Game Blog 4: The Banner Saga

Game Blog Week 4

Game: The Banner Saga

Question 3: How does morality influence the choices you make in the game?

The Banner Saga in a turn based SRPG (strategy role-playing game) set in a realm of Nordic fantasy where horned giants live alongside humans. Being that this is an SRPG the game has two main modes of interactivity: combat sections and dialogue sections, both of which contain many important decisions.

Upon starting this game I was under the impression that if your character died in a combat situation they remained dead for the rest of the game and so I tried my best to play conservatively to preserve my characters life. It wasn’t until later on that I realised that characters only encounter permadeath through specific dialogue trees. This drove a disconnect between the combat and the dialogue because it meant characters could die over and over in combat but if you went down the wrong dialogue path then they were gone for good which I found a bit jarring. It completely changed the way I played the combat sections  because I didn't have to worry about any of my troops dying, I sent my disposable weak troops to their deaths in the hope of doing some damage to the enemies to then give a greater number of turns to my tank characters to plough through the rest. Death was not 100% meaningless in combat, if you failed the combat section you would have to start it over again but from a moral stand point of view it didn’t hold nearly as much tension as in other SRPG’s such as XCOM where all player deaths are permanent.

For me this fact caused an imbalance in the combat/dialogue dynamic because I would be extremely diligent when making dialogue options trying very hard to keep characters alive but when in battle where forethought and strategy should take main stage I wasn't as invested because the stakes weren't as high. In games where permadeath is present morality plays a huge role in the way I play and the choices I make because I know there is a lot riding on what I say and do and unless you have a perfectly placed save you have to carry through with your choices which I believe only invests the player more unfortunately when playing ‘The Banner Saga’ I feel these intense moments where you know a party member could die if you go down the wrong dialogue path and piss off the wrong character are overshadowed by the forgiveness of the combat. I feel the game would have been stronger and far more morally engaging if the permadeath aspect was carried through into the combat.

In Summary: The morale compass I once at the start of the game had been tossed aside in the combat sections but carefully recovered for the dialogue sections.