Episode 248: The Dredge Report

[Rob Zacny]

Polygon's Danielle Riendeau joins Rob and Troy to talk about the long marches and difficult decisions in Banner Saga.

 

Well-marked spoilers are present between 30:58 and 38:26.

 

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Read Danielle's review of Banner Saga at Polygon.

[BagelMage]

The comparison to Game of Thrones pretty much sold me on this. It was also good to hear some one who ins't as deep into strategy as Rob and Troy one who really enjoyed it, sometimes stuff is a bit too deep for my mental capacity haha Great show guys. 

[clyde]

Great discussion. I especially enjoyed the speculation on what makes Banner Saga recommendable in spite of its flaws.

Regarding narrative decisions being arbitrary versus consequential:

I'm currently on my second attempt to finish the game. During my first attempt, I died in Boersgard and it seemed appropriate enough to be happy with that narrative ending and to start again. I wasn't frustrated, it just felt so believable to me (it being my first loss probably heightened the sense that my failure in Boersgard was true).

So I'm playing again and I'm making different decisions. My party make-up is significantly affected. I have a larger pool of fighters to use when others are injured and I can refine my tactics with the availiblity of classes. In retrospect I don't feel cheated, it's just that I don't see how I could pretend to be ignorant of these consequences during my next play-through.

I think that FTL suffers from the same problem and it's advertised as replayable. In FTL, the first time you see an abandoned ship or an out of control weapons-system on a colony, you make an uneducated guess as to what would be best. After a few games though, you can see that if a conditional choice does not appear on your list, then it's probably a bad idea. When the player realizes this, those conditional choices become a known benefit to adding specific races to your crew or equipment to your ship. There is still a problem though, I have very little ability to speculate which instances I may encounter. Compare this to Spelunky. In Spelunky, I'm in the shop and I have enough money for one of these: glue, more bombs, a glove, or a present. I look at the items I've already obtained to assess my strengths and weaknesses. I also have played enough where I have a somewhat useful understanding of what types of situations I may encounter later (I might believe that I will be able to get to the city of gold during this run, or I may think that I should go to the mothership for a jetpack later). I don't have very reliable information, but I'm still making an educated decision aware of the risks and rewards. That quality is what I would like to see more of in the narrative choices of Banner Saga. It already has some of them; do I want to raise morale by resting? Or am I too low on supplies? I can look at a map to gauge the distance to our next destination when choosing between supplies and enchanted clothing. There's still a chance that my cart will break an axel or something else may happen that I didn't plan for, but I had enough information about a perceived risk and reward (in the game's systems) that I had a reason for my decision. Having that reason is what makes me feel like I own my decision. I also don't think that risk/reward decisions exclude ethical connotations.

During my third play-through, many of the decisions I've made will appear to me as nothing more than a question that pops up and says "Do you want to handicap yourself at no benefit?" Those types of decisions could have been changed slightly to communicate to me (on the level of third play-through knowledge) "Do you think you are going to need the archer more? Or the provoker?" Again, not a solid this-or-that, but just a query of "Knowing what you know about the consistencies of this game and its inconsistencies, which one is a better gamble?"

Sometimes I use three willpower points on an archery shot that has a 70% chance to hit, not because I'm confident of the outcome but because it I think it may be worth the risk. The game would benefit from the same in its consequential narrative decisions.

[Gormongous]

Excellent discussion on an excellent game, guys. I especially liked Rob talking about the unpredictability of the game's scripted events and Troy bringing up how that unpredictability is managed in King of Dragon Pass. I think the crucial difference between the two, which makes The Banner Saga a bit more of a "guess what the developer is thinking" design, is that the different choices always have the same outcome in The Banner Saga, while random chance plays a huge role in King of Dragon Pass, since a "correct" answer can still fail and an "incorrect" answer sometimes succeeds. I think a lot of where The Banner Saga falls down is where it imitates King of Dragon Pass, but not enough or in the wrong way. That's my problem with renown as currency especially, which is covered in the thread on the Idle Forums proper.

 

Also, the turn order thing bothered me at first, but I soon discovered that the concept of "maiming" is an important and totally hidden part of the combat. On the higher levels of play, the decision of whether to reduce an enemy to a single hitpoint to clog their turn order or to kill them outright for the willpower and shock bonus is perhaps the most important decision to be made in the tactical battle. It may not seem entirely thematic, but "cleanup" goes a lot faster if you work on reducing the fighting effectiveness of the enemy as a whole, rather than kill off each individual enemy in sequence.

 

Also also, Danielle needs to review Total War: Rome II by the time that CA puts out its next inevitable DLC. More rage, more disappointment!

[MikeO]

I think this game is really well done, but I have to say, the tactical combat UI drives me bonkers. I need some way to rotate the map, or zoom, or change perspective, or something. I'm sure the art design makes this problematic, but I can hardly see anything when a bunch of guys are all clumped up together - I can barely see (or often not at all) the HPs etc of units I am selecting or attacking. Also, the details of special abilities are nebulous. Art design, sound design, story, all seem top notch. If they can somehow improve the battle UI, this is a really great game.

[Rob Zacny]

@Gormongous - Yeah, it took a bit to adjust to the way Banner Saga wants you to wear an entire team down, not lone targets. Which I guess kind of solves something that bugs me a lot in tactical RPGs, which is that they tend to become about ganging up on one target and snowballing to victory. It took me some time to adjust, but it's quite clever.

 

@MikeO - Tom Chick made a similar point at QT3 and... I just think you're both nuts. I don't know why, but for some reason I find this UI really readable and easy to use. It is tough in dense traffic, but not so much that I've ever had an issue. Just a reminder of how differently people can react to UI.

[glazedkoala]

SPOILERS:
That character you all lost is Gunnulf, and it is possible to save him. Interestingly, after saving him, Ubin shares his opinion: "Those supplies were important. You made the wrong choice."
I personally reloaded a previous save file to save him, which meant I had to redo a battle.
 

[sclpls]

FYI, there's a spoiler tag you can use to hide that text. I've played the game already (although not with that outcome!) so I'm not sweating it, but I'm sure some folks would appreciate it.

[MikeO]

I finished this last night. Rob, after playing the entire game, I can say that the tactical map clutter was really only super annoying in maybe three battles -- most of them were perfectly manageable. I had two extremely cluttered examples early on, which got me off on the wrong foot. All in all, well worth playing despite a few annoyances. I get Troy's comparison to King of Dragon Pass, although KoDP is more of a strategy game (as I'm sure Troy realizes)....they both have a lot of terminology that is unique to their own world. (and both feature good world building in general) I too loved the map -- I think it's the best implementation of this kind of map that I've ever seen.

 

As Troy, and, I think, Rob, said, this is really worth checking out, even if it may not seem to be the kind of thing you usually play.