When The Banner Saga arrived, it didn’t disappoint, either. The lush animated visuals, haunting score and intuitive combat system all helped The Banner Saga become an impressive story-focussed RPG. Now, Stoic Games is trying to bring their Norse epic to a whole new world of gamers.
Speaking with Digital Spy, Stoic Games programmer John Watson announced that The Banner Saga would be making its way to tablet devices, and that the game was even made with tablets in mind. Watson said that the game was “very well suited” to tablets since “a player can play the whole PC game with nothing but a mouse and the left button.” He also said that Stoic “wanted to make a tablet game from the beginning, but we felt the main audience for this tactics role-playing game was definitely on Steam.”
Stoic artist Arnie Jorgensen also added his own influence regarding a tablet release. “When we first started the company, we got to it because I bought an iPad and I played Sword and Sworcery,” said Jorgensen. “That was the whole motivation to start this thing. Right from the get go, we were designing everything to do with this.”
Watson also revealed that he hoped there would be console versions of The Banner Saga before the end of 2014, and that Stoic was also planning to release on PlayStation Vita at a later date. Watson stated that ideally Stoic “would be able to get some console ports out before the end of the year.” However, he made no promises, admitting “whether we can make that happen or not, I don’t know.”
He also explained that this could be down to the size of Stoic’s team — for instance, rather than hiring an external team for the iPad port of The Banner Saga, Watson has been porting it himself. He also said that the title would make its way to PS4 before the Vita. “I’d much rather see it on PlayStation 4 first, then work on the Vita,” said Watson. “The Vita might need some changes to take advantage of the fact that it’s both control and touch at the same time.”
Stoic may face a challenge in porting their role-playing epic to so many different devices, but you get the feeling that the three-man team is ready for whatever life can throw at them. They’ve already had King, the makers of mobile money-making machine Candy Crush Saga threatening a lawsuit over the use of the word Saga in their game title. The case has now been settled, and here’s hoping that Stoic can put their full attention towards creating solid ports of what they hope to be a powerful series of games.
The Banner Saga is out now for Windows PC and Mac OS X, with an iOS and Android release set for this summer.
Source: Digital Spy
