You can use it for levelling up (promoting) characters, purchasing magic items that will aid you in battle and for purchasing caravan supplies, but will never have enough. It’s earned through fighting battles and occasionally given as a reward for making certain choices. The ‘renown’ mechanic is a fine example of this. Three distinct branches of gameplay, all of which feed back into one another. Your role as player is to make dialogue choices in face-to-face meetings with other characters, text-based decisions that pop up as your caravan is making its way across the exquisite, Eyvind Earle inspired landscapes, and handle the turn-based battles that may arise as a consequence of those decisions. Progression through the story is linear in the sense that everyone will see the same key moments in the same locations, but certain actions will result in a rather different journey.

The characterisation is strong enough throughout that the majority of the named heroes feel like actual people, rather than walking skill-sets to be deployed in combat. If a particular character is an arrogant oaf, you’ll know because that’s how they act, not because an in-game encyclopedia or cinematic voice-over told you so. Stoic don’t always manage to abide by the vital rule of “show don’t tell,” but it’s clear they’re trying to do so whenever possible. That world is revealed with as little unnecessary exposition as possible. It has echoes of the great King of Dragon Pass, both in the domestic and community dilemmas it presents the player with, and its depiction of a mythological world that’s grounded in the familiar but still has much to discover. Traditional in some ways, making use of turn-based tactical combat and windows of text to outline certain situations, but in a manner that feels refreshing rather than purely nostalgic. There should be, because The Banner Saga is a splendid RPG.

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