The banner saga ending series#

Juno and Eywind bring some new wrinkles to the combat. You can only do this a few times before the darkness fully envelopes Arberrang, after which it’s game over. At that point, the game switches back to Aletta and you’re supposed to drive off another wave of enemies to buy Iver and gang some more time. Instead of the days ticking up, they actually count down to zero. While Alette’s side of the game plays similar to how it has before, maintaining a steady supply chain and your fighter/clansmen/varl ratio to keep up morale, Iver’s side of the story is a whole other thing. This final chapter also aims to mix it up a bit, mechanically speaking. It also carries over the ripple effects from the subtler choices you have made throughout the series, and The Banner Saga is one game in which the choice most certainly isn’t an illusion. Should you import your save from the previous games (and you should because this ‘trilogy’ really is just three chapters of a single, cohesive story), you will bring with you all your items, renown (which acts as both XP and currency), and any characters who survived. One led by Alette and her clansmen as they try to keep the peace in Arberrang, and another by the Varl Iver and the two menders Eywind and Juno as they try to drive back the darkness that is literally eating the world. While the first two games were entirely about surviving in an unforgiving world, this final chapter eschews survival in favour of testing the lengths to which you’ll go to do what needs to be done, and the weight of the lives of your friends against… everyone else, basically.Īs is customary for the series, the narrative jumps back and forth between two groups of people.

It’s a moment of pure gleeful triumph over a person who has upset me to my very core, but once the elation subsides, you’re quickly reminded that you have no time to rest or feel good. One of the very first things you get to do - based on choices you made in the last two games - is getting to punch a traitor so hard you break his nose.

The world of this series is a cold, cruel one, holding on to its last breath, and the heroes of this story are trying to make that final breath last as long as it possibly can. For two games, our heroes have been hanging by a thread, barely scraping through one life-threatening situation after another, essentially tricking the villain into thinking he’s dead just to buy some time. If you have played the first two games in the series, you know that this is not a story about good things happening to the people who deserve it. “One way or another, the saga comes to a close.” These words, uttered by the Valka Juno, at the beginning of The Banner Saga 3 are as much a promise as they are a threat.

The banner saga ending series#