The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. Each feature has two arrows describing its relationship with the story: one going from left to right, showing how the feature can affect the story and what choice options are available and one going from right to left, showing how narrative decisions made by the player can affect that feature.Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. But the really interesting part is what happens between the features and the story, so I’ve mapped all the relationships out and labelled them with what can happen. On the right, we have a node representing the game’s narrative choices. Each feature is followed by a description of what it is and/or how it relates to other features. Down the left side, we have various gameplay features, such as Heroes, Battles, Supplies, and Time. The diagram above is the sum of my investigation, and is worth reading to appreciate the complexity this game pulls off. Then, once good characters are introduced, your handful of interlocking mechanics will mean that, by liberally sprinkling resource or currency consequences onto outcomes, every choice can be a subtle, nuanced, and engaging dilemma. But my takeaway is this: if writing a lengthy interactive fiction, consider adding a small web of different narrative ‘currencies’ and gameplay resources, and at least some basic relationships between them. If you didn’t care about the characters and their goals in the first place, it wouldn’t matter. Overspending Renown on Items might mean running out of Supplies, which lowers Morale, in turn weakening your Heroes in battle, leading them to get Injured, which means wasting Time recovering, which may result in the bad guys catching up and characters dying. It’s all a complex way of determining one thing: who lives. None of these stakes would be worth a damn if The Banner Saga didn’t feature characters worth saving.
Take a look at the diagram opposite to get a taste of the ways in which the story’s choices are given weight and consequences by a supporting cast of game mechanics.
This is all no easy feat, and is specifically enabled by the writing’s tightly woven relationship to a variety of interconnected gameplay features, such as chess-like hero battles currencies like ‘Renown’, supplies, and your caravan’s supply of people and more abstract systems like time limits and your party’s level of morale. There’s almost no randomness here, but the writers don’t shy away from unexpected consequences. There’s always a myriad of competing potential good and bad outcomes to consider to a given course of action, and you never know how it’ll play out. Send your hero solo, and he may succeed, but it also leaves him vulnerable at the cliff’s base and there are giant bears in the area, so you could lose him permanently.
The winch will probably cost time and resources, and you may get attacked while building it, but it seems a safer way to retrieve things. Do you move on? Do you order a group of warriors to start constructing a winch to retrieve the supplies and bodies? Or do you send a hero down there to haul it all back up? Moving on may lower morale and sacrifice the supplies, but could save time. A few drunk men and a wagon of supplies tumble off a cliff. The reason The Banner Saga’s choice-points are so constantly engaging is because almost every one of them has some sort of implied stakes. Then, at the end of all three instalments, if the sum of your decisions is found wanting, you’ll fail to stop the world ending. But this time you play as each of the lead characters, making decisions which will change the course of that journey permanently, determining who lives, who dies, and what they experience in-between. The main element of progressions is a turn-based combat engagement employing characters you have. Much like The Lord of the Rings, The Banner Saga trilogy charts a species-diverse group’s splintered journey across a detailed fantasy world, as the forces of world-ending evil close in. You play as two characters, each with their own related story.
0 kommentar(er)
