Probably one of my biggest gaming diappointments. I love the first two Banner Saga games. They are not only beautiful games aesthetically but also have a deeply emotional story which deals with topics such as grief, depression and the small beautiful moments one can find even in a breaking world, all while shaping the world and characters based on your decisions. And let's not even talk about the wondrous world and lore, filled with details and mithology that expands in a natural way with each entry.
Unfortunately, the third game of the trilogy is terribly disappointing on a narrative and technical level. My main issue, though, is how the whole project was managed by Stoic.
I was one of the original backers for Banner Saga 3 and it had a pretty successful campaign on Kickstarter, more than dobuling the campaign goal. In fact, Stoic even said that, since development was going smoothly, the game would actually launch sooner than expected, various months in advance, actually.
And then, the game's launch came, and it was plagued (and still is) by bugs and technical issues that were not present in earlier entries. I have a big tolerance of bugs and I totally understand that in a series with so many different factors and decisions throughout the trilogy, it must be hard to keep track of everything, but there's no excuse for the game to still be in this state after all this time. At launch SPOILER [spoiler]my main character even died due to a bug when importing decisions from Banner Saga 1 and 2 (the dredge baby) [/spoiler]
The game has baffling design decisions, such as how you actually miss essential scenes on the late stages of the game that show the fate of certain characters and plot lines if you do well enough with time and resources [spoiler]when you have to reach Arberrang[/spoiler]. You have to actively waste resources resting on camp and have time advance artificially if you want to watch these scenes.
Moreover, the game just ends, abruptly, with no room for breathing nor even showing the fate of the characters who have been accompanying you throughout these 3 games. At launch, many people were requesting Stoic to even add a few slides at the end describing the fate of our companions (like other games such as Ash of Gods did post launch, for example), but they refused to do so, saying that it was a creative decision. A bad excuse for simply not caring enough about fans who have been supporting them throughout the whole trilogy. I guarantee you, it's no creative decision, the game just ends, and you get NOTHING about the characters who have accompanied you and have been invested in throughout the trilogy.
Honestly, all of these things reek that they ran out of money from the campaign and were forced to release the game early, since all these technical issues and narrative and design holes do not seem like part of a smooth development, as they called it. The worst part, for me, is the dishonesty of Stoic. Not only the game was not ready to launch and lied about it, they also abandoned the development without fixing a lot of the bugs and dismissed all feedback and suggestions. I can't possibly believe that a few lines of text under the sprite of a character would be expensive or costly in any way (I'm not even talking about doing different slides depending on decisions like Supergiant Games do, just one, with no variation, would be enough).
It's been 8 years since the game launched and they haven't addressed any of this nor have any intention to do so. They have now moved on to their new game, Towerborne, so it's obvious they have no intention of fixing the third game. Nevertheless, I think it's important to call them out for their attitude and work on this game. It's a terrible shame, since the first two Banner Saga games are probably two of the best indie games you can experience, and inevitably Banner Saga 3 leaves a sour aftertaste after 2 incredible games.
