Independent developer Stoic has today announced that its award-winning tactical RPG, The Banner Saga, will arrive on PlayStation 4 on January 12, 2016. A single-player-driven turn-based strategy RPG, The Banner Saga is actually the first in a trilogy of games with The Banner Saga 2 already confirmed for a PS4 release later next year.
Described as a cross between popular TV shows Game of Thrones and Vikings, The Banner Saga is a sweeping epic of a game which casts players as members of a Viking clan looking to lead their family and countrymen to safety. Originally conceived as a Kickstarter back in 2012, The Banner Saga smashed its funding goal before seeing a critically and commercially successful release on PC and mobile platforms. So popular is The Banner Saga that a recent Kickstarter to make a board game spin-off the series, titled Warbands, was also successful too.
As far as the transition to PS4 goes, while it hasn't been a totally smooth journey, the additional time spent developing The Banner Saga for Sony's console has actually yielded some unique improvements.
“We have been working on porting Banner Saga to consoles for some time,” said John Watson, Founder and Technical Director at Stoic. “Porting the game certainly presented technical challenges that we needed to overcome, and gave us an opportunity to redesign the user experience for console controllers. We have managed to merge the story and gameplay from Banner Saga with a refined controller interface to make it a very enjoyable console gaming experience.”
With deep progression and story elements, branching dialogue choices and the kind of cartoon-esque visuals that would make Don Bluth blush, The Banner Saga stands a great chance at being the PS4's premier tactical RPG when it releases next month.
After all, everyone likes a bit of Game of Vikings right?
Look for our review of The Banner Saga on PS4 in the near future but in the meantime, you can catch the launch trailer for the game below.