The Banner Saga Interview
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Here's a snip:
Speaking about arts... You stated the works of Eyvind Earle (1956's (The Sleeping Beauty" in particular), Ralph Bakshi and Don Bluth as a sources of inspiration, but the visual style of The Banner Saga is closer to the works of russian artist Ivan Bilibin and russian animation in general (for example, (The Tale of Tsar Saltan" or more recent (Prince Vladimir") to me. Are you familiar with the works of Bilibin or other russian animators? Russian and Scandinavian medieval cultures do have a lot in common, actually, and I was surprised to see familiar visual style from my childhood books and cartoons in a New World videogame.
I'm definitely I huge fan of animation from almost every source. I went to college for 2D animation and getting to make my own 2D game was something that's been been a personally goal of mine. I've always liked work similar to Arthur Rackham or Ivan Biliban, but our key aesthetic has always been Eyvind Earle. We mentioned Sleeping Beauty a lot because that's what our audience would recognize, but if you look up his personal works you see how do a lot more mature looking artwork closer to the sources that you've mentioned. I think a lot of art from the era has interesting similarities across several different cultures.
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Could you share some details on the story in The Banner Saga? As far as I understand, the events will take place after the Ragnarok happened, gods and chtonic creatures demised, in the world, populated by descendants of Lif and Lifthrasir, protected by the few survived young gods. What could possibly go wrong in a world like this? Where is menace coming from this time?
For one, we've done a lot of research on real-world viking culture, but this has inspired our original take on the world. Instead of a game with real-world viking lore, we wanted to use their themes in a way that won't be predictable for someone very familiar with the culture. The idea of Ragnarok was integral to their mythology, and in The Banner Saga they believe this even already happened, and that's why the gods are dead. The vikings who survived were now left to wonder why they survived. However, what threatens them now is something that looks like a second Ragnarok coming, and that's the biggest mystery of the game. Is this meant to be the doom of man, or is this something else? The majority of the story revolves around this event.
Thanks, RPGWatch.
