If your mom’s doing it, it’s probably already over.
True, they were recently uh… evolved … Vikings, or as Wikipedia puts it:
The English name “Normans” comes from the French words Normans / Normanz, plural of Normant, that is itself borrowed from Old Low Franconian Nortmann “Northman” or directly from Old Norse Norðmaðr, Latinized in Nortmannus (recorded in Medieval Latin, 9th century) to mean “Norseman” or “Viking”.
Edit: Having visited there with a group of Norwegian students, they certainly think of it as being part of their heritage. I’m not making an argument that it actually is, however. My describing it as Viking is probably due to the fact that its history was taught to me by a bunch of Norwegians who weren’t experts in history.
It looks and sounds great! And it promises a little more than mindless combat, if going on the way the trailer played. Decent story telling i can really believe coming from ex-bioware people. And that art was really nice, like a Hayao Miyazaki manga or something from the more ‘thoughtful’ stable of animation. It’s definately on my list to watch for, so thanks for the heads-up Bigger Boat.
Dark ages Rus was supposedly founded by Vikings as well. They conquered the Slavic tribes and set up princedoms along the river networks. Kinda makes sense that beardy axe-wielders were ultimately the source of both sides of the Cold War. Normandy -> England -> USA. Rus -> Russia.
Despite knowing those sequences of derivation, the conclusion was something that never occurred to me! Cool. I love that kind of stuff. Thanks Brian.
Seriously. Why isn’t this on Kickstarter?
Looking forward to seeing how it turns out :)
This is one cool looking game, majorly on my radar now.
Video reminded me of Ralph Bakshi’s works like Fire & Ice and Lord of the Rings.
Looks fantastic. Loved the trailer.
Random tidbit: the New Yorker magazine cover after D-Day was modeled on the Bayeux Tapestry: http://www.rockwell-center.org/exploring-illustration/the-tapestry-of-invasion/
It very certainly is.
The Normans were just another branch of the Viking diaspora - and essentially created by the centralization of monarchy in Norway or Denmark (depending on which nation’s historians you are talking to). They were very active in the Danish-Saxon wars, both as allies of the Danes and as allies of the Saxons (Rollo’s line intermarried with the House of Wessex and two of their King spent time in exile at the Norman court).
From a Scandinavian point of view, the events of 1066 and the following years can be seen as a three-way fight between the three most powerful successors of the Viking age - King Harald of Norway (often considered the last true Viking King), Duke William of the Normans, and King Swein of Denmark (he invaded England twice after 1066, but was bought off by William) - with the Saxons caught in the middle.
King SWEIN?!? HAHA! Was that some sort of freudian slip? He was King Svend :-D
Yes and no. Been reading a lot of Viking age literature recently, as I’ve been playing around with a Viking-age design, and those Kings get called everything from Sven to Sweyn depending on the author/source.
Svend is just the modern Danish spelling of the name.
Well, it means pig in german, which was why it was kinda funny
This looks very interesting indeed. I’d like to quote this passage, that I found quoted on the Irontower Studios forums. I think it’s from RPG Codex, or something like that:
Hi! I’m one of the guys from Stoic and we noticed this thread going so I figured I’d mention a few things. First thing we noticed was a lot of comments on was the bioware style dialogue. I had no idea people hate it so passionately! Fortunately, what we’re going for is more like The Witcher- your dialogue only branches when there’s an important decision to be made. We’re also going to be showing the full response options instead of ME-style paraphrasing. For our announcement trailer we wanted to show there is branching dialogue, and this was an example of that. That exact conversation probably won’t happen in the game. Bottom line is we want the player to be in control of how they say something and we want what you say to be important.
Definitely looks like there’s a wide range of opinion on the art style. For the record, the guy who referenced Sleeping Beauty is dead on- we’re absolutely going for the art style that Eyvind Earle created. Amazing artist. Hopefully we evolve it a little further towards Eyvind Earle to the point that people don’t think it “looks like fucking shit, made for flash and screams “casual””.
On that note, the gameplay isn’t casual at all really. We’re really big fans of Tactics, X-COM and Shining Force and we’re shooting for a pretty deep strategy game with an emphasis on strategy. We don’t plan on having a learning curve as steep as something like Dominions 3, but we’re not aiming at the Zynga crowd, either. We’re aiming at the kind of players who like FFTactics, King of Dragon Pass and Mount and Blade, mainly because that’s what we like.
Thanks for all the comments! It’s truly nice to get some honest feedback from the hardcore crowd like this.
That’s a lot of awesome games he names in that post, and I guess someone must have said so (possibly in an unpleasant way), because this bit was also quoted:
Name dropping? Dude, I own an original piece of art from KoDP [King of Dragon Pass]. One of my favorite games of all time and a huge inspiration for some of the gameplay in The Banner Saga. I hope you guys will like what we’re doing with it.
This makes me really excited, and has me wondering what the strategy part of the game will be like. I love King of Dragon Pass, and I’m very much looking forward to hearing more about this game.
Those guys are crazy complaining about the art. The artwork is excellent. I guess if you are of that school of thought that says “colors=kiddie, brown=mature” then you might not like the art. I’m looking forward to this specifically because of the art (well, because its turn based first, then the art).
Tony
Same here. And i was thinking during my first post, that it did have a likeness to KODP, i didn’t want to say just in case it was proven false. Now i’m very much in the ‘will buy for certain’ camp. :)
I love that the developer is tough enough to wade into a hardcore forum and land a few punches himself. I was going to wait and see about the finished game, but now I’m rooting for them.
Name-dropping?
Well, he hit all my hot buttons. Excited!