For the most part, Stoic Games is known as The Banner Saga company. Aside from a legal dispute with King Digital several years ago, the company’s sole claim to fame is its well-loved Banner Saga trilogy.
It’s certainly easy to see why for anyone who has played one of the Banner Saga games. With a focus on story and important choices, a distinct art style, and a brutally difficult battle system, the Kickstarter funded trilogy has many fans. However, if the new job openings over at Stoic games are anything to go off of, it looks like the company is expanding into new gaming territory.
Several job listings at Stoic point towards the company gearing up for a new, large-scale video game release. Some of the standouts are calls for a producer, a Jr. SDET (testing for bugs), a gameplay engineer and, most tellingly, a combat designer. The combat designer role calls for the development of combat in a “fast-paced action game,” hinting at something different from the company’s previous endeavors. It also calls for someone with experience in live service titles, like MMOs or live games in the vein of Marvel’s Avengers. With such different gameplay elements lined up, it’s questionable whether the same community that kickstarted The Banner Saga 3 will rally to this new title.
There are a few things to take into account if Stoic is really going in a live service, action-oriented direction. First, this is a huge departure in every way from what is, as of this article, the Banner Saga company. Each of the Banner Saga titles is a turn-based RPG, a far cry from action-oriented combat. Furthermore, if the game does turn out to be an MMO, then the impactful decisions of the Banner Saga that have become a Stoic staple will be significantly more difficult to implement.
On one hand, this could prove a boon for Stoic. Not only could this new game help the company be known for more than The Banner Saga, it could also provide steady revenue. While it’s still debatable how sustainable games as a service are, it cannot be denied they provide steady income for a good, long while, provided the title is good in the first place.
However, a live service, action-oriented game might play against Stoic’s established strengths. The powerful story that made The Banner Saga 3 work will be much harder to manifest in an ongoing, live service title. Hopefully Stoic can pull it off somehow, as a good narrative is a terrible thing to waste in any game.
Source: PCGamesN
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