Pre-sale figures for The Banner Saga 2 ‘far exceed’ its predecessor, according to Stoic art director Arnie Jorgensen.
TrustedReviews spoke to Jorgensen and technical director John Watson ahead of The Banner Saga 2’s April 19 release, and asked if the company has seen continued support for the sequel following the original’s successful starter campaign.
“We’ve got a little bit of feedback now and that the pre-sales right now far exceed anything we saw in Saga one,” Jorgensen said, “so we know that there’s a big base of people that played Saga one and are coming through to Saga two.”
“And maybe some that are even hopping on board like a lot of people do and saying ‘well I won’t play the first one, I’ll play the second one’ which they just think is probably better, it’s a better game. So we’re just seeing a lot more activity of people piling in now.”
When discussing the importance of Kickstarter support, Watson added, “The Kickstarter backers kind of formed the kernel, like the seed of our entire community, and it kind of built up with the development and release of Factions, the multiplayer demo, and they became very involved in that and onward.
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Watson goes on to note that, while there was a large number of Kickstarter backers, it is eclipsed by the over one million total players of The Banner Saga. “Once the game was actually released it was like, you know, then it was open to the wide world and the number of players that have played the game dwarfs the Kickstarter backers. The number of Kickstarter backers is about 20,000, which is a lot, but now probably close to a million people have played The Banner Saga, so they really formed the sort of spark and I think that the total audience is much larger.”
The Banner Saga 2 launches on April 19 on PC and Mac. The game will also come to PS4, Xbox One and mobile devices some time after launch.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
