After a short hiatus, Stoic will be starting work on the second game in The Banner Saga trilogy, its melancholy tactical RPG title. The first game was a gorgeous, thoughtful mix of chess-like battles and Oregon Trail-style roaming, and rightfully did rather well in our Banner Saga review. “No game has ever been more worthy of the title ‘Saga’,” the developer posted on Facebook, no doubt referring to the trademark debacle with King.
“The three of us at Stoic want to give a heart-felt thank you to all the fans who have supported us by playing The Banner Saga,” the post reads. “We’ve gotten so many messages about personal experiences with the game that we’ve been quite honestly blown away. We didn’t set out to make a game for everybody, but the people who like it have been incredibly, overwhelmingly supportive, far beyond what we had expected.
“The feedback we’ve gotten from players and reviewers have really been taken to heart. We’ve already put out the first patch fixing issues reported by players about bugs and balance and after a short hiatus we’ll be coming back to work on the next game in the trilogy. If there’s one complaint we’ve heard over and over, it’s that the story isn’t done.”
The first game does end somewhat abruptly, though it’s an affecting moment. Many questions remain unanswered, so hopefully we won’t have to wait too long for the sequel to answer them
In January, King, the creators of Candy Crush Saga filed a Notice of Opposition in regards to the “saga” in The Banner Saga, ridiculously alleging that it would cause confusion among purchasers and potential purchasers. However, King clarified the situation revealing that the Notice of Opposition had more to do with absurd Trademark and Copyright laws. The Notice was to prevent Stoic’s trademark of “saga” because King didn’t want to create a precedent where real copycats could argue that use of the word was legitimate. “If we had not opposed Banner Saga’s trademark application, it would be much easier for real copycats to argue that their use of ‘saga’ was legitimate,” King said.
Stoic’s response? They weren’t backing down. “We won’t make a viking saga without the word Saga, and we don’t appreciate anyone telling us we can’t.”
This isn’t all that far removed from the “scrolls” trademark scrap between ZeniMax and Mojang. The former being a massive company proactively protecting their brand to ensure that actual threats to it wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.
Cheers, Eurogamer.