"One of the first things anyone who has worked on a game with "real choices" will tell you is that it's expensive," he said. "Just imagine a simple conversation with one branching option. Now you've got to write two outcomes. If it branches again, now you've quadrupled your work and you have to track all those new variables. That's just one conversation."
"Some games deal with this by creating false choices that all loop back to one point, but that's still a ton of content to produce," Thomas said. "Instead of taking the approach of giving the player a choice for every sentence, we thought it would be more meaningful to only present you with a choice when it's important, similar to The Witcher."
Thomas also said that the story of The Banner Saga centers around a "world-changing event," but unlike a lot of other RPGs, players won't be assuming the roles of what Thomas calls "The Only Ones That Can Do Anything."
"The choices you make affect who lives, who dies, and the relationships between the characters. It's not just about saving the world; it's about what happens to the people you care about, and what's worth saving," he said. "What you say in conversation can absolutely affect how often combat occurs or how difficult it is. We'll be talking a lot more about this as we continue to develop the single-player campaign."
