He’s often telling them, he says, to tone it down. Jorgensen’s biggest problem, when it comes to managing the animators, is that, if anything, they are too eager to make their characters look outstanding. It’s the same homebrew method they used for the previous games. Character motions, meanwhile, were recorded in Jorgensen’s garden, then sent to be rotoscoped. “We’ve really taken our time to make sure the endings are as satisfying as possible… It’s a very wide range of endings you can have in this game and they come back to decisions you’ve made in Banner Saga 1 and Banner Saga 2 which you thought could have been small decisions.” Alongside these faces you’ll find the visages of various Kickstarter backers.

It’d feel like a disservice to the community, the story, everything. “If we don’t stick the ending – and it doesn’t matter what you’ve chosen along the way – you chose A, I chose B – if we don’t stick the ending then we’ve really failed in the whole thing. “One of the things we’re concentrating on in Banner Saga 3 is that we need to stick the ending of this,” says Jorgensen, who’s taking me through a demo of the battles. As the besieged warriors of Arberrang, you’re trying to buy the caravan passing through the shroud enough time to do their thing – find the source of the darkness and stop it. But this time it’s district-by-district, street-by-street. You’ll still move from one area to another in the style of a long entourage. Of course, it’s under siege and overcrowded (“Like a boiling pot,” says Jorgensen). Another group of characters remains in a city called Arberrang, the only city that hasn’t been overtaken by the Dredge, the stoney, apocalyptic foes you’ve been fighting and fleeing from the whole series. But the caravan making their way through the darkness is only one side of the story. The ruins of Strand, a village from the first game, will also make an appearance. The enemies, which still accost you on a polite, turn-based grid, are the misshapen victims of this atmosphere. You head behind this veil with a caravan of mercenaries to find “melted villages” and “forests curled like fish hooks”. A few snippets: Your decisions have carried on, and the setting remains a fantasy dark age but one where this dark veil has spread over most of civilisation, alongside corrupted foes. And now, after the Stoic team appeared at PAX East and announced the release date for The Banner Saga's finale, we get a bit of delayed GDC coverage from Rock, Paper, Shotgun that combines an early preview of The Banner Saga 3 with an interview featuring Stoic's creative director Arnie Jorgensen. Its developers showcased some gameplay from The Banner Saga 3 and participated in a few interviews. Stoic Studio had a strong presence during this year's GDC.

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