The Banner Saga: Factions enters open beta

Multiplayer for The Banner Saga, the tactical-RPG-cum-viking-tale previously covered here, has just entered open beta. Now referring to this as The Banner Saga: Factions, Stoic Studio describes it simply: “a competitive multiplayer game where you fight against other players online to be the last one standing.”

Now, I don’t normally post about pure multiplayer outings on IndieRPGs.com, but the developers state that “everything you see here is how combat is developing for the single player game as well”–which essentially means that we can consider this a highly involving (and replayable) combat demo.

Interestingly, Factions features persistent characters that you can train, improve, and even promote in between matches. To keep from fundamentally unbalancing the game, however, Stoic say that Factions automatically matches players with comparable amounts of character training.

There’s a lot more to be said about the mechanics on offer here, but it would probably be simplest to just point you toward this video, which features a pretty thorough overview:

To get in on The Banner Saga: Factions during the open beta, you’ll need to shell out $15 and sign up right here. This nets you two Steam keys (one for you and one for a friend). Once Factions is complete, Stoic has said that it will be releasing it for free (though there is currently no word on exactly when that will be).