Banner Saga is full of interesting ideas that I can't fully back because of the insanely reactionary nature of these games. I could talk about feeling moved by Alette's character arc if she's the one who survives, as a young girl who is forced to grow up too fast; I could say I enjoyed how fluidly the decisions carried between games; I could explain the real (good!) stress and fear I felt about the state of my caravan. Instead, I'll say something else: The unchecked fear of the Other is the #1 driving force of all of Banner Saga, from the zombie-like Dredge encroaching on your home, to the weird racist centaur people, to other caravans from different clans.

Choosing to help someone often puts your caravan in indirect or sometimes direct danger. You are trained to view the other people also trying to survive a catastrophe with extreme suspicion, and their differences from your caravan are emphasized so they seem more dangerous. To be clear, this omnipresent paranoia is never presented as a bad thing. It might be seen as a darn shame that you can't all hold hands and work together, but other people are fundamentally untrustworthy, obviously. So the "pragmatic" (and therefore right) thing to do is to prioritize you and yours, at the expense of everything else. On top of this, there are no gay people in Banner Saga, all the women are either archers or mages except for Folka (who is often the recipient of jokes about her being too fat / too masculine), and the only recruits of color are the centaurs who speak broken English and a bard who appears to be a Mongolian caricature. In a game that is so obviously afraid of the Other, that left a bad taste in my mouth.

"But you like other games without any gay people at all!" Also true. So here are some fun facts for you: Banner Saga was developed by Bioware alumni who had been on the Mass Effect team, and broke off to write their own fantasy, unfettered by bonds of AAA game development. In the same year that the first Banner Saga game came out (2014), Dragon Age Inquisition was released, also by Bioware, which made great (if imperfect) strides in including thoughtfully written LGBT characters, including a notable trans man, Krem. Bioware is a big studio that makes AAA video games, which often can't or won't push back against the status quo in an attempt to attract a wide audience. Indie game developers have historically had much more freedom, something the Banner Saga devs were clear they desired when they broke off. But the mess that is Banner Saga feels like not an indictment of the pressures of big video game companies, but a lament at how liberal the culture became.

And no, they did not earn the big "but the Dredge have feelings too!" twist in the final hours of the trilogy. It was too little too late.