Journey composer: Banner Saga score was his most challenging yet

Journey and Monaco composer Austin Wintory also wrote the music for The Banner Saga, and it was "the most challenging score I've ever faced," he said in a Reddit AMA today.

"The differences from a game like Monaco or Journey are eeeenormous," said Wintory, explaining that "the gameplay mechanics [of The Banner Saga] are so wildly different from those other games."

Stoic's The Banner Saga is a role-playing game set among the Vikings, with class-based combat taking place in turn-based fashion from an isometric perspective on a grid. The Viking epic also contains travel and conversation sequences for its player-choice-driven story, and Wintory said determining the pacing of the music — "how to make the music interesting without feeling out of step with the game itself" — was his biggest challenge.

"Took over a year to feel like I was figuring it out," added Wintory, who was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2012 for his Journey score.

The Banner Saga will be released Jan. 14 on Mac and Windows PC.