Bard's Tale IV - Remasters Removed

[HiddenX]

The Bard's Tale Remasters have removed from the BT4 Kickstarter reward packages. Creative Producer Thomas Beekers (Brother None) explains:

The Bard's Tale Remastered Status Update

Hi everyone,

From time to time we've been seeing questions about the Bard's Tale remaster and its development status. Normally we don't discuss details like this, but in the interest of giving you more transparency and clearing up some of those questions, we felt it was a good idea to post a statement here.

When the BT4 Kickstarter campaign started, we initially promised the emulated versions of the original BT trilogy - those were finished and delivered to backers many months ago.

Shortly after the BT4 campaign began, Olde Skuul expressed interest in developing remastered and updated versions of the classic BT games. We were a bit reluctant, as we had concerns about Olde Skuul completing development, however, we agreed on the condition that inXile would provide payment on completion of the project. Because of this, our wording around the BT remasters was a bit more tentative:

"Meanwhile, Rebecca will be working on the updated versions of the games and if that goes well we'll get you those as soon as she delivers them to us, also for free! As we're not working on these versions ourselves we cannot give an ETA or guarantee on their release, we'll all be waiting for Rebecca to deliver us an upgraded version worthy of the name!"

More recently, Becky has made appearances, such as on the Shane Plays podcast where she suggested Olde Skuul stopped working on the project because they haven't received payment. This implies that they've stopped working because we haven't paid them monies that are due, but as mentioned above, we agreed no monies would be due until completion.

There was some initial work done on the remasters, and we released some of those beta builds to you as a way to keep you guys involved during BT4's pre-production stages, as well as to help fuel development and get feedback for Olde Skuul. Unfortunately, Olde Skuul's progress slowed and eventually stopped. Our emails and IMs would sometimes take weeks or months to get replies. During this period we even provided internal and external QA resources at our own expense to help push development along, but those efforts didn't help much either. At this stage, we feel it's unlikely that Olde Skuul will finish development on the BT remasters.

Obviously, we're not happy with this situation, and it has been a frustrating sequence of events for us, but we felt it was right to let you all know what happened. In the meantime, we've removed the BT remasters from our reward packages on the Bard's Tale backer web site. The emulated version we previously released as promised will remain available to everyone who backs The Bard's Tale IV.

-> Becky on Shane Plays last year.

More information.

 

[Lucky Day]

Queue the flamers screaming bloody blue murder throughout the webs and internets.

 

[Deleted User]

Dang. I was really looking forward to them, too. I guess the originals are playable, just have to break out the graph paper, eh?

 

[Lucky Day]

Yeah, I'd be very interested in them too, but remakes of good old games tend not to sell i.e King's Quest. Pirates! being the exception which was remade twice.

 

[forgottenlor]

I'd think twice about backing a kickstarter now from Oldskuul. I thought they were doing this for promotional purposes, and if that was so they've shot themselves in the foot.

 

[Deleted User]

forgottenlor, I wouldn't jump to that conclusion so quickly. There are always 2 sides to every story and we don't know the details of the agreement.

 

[forgottenlor]

Well the remasters were way overdue when the betas were released, so they obviously completely underestimated the work involved. And remember that this is the game's original coder, so she was redoing her own work, not somebody else's. That would make me very hesitant to back any independent job that the studio would do, and I didn't feel that way previously.
I do understand though that Olde Skuul probably thinks they got a raw deal from InExile and that they have their own story. Who knows what each side thought they were promising or being promised.

 

[Vindicator]

Disappointing, but not surprising.
Newton's Fourth Law states, "The amount of work done is inversely proportional to the amount of weed smoked."

 

[crpgnut]

Disappointing, but not surprising.
Newton's Fourth Law states, "The amount of work done is inversely proportional to the amount of weed smoked."

Boy, your avatar really brings back the old nostalgia. Johnny Sokko and his Flying Robot Those are so bad, they're great!

 

[joxer]

Who cares for remasters, it needs reboot not same old outdated stuff.

 

[Darkheart]

Might have given the remasters a try, but many times it is more interesting to read about (very) old games than actually having to play them (see CRPG Addict's blog posts about Fate).

On an unrelated sidenote: You can get the new Steam version of Precursors for a dollar in the latest Bundle Stars bundle:
https://www.bundlestars.com/en/bundle/chaos-bundle

 

[Hastar]

Ultra Man would kick Johnny Sakko's butt

 

[Vindicator]

Boy, your avatar really brings back the old nostalgia. Johnny Sokko and his Flying Robot Those are so bad, they're great!

Yeah, I loved it when I was a kid… What boy wouldn't dream of his own 50m tall voice controlled flying robot?

@Hastar: Ultraman was great too… and he certainly could kick Johnny's ass… But his Giant Robot would then pound Ultraman into the ground.

 

[wolfing]

Well the remasters were way overdue when the betas were released, so they obviously completely underestimated the work involved. And remember that this is the game's original coder, so she was redoing her own work, not somebody else's. That would make me very hesitant to back any independent job that the studio would do, and I didn't feel that way previously.

To be honest, you give me code I wrote 20 years ago and it would be like working on somebody else's code.

Yeah, I loved it when I was a kid… What boy wouldn't dream of his own 50m tall voice controlled flying robot?

@Hastar: Ultraman was great too… and he certainly could kick Johnny's ass… But his Giant Robot would then pound Ultraman into the ground.

But Ultraseven would kick both of their arses and cackle gleefully.

 

[Carnifex]

That is truly disappointing. I was really looking forward to romping through all three of these again before the new one comes out, and now that won't happen. Honestly, I still believe they should find some way to make it happen, but that probably isn't going to happen.

 

[rune_74]

I was looking forward to the reboots as well....removing them from the rewards seems a bit off though as it was a promise they made....I'm not sure what they could do about it though.

 

[Deleted User]

Well, the emulated versions work, right? They just won't have all the upgraded stuff, like the upgraded artwork and auto-map features added to the first 2 games.

I still want to romp through 'em eventually. Maybe another good use for Grid Cartographer.

 

[Deleted User]

Newton's Fourth Law states, "The amount of work done is inversely proportional to the amount of weed smoked."

Funny, but a good sativa is known to make some people focus more and actually get more done. It's those indica strains that'll getcha. Or so I hear.

 

[Lucky Day]

But seriously if you are not getting paid, what is the real motivation to do something like that. Its understandable.

 

[Pessimeister]

This seems like a very disappointing communication breakdown; particularly for the continuity of having one of the original programmers peripherally involved in extending the Bard's Tale Legacy.

Perhaps better, more clear communication and understanding between the two parties would have prevented this from happening. Ahh well, there's always that first beta release of the remaster to test and of course the originals to go back to.