The Wizard Worm checked out Bard's Tale IV Director's Cut:

The Bard's Tale IV: Director's Cut Review - Is It Worth Playing Now? (Epic Dungeon Crawler)

The XBox Hub has reviewed the Director's Cut of The Bard's Tale IV:

The Bard’s Tale IV: Director’s Cut Review

Whenever I have to choose a class or character in a role-playing game I always have a dilemma. My standard go-to role is that of a fighter or a tank, but if I feel brave you may see me heading to the world of an archer or ranger-styled character, firing arrows in from the side of the party. I always wish I would take on a magical role, but am never confident enough to change my choices. The one class I have never really understood or understand the benefits of though is a bard. What do they do? Sing a morale-boosting song or keep the marching rhythm like the band at the back of an onward army? It never feels like the glory role and for that reason is hard to become enthused with. But with The Bard’s Tales IV: Director’s Cut, it’s all about the musical warrior, placed centre stage in the latest chapter of the long-running series. 

[...]

I have found The Bard’s Tale IV: Director’s Cut on Xbox One to be something that is very enjoyable; and believe me, I didn’t think I’d be sat here saying that. For fans of the series and lovers of the genre, the combination of turn-based combat, intriguing puzzles, and exploration work well. Throw in a large amount of gameplay hours, plus the side quests, challenges and crafting and this is a game that will keep the ardent adventurer in clover. Some may find things a bit overwhelming at times and the combat, although fascinating, doesn’t truly have the right stuff to do things justice, however there is much to love and enjoy once you’ve managed to get the music of The Bard’s Tale IV flowing.

Score: 3.5/5

MMORPG checked out the Director's Cut of The Bard's Tale IV:

The RPG Files: The Bard's Tale 4: The Director's Cut Review

The Bard’s Tale 4: The Director’s Cut is an epic tale of corruption and evil, suffering and loss, of lessons learned too late and and the bitter consequences. It’s also a story of hope and triumph and perseverance. It’s a game that challenged me and a story that tugged at my heart.

The Bard’s Tale 4 had a rocky start last year. We checked out the new changes and got a feel for the performance changes in our Initial Impressions piece a couple of weeks ago. Additionally, combat, enemies, puzzles, and many other aspects of the game were reworked and polished. Those systems felt good in the initial chapters, but a lot of games start strong and finish weak. How well would these hold up over the entire game? I spent the past two weeks working my way through the story. Read on and we’ll see if InXile put as much effort into the finish as they did the beginning. There are some minor spoilers ahead so be warned.

[...]

Conclusion

The Bard’s Tale 4: The Director’s Cut is a dramatic improvement from the initial release over a year ago. More than that, it’s an incredibly solid dungeon crawler and respectable entry in the franchise. It weaves puzzles and RPG character progression into a captivating story of love, loss, and triumph.

The Director's Cut for The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep will release August 27th.

We’re happy to announce that The Bard’s Tale IV: Director’s Cut will be arriving digitally on Windows, Mac, Linux, Xbox One, Xbox Game Pass (PC and Xbox), and PlayStation 4 on August 27!

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If you already own the game on PC when the Director’s Cut arrives, you’ll receive the update for free with the game’s release on August 27, and it will show up as a new product in your games library listed as The Bard’s Tale IV: Director’s Cut.

For the digital Director’s Cut we’re making the choice for new purchasers much clearer with new Standard and Deluxe Edition. Because the Director's Cut is a free upgrade for current owners, anyone who owns the base game will receive the Director’s Cut Standard, and those who own a current license for the Premium, Platinum, or Ultimate versions will be granted the Deluxe Edition. For our backers who may have retrieved digital rewards through CrowdOx before, you will be receiving The Bard's Tale IV: Director's Cut Deluxe Edition and all your digital items will now be tied to your Steam/GOG accounts.

A reminder for Mac & Linux users: your Steam and GOG keys are already available via CrowdOx if you haven’t redeemed them yet. The keys are universal, meaning they work with whichever system you are running Steam/GOG on (Windows, Mac, Linux). There are no Mac- or Linux-specific keys needed. 

For non-backers reading this, here’s a breakdown of The Bard's Tale IV: Director's Cut editions.

[...]

A progress report for The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep.

Release Update

Hi everyone, work on the Director’s Cut is going very well, and we’re excited to share more about our progress today.  As you’re aware, we were acquired by Microsoft late last year, and they’ve been a truly amazing partner, providing us access to new resources and refinement processes, and allowing us to take the time we want to ensure we make this the definitive edition of The Bard’s Tale IV.  The good news is that the wait won’t be that much longer, as we’re targeting late summer for a release of the Director’s Cut on Windows, Mac, Linux, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

We’ll be sharing more news on specific dates in the near future, but for now here is a video on the changes from the game’s Creative Director, David Rogers, detailing what you’ll find in this new Director’s Cut. 

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And here are a few shots of some of the new features to look forward to—ones inspired by the feedback you gave us. 

New Song of Exploration, “Struggler’s Lament”, allowing you to move past the main questline puzzles.

New character customization options.

Revised inventory management and additional UI features.

The Bard’s Tale Trilogy Update

We also have some news regarding The Bard’s Tale Trilogy for Mac gamers. Since launch, we’ve seen that Linux users have been able to play the game with minimal fuss, using methods like Steam’s Proton service. On the other hand, Mac users have not been able to play the game, so we are pleased to announce that we have made the additional investment to develop a Mac version. Krome is currently working on some additional updates for The Bard’s Tale Trilogy, and will begin work on the Mac version later this summer. All of you, Windows, Mac, and Linux, will be getting these additional Bard’s Tale Trilogy enhancement updates free of charge. 

Stay Tuned!

As we noted above, we’ll have a release date for the The Bard’s Tale IV: Director’s Cut soon, so be on the lookout for another update!

A new update for The Bard's Tale IV: Barrow's Deep announces a directors cut for June, which is also when mac and linux versions will be available.

Early 2019 Update

Posted by inXile entertainment (Creator)

Production Notes

Hi all, Paul here. We hope everyone had a fantastic holiday season and is having a good 2019 so far. For us, it has been a very busy and momentous last few months. As we move into the new year, things are coming more into focus and we would like to provide some quick updates on the progression of The Bard’s Tale IV’s updated 2.0 version, as well as an update on the Mac & Linux versions of the game.

A New Journey for inXile

As many of you know, we were recently acquired by Microsoft, which is a great boon as we plan out future titles and has the added benefit of providing opportunities to improve our current and in-development game titles, including The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep. We are very happy to be part of this new federation of Microsoft studios. As creators and game developers, we look forward to leveraging and utilizing the many tools, features, and services that Microsoft can offer.

2.0 expands to become the Director’s Cut

We are still in development on the free DLC patch, which also includes a number of other player-requested features and items off of our own post-release support list. As the scope of the patch has expanded (and continues to), we decided that it warranted a more formal title than 2.0. When released, it will turn the game into “The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep - Director’s Cut”. We are introducing several new features, most notably the previously mentioned DLC and an engine update, a larger undertaking allowing us to further improve performance and optimization. Many of those features were discussed in our last update, and include:

• A new dungeon and story line featuring new enemy types
• New items (master-crafted gear and Dwarven Weapons)
• Inventory filtering
• Expanded balancing efforts across the entire game (combat, economy, abilities, etc.) based on player feedback and our own testing
• A new Song of Exploration allowing you to bypass puzzles if those aren't your jam 
• Additional character portraits
• A new intro animatic
• Expanded work on improving localization
• Updated game engine
• Improved performance and stability
• Improved level art 
• Reworked main menu
• Numerous bug fixes

And much more! We are also currently working with Microsoft to improve and optimize our gamepad support. The Director's Cut is scheduled to go live in June.

Mac and Linux Users:

We’ve seen your comments and hear you. The Mac and Linux builds are making great progress in co-development and parity to our main version with our development builds and current feature production pipeline. We have a full-time dedicated team for each platform (Mac & Linux), and those teams are working concurrently with our main features dev teams.

The issue we have as developers is that we are unable to finalize the Mac and Linux versions of the game and continue to simultaneously make such sweeping changes to it. We wanted to resolve the issues that affected the PC launch before we shipped Mac and Linux and this dovetailed directly into the work we began doing for the Director's Cut, effectively becoming one continuous effort since September. This is why these versions need to go live the same day as the PC version of The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep - Director’s Cut.

We know it’s frustrating that you backed us early and have such a long delay but it just didn’t make sense to stop production in order to finalize these two versions and then circle back and update them months later. The Mac and Linux users will get the benefit of all the new features we are adding along with all the optimization, stability, and performance improvements so far, including our latest UE4 engine update, and that means tracking those development cycles to the current build.  

For these reasons, we are releasing the Mac and Linux versions at the same time as The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep - Director’s Cut. We greatly appreciate everyone's patience with The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep - Director’s Cut, and we believe all backers on all platforms will enjoy the new and polished features when the new version goes live.

Until Next Time,
Paul Marzagalli
Public Relations & Community Manager
@phimseto

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Christ Centered Gamer reviewed The Bard's Tale IV: Barrow's Deep.

Okay. I’ve been harsh with Bard’s Tale IV‘s puzzles, but now for where the game shines: the battle system. Combat here carries so many intricate factors I doubt I can give it justice, yet here I am to try. Encounters of the evil kind are inevitable. Similar to Checkers, combat is done in turns between your party and the enemy party. Which side goes first depends on who strikes first. You’ve got a limited number of moves (called opportunity) in your turn. Each character only has six abilities, five of which you personally equip. You get four moves, one movement option, and an item slot. Consider how these choices work in a group, though. A well rounded team needs complimentary attributes. In battle, your characters are assembled on a two rowed, four columned grid. Who’s in front and who’s in back in relation to your foes can put you in or or out of harm’s way. Changing positions mid-battle costs opportunity too. Lastly, each attack has different areas of range, cooldowns, and/or charge times. Some attacks can be cancelled mid-charge by mental attacks. Equipped weapons and armor can alter some moves’ behavior, and items grant advantages if chosen wisely. Now, I agree that this all sounds dense. It is, but it’s a good kind of dense, at least to my tastes. I enjoyed the countless variables I had to turn the tides. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it was mine.

[...]

Thanks Farflame!

A post-launch update for The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep announces a free dungeon DLC and looks at what's coming next in patch 2.0.

The Bard Goes Caroling

Posted by inXile entertainment (Creator)

TL; DR - Post-launch check-in, a look at what's coming next

Hi All, Paul here with an end of year check-in! The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep has been out for a few months now, and we wanted to let you know where things are and where things are going. Let's dive right in with a look at the game's post-launch from Creative Director David Rogers!

A Note from David

Hey everyone, David Rogers here to tell you about some of the good stuff we have coming down the pipe in the upcoming 2.0 patch. We've been hard at work poring through our forums, listening to reviews, and talking directly to some of our most dedicated fans so we could continue to improve the game. This patch brings another sweep of balance changes such as:

• Last patch, we focused primarily on balancing player abilities, and you'll see a little more of that this patch. 
• We're turning our main focus to enemy tuning and balance in order to ensure our enemies continue to challenge you throughout the game. 
• We're also making several adjustments to the end game economy by adding an additional tier of high level, master-crafted, items; adjusting merchants to sell more useful gear; expanded their inventory size for easy of use; and adjusted the gold faucets so gold stays useful and not over-abundant through the end game. 
• We're adding additional portraits to character creation which includes 2 new female dwarves and 2 new male elves. 
• We've added 9 new fast travel locations to the world. We've buffed many of our unique items and elven puzzle weapons to make them feel more competitive vs. standard gear.

This patch also brings a few long requested features, namely inventory filtering and controller support. These have been two of our most requested features and we're please to be bringing them to you. We hope with all these changes you'll give the game a 2nd playthrough or that one of these features encourages you to dive in. If you've left a review on Steam or GOG and we've made changes that address your concerns, we'd also appreciate you revising that review. We're passionate about making The Bard's Tale IV the best game it can be, and we hope that shows with every patch.

I want to give a very special thanks to everyone who's been active on our forums, written reviews, made reddit posts, and generally everyone who's provided us feedback. So much of what we did this sprint was pointed out by you, the fans. You didn't have to stop and reach out to us to help us improve the game, but you did, and that support has been invaluable. Thank you!

A Note from Jeff & The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep team

Jeff Pellegrin here, and I would like thank everyone who communicated issues, bugs, concerns, and feedback (both positive and negative) on GOG, Steam, Kickstarter, etc. We aggressively tackled many issues and continue to patch and add features to The Bard’s Tale IV based on your input.

One key feature to show that we are listening is an extra Song of Exploration “Struggler's Lament” which can instantly resolve most doors that are locked by puzzles. The ability will not resolve optional content that can be rewarding and could be critical in your adventures, so make sure to still learn our different puzzles systems because that knowledge will come in handy eventually! Best of luck and thank you!

The Best Way To Say "Thank You!" 

Hi everyone, Paul back for the remainder of the update. Last summer we held a contest - the more wishlist adds that we got for the game, the more benefits for every player. We never achieved the last item on that list - the free DLC. That was that, but then, as some of you know, the game had a rougher launch than we'd hoped for. Since then, we've released several updates, and as David and Jeff have detailed, we're continuing to support the game with even more improvements.

We knew that we wanted to do something special for everyone that was there at launch, as a way to say thanks for your support at that moment, and we realized the solution was right there for us - deliver the content that we didn't get with the Wishlist Initiative. We're happy to report that every owner of the game will be getting "The Royal Necropolis of Haernhold" DLC for FREE in early 2019, so look forward to a new adventure in the dwarven realm of Kinestia!

Here's what Lead Designer Russell Krueger has to say about the area:

 The Royal Necropolis of Haernhold is a new, combat-focused dungeon that lets players travel to Kinestia to uncover the nature of Tarjan’s treachery and undo the catastrophe that has befallen the tomb of the dwarves’ greatest hero, Gaerwyn. We are pleased to announce that this dungeon will feature several new mini-boss fights and two very challenging boss fights.

 Fans of our puzzles won’t be left out in the cold either! While the emphasis is very much on trying out and acquiring new, powerful gear and then using it on the most challenging fights we’ve ever made, we are also able to leverage all of our existing puzzle designs and components for a set of new, mind-bending puzzles that players will have to solve to find the secrets of Gaerwyn’s tomb.

Combined with the combat balance updates for end game parties, players will have plenty of content that will keep them on their toes! A friendly word of warning however: once players step foot into the Royal Necropolis, they will be stalked from the shadows by one of the most powerful and deadly minions Tarjan has ever bent to his will. Keep an eye out above you, because you never know when this creature will drop in to say hello…

Mac/Linux Update

For those of you patiently waiting for the Mac and Linux versions of Barrows Deep, we unfortunately do not have a definitive timeline, but work is progressing on both versions. The increased delay is down to the post-release updates and feature additions, and developing both those updates and the Mac and Linux versions at the same time would have been slowed down both substantially. Now that the game is in its current state however, the pace of development is picking up.

Goods Have All Been Shipped

One of the true delights of the last couple of months has been seeing folks react to their physical goods arriving. We love all the pictures that you've sent along, and it's also been great that for such a large project. Fortunately, there have been very few issues with backers receiving their physical goods, and we're continuing to work with backers who have reached out for support. No one was more excited about receiving his goodies than our own Brian Fargo, who has been waiting 30 years to add the newest game to the Bard's Tale shelf!

The Bard In Concert

Of all the features of The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep, the one that has been universally acclaimed has been its rich soundtrack. We're celebrating that with a special concert on January 31st in the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall in Scotland. The concert features a number of performers from the soundtrack, all conducted by the game's composer Ged Grimes. 

Tickets are available here and you can read about how the show came together here. For those of you not in a position to join us in Scotland, we are looking to stream the event, and will share those details on our social media pages once we have them. 

Seasons Greetings

Finally, a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year to all of you! It's been an amazing journey, and thank you all for being a part of it (and helping to make it happen)! With The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep and The Bard's Tale Trilogy, 2018 was very much The Year of Bard's Tale. Heading into 2019, the franchise is still going strong with the concert, your journey to The Haernhold, the arrival of Thief of Fate and Legacy Mode into The Bard's Tale Trilogy, and of course the debut of Barrows Deep on console! Thank you for helping us bring this franchise back. See you all in the new year!

Until Next Time, 
Paul Marzagalli 
Public Relations & Community Manager 
@phimseto

Game Debate checked out The Bard's Tale 4: Barrows Deep:

A Bard's Fail - The Bard's Tale 4: Barrows Deep Review

The Bard's Tale is a series with a long tail. The Bard's Tale I was ahead of its time, presenting an epic RPG quest with magic items, various enemies and dungeons, puzzles and traps, while other games were little more than simplistic 2D platformers. Admittedly, characterisation was thin on the ground, and your party of adventurers were little more than lists of statistics used as tools in combat. But this was the eighties. Nobody was really doing this stuff. Two sequels followed in largely the same mould, introducing wilderness adventures that were essentially the same as the dungeon exploration only with the walls painted to look like trees.
[...]
Of course, I wanted to love this. The little eleven-year-old boy who lives in my head and played the originals wanted to build a party of adventurers and explore the cellars beneath Kylearan's tower so much. I wanted something of Skara Brae to evoke memory of those long summer evenings spent indoors while I should have been out riding my bike, instead trying to find the silver shapes necessary to get into Mangar's tower. But that's not really what I found. I've been underwhelmed by inXile's previous nod to nostalgia, Wasteland 2, and everyone else in the universe seemed to adore it, so maybe it's me. Your mileage, as always, may vary. But if you're looking for a rock-solid, incredibly challenging nuts-and-bolts RPG with all of the quirky flair of the original trilogy, this isn't quite it.

Score: 6/10 - Good

A new patch for The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep which introduces legacy mode and save anywhere.

Second Sight Update now live!

Hello everyone!

Today, we are pleased to bring you the Second Sight Update, which brings a number of requested features (most notably an option for “save anywhere and anytime”) and a host of fixes. It also brings our previously mentioned Legacy Mode features, which we’re thrilled to finally deliver, especially to our long-time fans of the series! For details on this patch, please check out the notes below.

Work on the game continues. Certain major milestones, such as a revamped inventory system and controller support, are still on their way. That is in addition to continued improvements and optimization based on your feedback.

In addition to the above, we also continue to work on the Mac and Linux versions, as well as a few other nice things that we can´t talk about yet. Please let us know what you think of the update, and we look forward to talking with you again soon.

The team at inXile

What is Legacy Mode?

With the Second Sight update, we’ve added a whole suite of options to customize your play experience that we call Legacy Mode. You can play the game like a modern first person adventure or wind back the clock, turn off auto-mapping, activate grid based movement, and step your way through our dungeons and overworlds like you’re back in the 80’s.

Legacy Mode Features:

• Grid Move (BETA): You can now play using grid-based movement! This feature has been a long time coming and we worked hard to get that classic game feel while still working with all our more modern elements and overworld design. You’ll have the option to grid move with full free look enabled at all times or play in a more classic mode in which your camera is rotated for you as you walk forward along the grid. There's still polish on this feature left to do, but rather than holding back for longer we wanted those of you who are passionate about this feature to try it out and let us know what you think, and what you feel the most important improvements to the system would be. Let us know what you think on the forums!
  Note: For those turning this feature on in an pre-patch 4 save game, you’ll notice many NPC’s aren’t looking directly at you in the world while moving on the grid. We adjusted NPC’s to better align with the movement grid, but to make that change propagate in existing games it’d require wiping out the NPC’s save data That would reset things such as their inventory, which we wanted to avoid at all costs.
• Save Anywhere: This has been our most requested feature. You can now save the game (almost) anywhere in the game. Save through the pause menu, or use F5 and F9 to quick-save and quick-load. While save anywhere is active, you cannot consume luck-stones for bonus experience. A small price to pay.
  Some areas have been blocked off from saving for technical reasons, and if that’s the case you’ll see a prompt appear letting you know that’s the case. Usually just moving somewhere else in the room or level will resolve that issue.
• Auto-Resurrect: For an extra bit of difficulty, you can deactivate auto-resurrect. This will cause characters who fall in combat to only resurrect upon finding a luck stone. Food will also not revive characters while this is active.
• Perma-Death: This mode is only for the bold. If your entire party is incapacitated, your save file is permanently deleted. Don’t say we didn’t warn you. This option cannot be changed once it’s been set and can only be set on new games.
• Enemy Reactions: Deactivate enemy reactions to stop enemies from chattering and taunting.
• Auto-Mapping: You can deactivate auto-mapping entirely, resulting in all your maps appearing black with no icons. Break out your graph paper.
• Mini-Map: You can toggle how prominent your mini-map is on screen. You can set it to always show, only show while your adventurer’s HUD is up, or never show at all.
• Show Waypoints: Toggle waypoints on or off, if you hate being told where to go.
• Show Enemies On Map: Toggle weather or not enemies appear on your map and mini-map, for an extra challenge.
• The A-Team is back: You can spend 8 mercenary tokens at Mercy the mercenary vendor to hire 6 adventurers who are fully geared for war and ready to rock.
  Brian the Fist, the Fichti Paladin
  El Cid, the Dwarven Fighter
  Markus, the Elven Bard
  Sir Grady, the Trow Rogue
  Merlin, the Einarr Conjuror
  Omar, the Elven Magician
• Adventurer Re-Spec’ing: By spending a mercenary token at the Review Board, you can refund an adventurer's skill points.
• Legendary Difficulty: A 4th difficulty tier has been added, increasing enemy difficulty by 100% over normal mode.

[...]

Forgottenlor started playing The Bard's Tale IV and around a third of the game, gave up. But unlike other games he gave up on in the past he did want to share his views of what he did play and this is how this editorial was born.

This isn't a review, so I won't approach it as I normally approach a review. I'm no longer sure it's appropriate to review a game after finishing about 1/3 of it, unless it contains the same content repeated again and again. The Bard's Tale IV isn't that kind of game. It's not procedurally generated but is a hand-crafted game with many different areas, and it introduces new content each time the player enters a new area. I tend to review games I finish, which is why as one of my readers complained I tend to give "good" or "very good" reviews. I actually finish most games I play, but there is a decent minority of games I don't. Those fall into two categories. The first are the games I give 4-5 hours to before I realize I just can't be bothered with and the latter are the long games, like The Bard's Tale 4 IV, that are fun enough to continue with, but at some point are just no longer appealing when I have many other games in my backlog. I started after about 15 hours thinking about abandoning my The Bard's Tale IV game but came back to the game a couple of times before actually quitting, so I actually played 20 hours before throwing in the towel.

The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep was reviewed by GameCloud.

Besides that, this game can pull some haughty guffaws from me when it wants to, and though the story it tells isn’t amazing, the writing around it is excellent. The distinct personalities of each character make for some hilarious interactions between them (save for your own character, who may as well be a cardboard cutout.) To be able to unlock your next level of abilities, you have to be assessed by a review board of hooded figures that judge your deeds, who do so in appropriately dramatic fashion. Running gags, witty one-liners, cleverly written notes that play-off whatever is happening at the time, Bard’s Tale IV has all of this and more.

[...]

Thanks Farflame!

@DSOGaming Patch 3 has been released for The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep.

inXile Entertainment has released the third patch for The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep. According to the release notes, this patch brings several optimizations for improved performance, improves how the graphics benchmarking determined the correct graphics settings for your system, greatly improves the user interface when playing with 4:3 aspect ratio and packs numerous improvements to non-English localized text.

[...]

Thanks Farflame!

The RPG Codex doesn't like Bard's Tale IV so much:

RPG Codex Review: The Bard's Tale IV

The first Bard's Tale, released in 1985, was a graphical wonder for the time. While Wizardry was still doing wire-frame dungeons, Bard's Tale brought in a first-person view where buildings had shape, walls had cracks and characters colorful animated portraits. There was even music!

In a sense, this is perhaps where Bard's Tale IV is most faithful to the series' roots: it's an attempt at elevating the production values of the genre, this time making a mass market AAA dungeon-crawler, with a budget of several million dollars. Sure, Legend of Grimrock I & II look great and certainly this game wouldn't exist without them, but they still have that indie-ish feel, especially in their commitment to old-school sensibilities.

Because make no mistake, Bard's Tale IV isn't an old-school RPG.

It's interesting to read old Kickstarter updates, when InXIle was promising a branching story, a world that would react to your party's races, all classes from the original series, exploring other realms, hundreds of monsters like dragons and anthropophagie, etc. Absolutely nothing of that is present here. You won't find the monsters that they showed on the videos, and the much-promised grid-based movement mode is still greyed out in the menu, scheduled for a future update. I wouldn't even call this a "true" dungeon-crawler, given the linear level design, but we'll get to that later.

For the purpose of this review, I'll ignore those previous promises (we already have a forum emote specifically for those) and just focus on what the currently released game promises - a modern take on dungeon crawlers, with gorgeous graphics, tons of puzzles and a Hearthstone-inspired combat.

[...]

Finale

When it works, Bard's Tale IV is a satisfying glimpse of what a AAA dungeon-crawler can be. There were moments of pure joy, exploring beautiful vistas, solving interesting puzzles and finding an unique enemy behind a secret door. I'd say I had about 10 hours of good moments in total, mostly in the first half of the game, when the combat and itemization still make sense, and in a few well-made areas or puzzles later on.

But I spent almost 30 hours playing it, and the other 20 hours where extremely repetitive and dull. This is not a good ratio, and it is all due to pointless filler content, that exacerbates every single underlying flaw the game has. I had to force myself to finish it in order to write this review, because the final hours are nothing more then doing mechanical puzzles and fighting cultists over and over. The final puzzle is literally a set of four gear puzzles that must be solved to unlock a larger gear puzzle.

And that's a shame. Even if Bard's Tale IV has nothing to do with old-school dungeon crawlers, it could still be a fun new take on the genre, a kind of "Portal RPG". However, while it was certainly hurt by a rushed release and a terrible starting area, what really dooms it is this recurrent hubris some developers have of always making the longest RPG possible at the expense of anything else, of valuing marketing selling points more than the player's time. Portal 2 is the most famous and highest rated puzzle game of all time, lasting about 8 hours long. Its mechanics are undoubtedly fun, but I doubt many people would even finish the game if they added a tons of dull low-effort filler content to make it 30-40 hours long.

The Bard's Tale IV can't be saved by an enhanced edition or re-balancing patch, because the biggest problem isn't its systems. It needs an abridged version.

Couchpotato noticed these reviews for The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep.

IGN - 7.9/10

At its roughest edges, The Bard’s Tale IV shows its retro revival roots in some not so positive ways. It may not be special enough for me to easily overlook these technical shortcomings entirely, but it’s an RPG that’s brimming with enjoyable, challenging fights, elaborate and entertaining puzzles, and plenty of visual and musical flair. And that was more than enough to keep me humming along contentedly to its tune more often than not.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun - No Score

I feel absolutely certain this will find an audience who’ll defend it, no matter how flaky the tech, how awful the writing, how outstandingly dull the characters. (Oh, they try to do BioWare Bants between themselves, which is so far off the mark, and only laughable because, despite wandering them around for hours, I’d literally no idea what their names were, let alone if they had a personality.) Because people love old things made new, and people love pretending that something crappy now reminds them of something crappy from back when their backs hurt less and they could stay up past 10.30 in the evening without feeling it the next day.

WCCFTech - 7.9/10

Overall, The Bard’s Tale IV is a rare new game that feels just a little old. People who only care for the newest thing with the newest mechanics might not appreciate the cosy, slightly dusty tenderness of Bards Tale, but it does have this delightful feeling regardless. Even if you’ve never heard of the series, or played RPGs from the nineties, The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep is a special game not to be quickly dismissed.

COGconnected - 86/100

There is so much going on that is good that it’s hard to even mention it all. You start with plenty of customization options, not just with character creation, but within classes and skills. All told there are somewhere between sixty to seventy skills per class. I haven’t even mentioned the puzzles, which I found to be just the right mix of difficult, neither boring nor too hard. The story is great, even with the occasional self-spoiler. Combat has a lot going for it and keeps things interesting, but it’s always possible that not everyone feels that way on that front. The few performance issues aside, it’s a game that’s hard not to like. Interestingly enough, prior to release InXile Entertainment CEO Brian Fargo said that if The Bard’s Tale IV sells over two million copies over the first eighteen months he’ll attempt to buy back Interplay. Is this a two million seller over the next year and a half? It very well may be.

Trusted Reviews - 2/5

Without the bugs, The Bard’s Tale IV is okay at best. With them, it’s perhaps best to preserve your nostalgia and play the HD remaster of The Bard’s Tale I to III instead. Several bugs were cleared up between us getting code for the game and the review version, however as it stands the version we’re currently playing still has several technical hitches and is a mediocre experience even when it runs smoothly. It could be better, but it’s hard to recommend in its current state, even to die-hard fans.

Patch 2 is now available for The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep.

The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep Patch 2

29 September - paul_inxile

Hello everyone!

The second patch for The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep is live, and it is a big one. Once again, thank you for all the feedback you provided. We really appreciate it.

In this patch, our team's main focus was continuing to improve optimization of the game across both the GPU and the CPU. We have made some great gains in this area across all quality settings and we will continue to improve it in the upcoming next patch.

We also continued our improvements to loading times. Additional notable fixes in this patch include a resolution to a problem some people experienced during launch where non-ASCII characters in Windows usernames would cause a game crash, UI support for widescreen and non 16-9 aspect ratios, large localization updates across all languages, clean-up pass to the mini-map (including adding save totems to it), lots of ability clean-up and description work, and various balance tweaks.

Moving forward, we are already working on the third patch that will have additional optimization and load time fixes. We expect this to be out in approximately 10 days when this work has been completed.

Beyond that, we will be focusing on additional optimization, fixes, and Legacy Mode. Unfortunately, Legacy Mode will not be part of the third patch as we originally suggested, as this feature is a larger project, and we did not want that feature to reduce the cadence of our updates in the meantime..

For details on this patch, please check out the notes below.

[...]

Fextralife produced a video to help newcomers to The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep.

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In this video, we'll go through helpful tips that we think you'll need to know when you're just starting in The Bard's Tale 4

Thanks Farflame!

COG has reviewed The Bard's Tale IV:

The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep Review

Thirty years is a long time to wait between installments for one of the most notable RPG franchises in gaming history. Sure, there was a revisit of sorts in 2004 with a version of The Bard’s Tale, but that wasn’t a direct sequel or even a remake. And, yes, VR owners did get a chance to get back into the “proper” lore with last year’s The Mage’s Tale, which set the stage nicely for The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep. With such a big gap in time between the last main chapter of the story, will it be able to not only connect with the nostalgia factor but also keep things up to date for modern gamers?
[...]
There is so much going on that is good that it’s hard to even mention it all. You start with plenty of customization options, not just with character creation, but within classes and skills. All told there are somewhere between sixty to seventy skills per class. I haven’t even mentioned the puzzles, which I found to be just the right mix of difficult, neither boring nor too hard. The story is great, even with the occasional self-spoiler. Combat has a lot going for it and keeps things interesting, but it’s always possible that not everyone feels that way on that front. The few performance issues aside, it’s a game that’s hard not to like. Interestingly enough, prior to release InXile Entertainment CEO Brian Fargo said that if The Bard’s Tale IV sells over two million copies over the first eighteen months he’ll attempt to buy back Interplay. Is this a two million seller over the next year and a half? It very well may be.

The Good

• Excellent story and music
• interesting combat style
• Good puzzles
• Lots of options
• Great visuals

The Bad

• Game occasionally spoils itself
• Long load times
• Some stutters

Score: 86/100

The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep has a patch plan. The first major patch is scheduled for the 21st September.

The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep Patch Road Map

19 SEPTEMBER - PAUL_INXILE

Hello everyone!

First of all, thank you for your patience and for your ongoing support. We are here to update you on the short-term road map for The Bard's Tale IV so you can get a sense of what's coming. We had a few more problems during yesterday's release then we had hoped for, and we apologize for the inconvenience. We will try hard to solve all of your issues as fast as we can.

One of the biggest concerns has been the delay in delivering the final keys of the game. Both our partners Crowdox and Xsolla faced a situation where these were not distributed as planned and it took them some time to sort it out. Our partners have assured us that all remaining issues should be resolved by today.

We are also aware that some people are experiencing problems with dropping framerates, missing widescreen support, FOV sliders, or unusual high loading times between certain areas. In addition, a small amount of people are encountering a black screen on load. Thank you for all the feedback you have been provided so far, and we want to make sure you see what we are doing with it. Please take a look at our patch notes below for detailed information.

We are working around the clock to solve these issues as soon as possible. Also, we would like to ask you to let us know if there are any other issues that influence your personal gaming experience in a negative way. We have spent a lot of love, time and effort into the development of The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep, and there is no bigger reward for us than if you are enjoying it.

The team at inXile

Patch notes:

Patch 1 - Est. Friday 9/21

• We're starting initial work on improving load times to help people playing on non-SSD hard drives. There is more work to be done but it's a big focus of ours in the near future
• Initial work on optimization and framerate improvements.
• Auto-detection of hardware and adjustment of quality settings on initial load of the game. While there is currently auto-detection in the options menu, it wasn't happening automatically. The game defaults to Ultra settings which is likely causing FPS issues for those without high end hardware.
• FOV adjustment slider.
• Fixing wide-screen monitor support. This is part one of a two part plan.
• First is getting the resolution settings working as intended followed by an art pass on the UI elements in patch 2.
• Fixes for a few side quests that weren't triggering as intended
• Fix to puzzle weapons where if a puzzle is solved on the weapon while it's equipped by a player, it will result in the puzzle reverting it's state to unsolved. As a workaround now, it can be solved in the inventory perfectly fine.
• Optimization to Kaels Rudiment that dropped framerate while in combat
• Fix in Magnar's Tower where a lever can be spammed in the shadow combat room that makes a bell hint unreadable
• Fix for a softlock if a tutorial pops up when a player reads a note
• Falkentyne's Fury will no longer persist on the players party team after a combat has ended.
• Fix where the Strifespear's abilities don't play nicely with the Vanguard skill
• Update to the save system that will allow players to delete saves as needed.
• Fix for a bug where killing Charn Cultists with Falkentynes Fury, which would result in a soft lock.
• Fix for spellpoints not updating correctly on the stat sheet when gear is equipped and unequipped.
• Fix where in rare instances, activating a standing stone of gratitude before going into a combat can result in a soft lock
• Fix for a duping item issue by replacing a non-stackable trinket with a stackable one.
• Fix so MACO compass can't be spammed outside of combat, allowing for a stacked stun chance.
• Fix where pausing the game during a cutscene after killing Yadis can cause the game to enter an unresponsive state.
• Fix for the wraith where it shows 3 mana before summoning but actually costs 4 mana.
• Other smaller fixes

[...]

The long wait is over - Bard's Tale IV has been released today on Steam and GOG:

Bard's Tale IV

Over one hundred years later, the terrible events of Skara Brae’s violent destruction are nearly forgotten. Hidden in the shadows, an evil has waited patiently. Until now. Fanatics are gathering control, the famous Adventurer’s Guild has been outlawed and its members persecuted, and you must rise up in defiance to become the hero that the realm needs. Featuring 40+ hours of gameplay, 350 speaking parts, and over 100 pieces of incredible music.

Create the Hero You Want To Be
Play as Bard, Fighter, Practitioner, and Rogue. Each archetype features 60-70 skills and collectively they unlock 21 unique classes. Build an array of characters to make each playthrough a unique experience.

Craft your Party, Your Way
Develop, progress, and grow a party of adventurers as you see fit. Start your party with a single character. Recruit or create new heroes to bolster your ranks. Level up and customize their skills and gear. Summon creatures into battle to fight for you! Build a party that suits your unique play style!

An Adventure Around Every Corner
Traverse a beautiful world filled with wonder and powered by Unreal Engine 4. Explore towns full of quest givers, fight your way through dark and deadly dungeons, and navigate beautiful rolling hills, dense forests, and icy wastes.

Outsmart Evil
Battle your enemies in dynamic, intuitive turn-based tactical combat that rewards clever thinking. Combine spells and skills for increased effects greater than the sum of their parts. Use superior strategies, thoughtful positioning, and deadly combos to bring down your foes!

Unlock the Secrets of the Past
Unravel challenging mysteries. If your enemies don’t get you, the devious riddles, demanding puzzles, and dangerous traps which await just might. For those bold enough to seek them out, hidden rewards await your discovery.

Recover Powerful Artifacts
The sense of discovery and mystery doesn’t stop with the environment. Recover ancient Elven weapons imbued with mystical powers and containing secrets which you’ll need to uncover by carefully examining them. Doing so will gain you deadly advantages in the battles that lie ahead.

The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep has a launch trailer and reached 300K wishlists which lowered the price to $34.99.

Wishlist Update - 300k Unlocked!

14 September - paul_inxile

We are thrilled to announce that the second tier has been unlocked!

In other major news, the launch trailer for the game has been released! You can watch it here:

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The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep Spotlight 4 focuses on music.

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Be sure to participate in our Wishlist Initiative! Wishlist the game on Steam, GOG, and Humble Bundle to lower the game's price and unlock free in-game extras! Follow the links below!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/566090/The_Bards_Tale_IV_Barrows_Deep/

https://www.gog.com/game/the_bards_tale_iv_barrows_deep

https://www.humblebundle.com/store/the-bards-tale-iv-barrows-deep

https://www.greenmangaming.com/games/the-bards-tale-iv-barrows-deep-pc/

 Brian Fargo has posted a message about The Bard's Tale IV.

What an incredible last six years it has been. I had given up all hope of creating the kind of RPGs that I like to make, then along came Kickstarter, and now here we are about to finalize our third crowdfunded game. Thanks again for trusting us. 

Our goal with these games is to under promise and over deliver, and we hope you feel that we’ve accomplished this with The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep. Most people don’t realize how much of our own money we pour in to make these games as special as possible. In this case, we spent more than 5x the amount raised via Kickstarter! We can’t help being passionate and giving it our all. If you haven't seen them yet, be sure to check out the spotlight videos we have been creating for the game. 

• Character Progression 
• Combat
• Personalities 

The game ended up with 350 speaking parts, over 30 distinct locations, and over 100 pieces of music. The Windows version is still on schedule for the 18th and then all hands are on deck to get the Mac and Linux versions out as fast as we can. We are hitting ALL our stretch goals, and have incorporated a tremendous amount of feedback from the beta test. The only slightly bad news is that we will be late on a few items, but they are most assuredly coming in the following weeks after release. 

We were determined that The Bard's Tale IV physical goods matched our expectations, and I was not happy with the quality of the early prototypes we received. This resulted in a longer production process, and I made the call to push back the timing a bit to make sure we would be happy with the final result. We love how the backer goods turned out (look for a picture below) and when we brought samples with us to Gamescom last week, everyone really reacted favorably towards them. That made us really feel that we had made the right call, and while we aren't happy about the delay, it will be worth the wait when they arrive to you. And yes - those editions will have another key for the game, giving you a second copy for free. Give it to your friends or family, and be sure to spread the Bard's joy!

And if you ordered a signed Collector's Edition:

Also, as an extra bonus, I put an "X" on 5 of the signed collector’s boxes that have the team’s signature (look for a photo at the bottom of the update). Anyone who gets one of these special boxes will get all inXile games for FREE for life. Yes, I was thinking of Willy Wonka when I was signing.

And about game length and a gift:

And though we promised a 25-hour game, playtests are showing it to be closer to 35+. And while it’s hard to be objective about your work, I can honestly say I’ve enjoyed playing it and found myself at many times wanting to play for “30 more minutes.” I’ve had to re-play the first 10 hours of the game at least 20 times and it’s a good sign when it’s still enjoyable.

Again, we are very happy to announce that we're hitting on all goals, and where we aren't hitting certain time frames on stuff, we are looking to make up the difference with added value. On that note, an added thank you for your patience, every backer will be receiving the digital version of our Strategy Guide for free. It's just one more way to acknowledge that we appreciate all the support that you have given us.

A new spotlight video for The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep focuses on personalities.

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Be sure to participate in our Wishlist Initiative! Wishlist the game on Steam, GOG, and Humble

@Gamers Global Brian Fargo was interviewed about The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep.

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This are some excerpts from a gameplay demonstration at Gamescom 2018. You will not see the game in this video, it’s just Brian Fargo answering our questions about the game.

The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep spotlight #2 video focuses on combat.

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Curious about how combat works in The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep? Start planning your favorite strategies today!

@WorthPlaying A wishlist initiative for The Bard's Tale IV looks set to reward purchasers for both GOG and Steam versions when certain goals are met.

Wishlist Initiative, an evolution in the relationship between an indie developer and its fanbase.

In a project that is the first of its kind, gamers who wishlist The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep on either the game’s Steam or GOG.com pages add to an overall counter that unlocks bonuses which reward all purchasers of the game now and in the future.

At 100k wishlisters, inXile will partner with Red Hook Studios to provide an in-game version of the iconic torch from Darkest Dungeon. According to Red Hook Studios Co-founder Tyler Sigman, “Darkest Dungeon has its roots in classics like The Bard’s Tale, so to be a small part of helping to bring the series back is a real treat for us as fellow game devs and especially as fans.”

At 300k wishlisters, the retail price will drop from $39.95/£29.99 to $34.95/£27.99.

[...]

Thanks Couchpotato!

@Silver word David Rogers of InXile was interviewed about The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep.

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Interview de David Rogers, directeur créatif à InXile Entertainment concernant The Bard's Tale IV : Barrows Deep

A small update from InXile announces that they have changed their mind regarding releasing the remasters into early access. Instead a complete build of The Bard's Tale I will arrive mid August for GOG and Steam with the rest to come later.

Update on The Bard's Tale Trilogy remasters

Remasters Update

Hi All,

This week, we decided to not release the Bard’s Tale Trilogy remasters into Early Access and instead will continue pushing toward a fully complete build of the original Bard's Tale in mid-August. As we evaluated it, we felt like it was closer to a final build than we thought it would be at this point in development, and it wouldn’t be beneficial to put it into Early Access. Another plus is that we can include GOG then as well, a feature that we have been asked for during the last few weeks. The fully complete versions of The Bard’s Tale II and III will then be added in over the following months.

The wait will be a bit longer, but the end result - for all of our backers - will be worth it.
 
Until Next Time, 
Paul Marzagalli 
Public Relations & Community Manager 
@phimseto

Hammeh checked out the beta version of Bard's Tale IV:

The Bard's Tale IV: Barrow's Deep - UNWRAPPED! [Beta Review]

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The Bard's Tale IV:Barrows Deep Closed Beta is here , and it's a bar brawlin' taste of RPG fun! Join me for Unwrapped as I share my first impressions/review of The Bard's Tale 4, exploring it inside-out!

Gameinformer shared their impressions of The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep.

3. There Are Some Cool Exploration Elements

I had fun with the game’s systems. As you gain party members, you gain access to Songs of Exploration, spells that can be used to open secret doors and solve puzzles. In the opening hours, it was obvious which song I was supposed to use. For example, an ability called “Hidey-Bide” reveals hidden item caches, and “Jarnel’s Eyes” reveals hidden corruption in the environment, such as shadowy figures disguised as villagers, as well as a large area of the map. These abilities made me feel a little more connected to the fantasy of being a bard.

[...]

InXile have announced a September 18th release date for The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep. In addition IGN had a go at beta.

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Take a look at the early part of gameplay in the beta/demo for The Bard's Tale IV.

The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep has an update on Wizards. There is also a Q&A on the remastered original trilogy and Bard's Tale IV itself.

We're Off To See The Wizard

TL; DR - Wizard class preview, Q&A, Album Box winner

Hi all, Paul here with the latest backer update. There's a lot here, so let's get right to it. We're leading off with Creative Director David Rogers. 

Wizard Preview

Hi everyone, David here with the promised look at the Wizard class. The Wizard is a subclass of the Practitioner that focuses on summoning and maintaining allied minions through a variety of spells, passives, and stat boosts. These minions have a lot of different uses – they can split up enemy focus, deal damage, tank hits, buff one another, or even be used to heal the caster. In a lot of ways, they’re full-fledged party members that show up exactly when and how you need them to.

Obtaining the Wizard: Novice skill will grant mastery in the Gate ability. Gate summons a Shadowy Wraith, an elemental who uses Spell Points to deal damage to enemies. It’s one of a few abilities that can be cast in several ways: the longer you channel this ability, the stronger the minion it’ll create by granting more Spell Points. A Wraith will vanish back to the ether it came from when its Spell Points run out, so starting with a high number can let your elemental throw out a couple extra spells before dissipating. With this style of casting, you can plan more effectively around how long you expect a fight to last and be ready for whatever situation you’re in. 

Passing the Wizard: Journeyman skill, a Constitution boost that allows you stay in the fight and boss your new friends around a little longer, the Wizard: Master skill will grant mastery in the Prime Summoning ability. Prime Summoning raises two Skeletons to join the party, either as Warriors or Archers. Warriors have an armor-boosting ability, Deflect, and can be put to good use protecting the rest of your party. On the other hand, Archers go down a little more easily, but can put out devastating punishment with their bows if you protect them. Figuring out how best to utilize your bony friends presents some interesting choices. 

Wizard: Master also teaches the Sacrifice Minion ability. Another Multi-Function ability, this spell is effectively three in one. Coalesce Essence kills one summoned minion to bolster another, transferring the original’s stats over. Release Bonds sets free the target minion, weaponizing their essence in a True Damage attack against a target enemy. Absorb Soul sacrifices the target, reabsorbing their magic to heal the caster. These abilities let you get the most out of your minions, letting them fight for you while they’re strong and die for you when they’ve lost their usefulness. You can even combo the spell with itself, using Coalesce Essence and then Absorb Soul to create one big minion and then drain them, gaining an even bigger heal. We here at inXile don’t recommend getting too attached to your minions – killing them is sometimes even more fun than creating them! 

At the end of the skill tree, having demonstrated time and again your mastery of minions, players can pick up Grand Summoner and another hefty Constitution boost. The skill grants a passive by the same name that shows your minions who’s in charge, buffing all summoned combatants with Armor. After all, they should be protecting you, not the other way around. This passive is especially helpful with Skeleton Warriors: stacking Armor on them and letting them shield you can be a great way to keep your squishy Practitioner safe. Hey, 11 Armor here – not bad!

Thanks for reading along, and looking forward to seeing what your party builds looks like once the backer beta comes out!

Best,
David Rogers
Creative Director

Q&A - The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep

Hi all, Paul back to take you through the rest of the update. We received a number of questions for both The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep and The Bard's Tale Trilogy remaster.

With the backer beta due out very (very) soon, we've truncated the number of BT4 questions answered (since the beta will answer many of them) and added in some BTT questions that you've asked us.

Q: Will there be different instruments to play, all with their own renderings of the songs?

A: Each bardic song plays a different track played on a different instrument when cast. We worked with Kurt Heiden, who was the composer for The Bards Tale III: Thief of Fate. Each version of the game had a different MIDI track for each of the Bards songs, and we picked our favorites to recreate. They were scored and then recorded in Scotland by Ged Grimes and his crew of talented Celtic folk musicians.

Q: In regards to the "Will it be possible to create your full party?" question, can you clarify a bit how that works? You start with one character but soon get more? Can you have all characters you made or do you have to have any written NPCs?

A: We get you straight into the game, absorbing the story and the world, as soon as you start a new game. We give you a default character, a bard obviously, but almost immediately let you make your own character if you prefer. The combat and character progression systems in The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep are deep, so we didn't want to ask you to make six characters right out of the gate before you even engaged in your first combat. The first section of the game is basically a quest to recruit your starting party, so we quickly ramp you up to four party members. You meet three narrative characters at the start that join your party: Dalgliesh the Dwarven fighter, Wringneck the Trow Rogue, and The Green Lady, an Elven Practitioner. Similar to the starting character, you can choose to continue adventuring with them, or spend Mercenary Tokens to create custom characters to replace them. No one character is required to be in your party.

Q: Does weather impact the gameplay in any way?

A: No. Any weather in our game is purely cosmetic and just helps to set the mood.

Q: Another question: how much depth will there be in intra-party interactions? Is it just occasional banter or will party members develop running feuds, flirtations, etc. over time (or based upon in-game events).

A: Different characters have different interactions and relationships. Narrative NPCs, like The Green Lady, have fully fleshed out scripts, but the custom characters you create will also have their own personalities and interactions based on the voices you pick for them, so making your own characters won't mean you're missing out. Party Chatter isn't a dynamic system in that you can't, say, make two characters fall in love, but different characters do have different relationships and will interact in special ways.

One fun anecdote to illustrate this is that I made a character and gave him the Volatile voice pack, making him super aggressive. When Dalgliesh the Dwarf joined my party all of a sudden my character kept trying to goad him into an arm wrestling match to prove he was stronger than a dwarf. This exchange probably went on for forty seconds and I was cracking up the whole time.

Q&A - The Bard's Tale Trilogy

And now, we're turning things over to our friends at Krome to answer your questions about their upcoming Bard's Tale Trilogy remaster!

Q: Will the games play like the originals?

A: In tackling this project, we extensively researched each game across different platforms. In doing so, we realized there were many subtle (and sometimes large) differences between them. The goal of the remasters has been to reconcile these differences into one uniform, evolving play experience over the three titles - one heroic narrative across three chapters, with some extra quality of life improvements. Toward the back half of the Trilogy’s development, though, we will be circling back to build out what we’re calling Legacy Mode - a system of optional settings that make the games play closer to how they original 1980’s versions did.

Q: What was your philosophy behind your approach to updating the graphics, particularly the character/monster art?

A: The artists have worked to keep as much of the original character as possible during the uprezzing process, and have made artistic choices where they felt were necessary. Each time we get a new batch of art in, we find ourselves smiling. We’re looking forward to you finally having an opportunity to experience this for yourself!

Q: When will we be able to play?

A: We're planning to release the trilogy with a fully-playable Bard's Tale 1 on July 24th via Steam Early Access!

Q: When will I have access to Bard's Tale II and III?

A: We know people are excited to check out the remasters, so we're aiming to release The Bard’s Tale II: The Destiny Knight in an early access version when it can be completed (with some bugs) and likewise with The Bard’s Tale III: Thief of Fate. We don’t have a current ETA on that, but The Destiny Knight will be sooner rather than later at this point. We will then continue to clean up the games for their final release.

Q: Can I get the remasters on GOG?

A: There will be a GOG version without DRM (with no GOG Galaxy), but will be done when the game is complete, after early access on Steam. Please keep in mind that if you want to get the game on GOG instead of Steam, you'll need to wait until the final release to claim your game key.

Q: Will I be able to press a button and have the game to revert the changes?

A: The Bard's Tale Trilogy remaster is a rebuild of the original games, including the visuals and code, so it's not as simple as us adding a graphics toggle key. Instead, we're devoting our efforts towards offering more improvements to the remastered elements. For example, 70% of the dungeons in The Bard’s Tale III use the same tileset, despite it being a dimension-hopping adventure, and that's something we're hoping to address more directly as part of the remastering efforts.

Q: Will it be a huge grind to level so we can finish the game?

A: We've discussed game balancing and pacing extensively during development, and came to the conclusion that most players would benefit from an experience that cuts down on some of the grinding time. However, we expect Legacy Mode will support those players who want to have that particular experience.

Q: Is Legacy Mode going to be just like the originals?

A: As discussed above, there are many differences across different versions of the game, some of them small and some of them larger. Legacy mode isn't going to be a 1:1 copy of any specific original version of the game, but it will include elements like 1-6 + S for Bard's Tale 1, etc. Legacy Mode won't be coming until later in the Early Access period, so we also hope to use that time to get your feedback on how to refine the trilogy going forward.

Q: Can I use saved games from the original versions in the remaster?

A: With all the differences and bugs from the original games, this was something we thought about but decided against in terms of production time and resources. Instead, we concentrated on making sure the party importing mechanism worked as intended for all of the games in the remaster. That leads us to our next question...

Q: Will I be able to transfer saves across all three games?

A: One of the biggest risks with playing the emulated versions was avoiding problems when trying to port your save file and party across all three games. One of our key goals with the remaster was to improve on the import process by treating the trilogy as one story played across three chapters - you create your party in the first game and then bring that party, changing it as you see fit, across all three games without any problems. That way, you have the full, epic journey as the original Bard's Tale teams intended, no fuss.

[...]

Spotlight #1: A character creation video for The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep.

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Curious about how character creation works in The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep? Start planning your adventuring party today!

More info at: http://bardstale.com

David Rogers was interviewed about The Bard's Tale IV by Venturebeat.

...

As as fan-supported project, The Bard’s Tale IV has plenty of references to the old games. You’ve got spells like Warstrike and songs such as Falkentyne’s Fury and Wayland’s Watch. InXile turned to the original MIDI recordings of the songs as it prepared its orchestrations.

“We took the old MIDI tracks and we brought them forward and orchestrated them, had our sound designers pour their love into it,” Rogers said. He went on to note that the games (they were on Apple II, Apple II GS, MS-DOS, Amiga, Commodore 64, and other formats) had different MIDI tracks, so the best depended on what platform you played on. He wasn’t sure what versions they used, but an InXile rep said over email that “some are from the GS and some from the Amiga. We picked and chose our fav[orite] ones."

[...]

@Twitch The Bard's Tale IV was shown off at E3 and an interview took place.

Thanks Farflame!

A new update for The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep sees the release of a new website and the news that the backer beta will emerge sometime in July.

Backer Beta Update & New Website!

TL: DR - Backer Beta info, New Website, Bonus Backer Goodies

Backer Beta Update

Hi all, Paul here with a quick update! To start off, many of you have asked, so we wanted to share a quick head's up with you: the Backer Beta is coming out this July, and while we don't have a set date to announce yet, it will be in the earlier part of the month. Stay tuned for more information on the beta as we get closer to its release!  

New Website

We wanted to reach out because we announced the launch of our new website on Wednesday: http://bardstale.com! The site is mainly for folks looking to discover more about the game, but there are a couple of items that are of interest to you (since you are getting them), so we wanted to share a first look at them with you!

 Part of the new website is a suite of pre-order packages for non-backers. If you have any friends that have been following the game or might be interested, we would be grateful if you helped spread the word. The pre-orders include a pair of new in-game items - Kael's Axe and the Fire Horn! Returning fans will recognize both names as two of the more powerful weapons from the original Bard's Tale. While these items are special pre-order bonuses for new players, every backer receiving a copy of the game ($20 pledge level and above) will be receiving these items for FREE, so you've got these returning classics to look forward to wielding against your enemies! It's our way of saying thanks for backing the game and helping us to reach this point! Each item has its own story, and we'd like to share that with you in a first look. 

Kael’s Axe

Centuries before Mangar encircled Skara Brae in ice, the great bard Kael, one of the founders of the Adventurers Guild, had been given foresight of the city's peril in a dream. Kael thought to kill the Dark One before he struck, so he commissioned from the elves an enchanted axe. Weapon in hand, he then sought Mangar's tower, which manifested like a cancer in many realms throughout the ages.

Though the axe defeated all the enemies which Kael faced, it sadly could not protect him from the madness which seeped from the tower's walls, leaving him gibbering and lost before he was able to confront Mangar.

No one knew what became of Kael or his axe until those days of icy doom in Skara Brae when a brave band of adventurers entered the tower and defeated Mangar at last. It is said that they found poor Kael in his resting place within the city's catacombs, along with his now legendary weapon.

Since then, it has been passed from adventurer to adventurer, always given to one from whom great things are expected. Now it is yours, but its secrets must be unlocked through cleverness and valor. Fortunately, you have also been given a few pages from the journal of the last hero so honored, and these may - if read carefully - help you reveal the long-forgotten powers of Kael's Axe.

Good luck!

Fire Horn

The Fire Horn is a relic from long before the days of the Three Great Evils. It was forged by the dwarven smiths of the Haernhold, having been commissioned by King Aildrek of the Baed to make for him a battle horn that would set aflame the ships of Gotten raiders before they could enter Skara Brae's harbor. This was before Aildrek became known as the Witch King, so the dwarves did not yet know of his villainy. They were soon to learn.

In good faith the dwarves crafted the horn and delivered it to Aildrek's castle in Skara Brae. The Fire Horn was presented to him with great ceremony...along with their bill. Aildrek, however, insisted that he test the horn before he paid for it and, putting it to his lips, blew a note at the dwarven smiths, turning them all into smoking ash.

By the time word of this barbaric treachery reached the Haernhold, Aildrek had revealed his true nature, prompting an uprising against him. The dwarves sent a champion to aid Skara Brae and recover the horn, but though Aildrek was defeated, the horn was never found. It remained lost until a century later when Baron Harkyn occupied the castle and betrayed his people to Mangar the Dark. The legend goes that the brave adventurers discovered the horn in the depths of the castle and used it to defeat the baron's corrupted berserker horde.

Since then, as the tales tell, the horn has always appeared when Skara Brae was in deepest peril. Now, with new evils rising, the Fire Horn has appeared to you. Claim it and light the way (and your foes) to victory!

Getting Closer

Regarding the Fire Horn, this has been a long wait for me. A year ago, we did a backer survey asking about which returning weapons you most wanted to see. We didn't list the Fire Horn, and easily our largest write-in answer was "FIRE HORN!!!" and variants thereof! I'm pleased to finally let you know that the Fire Horn is making a triumphant return! 

The launch of the website represents another milestone as we quickly approach the release of The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep. As an added peek behind the curtain, if you look at the pre-order tiers, you can get a first glimpse of what some of your backer digital and physical rewards are going to look like when you receive them! Take a look, let us know what you think, and please help us to continue spreading the word out in the world and across social media! Thanks for your time, and for those of you in the U.S., have a great Memorial Day weekend!

Until Next Time,
Paul Marzagalli
Public Relations & Community Manager
@phimseto

Take a look at the demo of Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep:

The Bard's Tale 4: Barrows Deep Full Demo Walkthrough

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The Bard's Tale IV Alpha Trailer

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A new update for The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep brings with it some Q&A and some positive news regarding the remastered original trilogy. There are some images of the remaster at the link.

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Q&A with the Dev Team!

Thanks to everyone who sent questions our way! We obviously couldn't answer every single one, but don't fret if yours isn't here – we'll be answering more in the next backer update! If there's a question that you would like answered, please feel free to ask it in the comments section below! What follows is a dive into some of the more specific gameplay mechanics, so we hope you enjoy it!

Q: How many dungeons will BT4 have & how many locations/zones will BT4 have?

A: The combined count is 25 dungeons or dungeon-like areas. That said, it's a dungeon crawler - you always have to be on your guard!

Q: What races will be playable in BT4? The Trow have been mentioned as a new race, but what others are confirmed?

A: Dwarves, Elves, and Trow, and there are different variety of Human cultures (Baedish, Fichti, Einarr, and Outlander).

Q: Will it be possible to create your full party?

A: Yes, though not all at once. You start off with one character, and you'll be able to swap that one out during the introduction if you wish. Over the course of the game, you'll be able to grow your party up to six.

Q: Will BT4 be a continuous world where all locations connect together as one big world, or will it have a travel map between locations like Wasteland 2?

A: Yes, you can access the entire world by walking, or you can utilize our fast travel system to warp to previously explored areas. For those old school types, you are never required to use the fast travel system – it's just there for convenience.

Q: How many of BT4's monsters are from the originals or are directly based on the portraits from the originals?

A: For rank and file enemies, many of them were built to fit the current culture and story of this Bard's Tale. About a third of the monsters are from the original games, and the remaining are new, with most inspired by Scottish folklore and mythology (we covered some of them in a previous update). Some of our old major bosses are coming back as well. And no, we won't be fighting Nazis (sorry, Bard's Tale III fans), but a couple of fan favorites like Herb and the 99 Berserkers make a return!

Q: Does BT4 have time-sensitive puzzles? If so, do they take place in real-time or turn-based mode?

A: There are no Shadow Snare puzzles like in The Bard's Tale II: The Destiny Knight - something which requires a real-time solution or you fail (and, in the case of the Shadow Snare, your party dies). While it was certainly an unique feature back in the day, it was a bit too punishing and there are other ways to challenge the player and provide that fun gaming tension.

Q: How many of BT4's bard songs are from the originals or are directly based on the songs from the originals?

A: The vast majority are songs from the original games. Out of the nine magical bard songs that the bard has access to, only the Song of Compulsory Cavorting is brand new. We took the core of what the songs did, or the role it played in the originals, and updated it to fit our combat & exploration systems. They even sound like the old bard songs.

Q: Will there be references to the other cities outside of Skara Brae (such as those you visit in The Bard's Tale II)?

A: Yes, there will be references to the other cities outside Skara Brae. You may even get to visit one.

Q: Will BT4 be akin to BT1 in forgoing automatic regeneration of SP/HP in dungeons, so there's an element of longer term resource consideration?

A: The answer is yes - HP does not regenerate over time like the originals. HP doesn’t regenerate over time automatically but can through the use of items and abilities. We also added checkpoints in the form of Luck Stones. These strategically-placed artifacts will save the game and restore your party's HP, if you can survive to reach them. This gives the game that feeling of tension as you delve deep into the dungeons, but without needing to backtrack all the way back to the Guild every time you need a breather.

Q: How will attributes work? Will we roll for random attributes like the originals or will we have a point +/- system like WL2? Will attributes go up automatically when a character levels up, or will we get points to raise the attributes of our choice?

A: Everything about your character, including your attributes, comes from your skill tree. Your starting attributes depend on your starting archetype, and you can customize them via the skill tree as you level up. Each time you level up you get to choose how you spend that skill point. You might choose to upgrade an attribute like intelligence, learn to craft a new potion, or learn a new passive ability. Some of these skills, however, are locked behind advanced tiers that only the Review Board can unlock for you.

Q: Will it be possible to permanently recruit monsters from random encounters?

A: While you will not be able to dominate enemies and have them join your ranks, you will be able to summon and keep a variety of monsters in your party.

Q: Will the player be able to fully customize their main character (class, race, gender, etc.), or will there be pre-defined settings (you're always a bard, you're always human, etc.)?

A: Yes, any character you create can be fully customized. You can pick your class, culture, portrait, and even your voice.

Q: Do enemies level scale in BT4?

A: Like the original, enemies don't scale. We set the level and difficulty of the enemy when we place them in the world. So you could come back to an older area and wreck shop because you're much higher level, or you could go into a higher level area and get your face stomped.

Q: Are the party's total action points based on party size?

A: Your party gets more opportunity as a quest reward for completing major plot points. You tend to get larger parties as you get more opportunity, so while they aren't directly linked, they do develop along a parallel track.

Q: The AP system shown in the alpha seems to be favor smaller parties. Is it still worth bringing more party members?

A: More characters is generally always better (except in a few rare circumstances), as it provides more HP on the battlefield to soak attacks, more abilities to chose from, and more people in the right place at the right time to perform key plays in combat.

Q: What is the maximum party size?

A: Six is the max party size. We also leave open two slots for summoning creatures if you have a full group. It can be 6+2, 4+4, 5+3... whatever party configuration works best with your play style.

Q: Are all the conversations fully voiced acted?

A: They sure are!

[...]

The Bard's Tale Trilogy Remasters Update

Finally, some long-awaited update news on the original trilogy remasters. As you may remember, when we did our original crowdfunding campaign, we were approached by Olde Skuul and told that they were working on a remasters project. Due entirely to your requests, we agreed to offer these remasters as bonus extras in addition to your backer rewards when they were done.

The project was a large one, and was taking longer than anyone was hoping for. After discussing the situation with Olde Skuul, we agreed to part ways on this. However, the entire inXile development team – from Brian on down – wanted to see this project realized for both the backers and for a new generation of players, so we undertook a search to find the right partner for this project. That journey led us to Krome Studios, and we could not be happier with the work that they are doing so far. It is my pleasure to introduce Lindsay Parmenter, Head of Development of Krome, to walk us through a little of what they have in store for you.

The original Bard's Tale games hold a special place in our hearts - many of us here at Krome Studios, especially Design Lead James Podesta and myself, played the games back in the 80s and are also backers of Bard's Tale IV.

After some casual conversations with the inXile team, the opportunity came up to put something together that we think will be really great for the Trilogy remaster. Not only are we updating the games to work natively on modern systems, but we're also putting on a fresh coat of paint, to give a new generation of role-playing and dungeon-crawling fans an easier opportunity to experience these classic games.

As a short list, our goals for the Trilogy remaster are:

• Up-res the original art, but keep the art in theme with the originals (the original examples are from the Amiga version of Tales of the Unknown):

And obviously it wouldn't be much good doing an up-res of character and enemy images if we didn't animate them!

• Add in various audio throughout the games for attacks, spells, and more.
• Add some quality of life improvements, such as the automap, tooltip popups in the UI, etc.

It's fantastic to be able to share with you some of the work that we've been doing on The Bard's Tale Trilogy. We know everybody's been waiting a while for this, and we look forward to updating you all with the progress in the months ahead.

That's It for Now

Paul here again to wrap things up. Thanks to Lindsay and Krome for this quick look at the original trilogy remasters. Right now, the plan is to complete work on the first Bard's Tale game and then release that to all of you to play while work continues on the next two games. We're hoping to have that for you this summer. Once work has completed on the other two games, the entire remastered trilogy will be made available to you via your CrowdOx rewards. This project is our way of delivering an extra thank you to all of you who backed The Bard's Tale IV, our other crowdfunding projects, and our other games through the years. We're grateful to have you as fans and we're excited to bring you The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep later this year!

Until Next Time,
Paul Marzagalli
Public Relations & Community Manager
@phimseto

Gamesindustry has interviewed Brian Fargo about the Bard's Tale series:

"We can't rely on nostalgia to sell"

Brian Fargo mines the past with The Bard's Tale IV, looks to mine the future with blockchain-powered storefront Robot Cache

Brian Fargo built his career by creating classic games, and he's spent the last decade coming full circle, creating sequels and spiritual successors to classics. But speaking with GamesIndustry.biz at the Game Developers Conference this year, Fargo gave little indication that he was stuck in the past.

"We can't rely on nostalgia to sell," Fargo said. "And nostalgia is a two-edged sword. Because a lot of people's emotional attachment to the incredible experiences they had playing these games to begin with, were are at a moment in time that can never be recreated.

"It was like, 'I was in a dorm room with all my friends staying up all night and I didn't have a care in the world.' That feeling of playing that game? I could never recreate it, because maybe you got bills to pay, kids to feed, and you don't have that same light-heartedness."

As an example, Fargo said he had recently spoken with a fan who played one of his earlier games in a foreign language, with his grandmother at his side the entire time translating every part of the game for him.

"I can't recreate that. But when they think back, you're always worried they'll go, 'I don't think the new game's as good.' Well, you're not playing it with your grandmother. So there's that part of it you always have to be cognizant of. You can't reproduce that."

[...]

IGN checked out The Bards Tale IV (-> with some gameplay videos):

The Bard's Tale 4 Aims to Put a Modern Touch on a Classic RPG

Yes, there will be humor as well.

By Ryan McCaffrey Not many realize it, but it’s true: The Bard’s Tale is one of the oldest franchises in gaming history. The dark-humor adventure/RPG began as a 1985 Apple II title under the direction of Michael Cranford with help from Brian Fargo, and Fargo has carried the torch ever since. In fact, the series has more or less returned from the dead twice: first as a hack-and-slash action-RPG for PS2 and Xbox in 2004, and then again for PC via Kickstarter in 2015 for The Bard’s Tale 4.

That Kickstarter was successful, and now The Bard’s Tale 4 is coming along quite nicely. I got a chance to play a brief alpha demo build, which showcased the Unreal Engine 4-powered visuals (a far cry from the Apple II’s sprites!) and a bit of its humor, but paid particular attention to the combat system. It’s structured similar to a turn-based tactical RPG, with a grid dictating which spaces your three party members can move to and attack from.

[...]

Thanks Farflame!

Hardcore Gamer checked out the Bard's Tale IV demo:

The Bard is Ready to Tell a New Tale in Barrows Deep

The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep plays like a regular first-person dungeon crawler. During our time with the demo a few puzzles were discovered while exploring the dungeon we were in. The solutions were not necessarily obvious at first glance, but they were easy to figure out after examining nearby clues. Combat is turn based and fought over a grid, so player positioning factors into what abilities they should use and what their viable targets are. Area of effects and damage over time were things to take into consideration, but there were other factors as well such as a character who unlocked more powerful abilities if they happened to imbibe alcohol during one of their turns. It’s called The Bard’s Tale; what kind of bard wouldn’t have some element of drunken merriment?

[...]

Thanks Farflame!

Ars Technica went hands-on with The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep.

Add some Hearthstone to your classic RPG

Let's start with the combat, which is, by necessity, a bit of a departure from the text-based combat of the original Bard's Tale. In this game, each battle takes place on a grid of tiles overlaid on top of the existing 3D world, representing the spaces characters can occupy. Half of the tiles—those closest to my perspective—could only be inhabited by my party members, while the other half could only be occupied by enemies. It's a turn-based system in which you assign a set number of action points for your party, then end your turn to see the resulting melee.

Positioning is key in this battle system; placing a fighter in front of a mage to protect the latter from many attacks is a good strategy, for instance. Each attack, on both sides of the battlefield, only affects tiles in a preset range. One attack might light up a T-shape of tiles, while others would attack in a straight line, for example. Those attacks are determined partly by your characters' abilities, but others were made available to characters by the equipment they carried.

The flow of the game felt very similar to that of digital card games like Hearthstone or The Elder Scrolls Legends. Each battle was a puzzle that could be solved by arranging party members in the right formations and spending action points on the right actions. And there was just a little bit of randomness to make things interesting now and then—though the demo I played didn't have nearly as much randomness to it as one would find in a zany Hearthstone match.

[...]

Baxorn played some of the early Alpha for The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep.

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Finally we are starting to get to see a really early build of Bard's Tale IV! This is a very short teaser demonstrating what to look forward to. I gotta say, I can't wait for more!

The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep will have its Alpha test Wednesday.

Bard’s Tale 4 Alpha test coming Wednesday! You are in for such a treat with the soundtrack. @GedGrimes pic.twitter.com/HTNP4OVQHJ

— Brian Fargo (@BrianFargo) March 20, 2018

A new update for The Bards Tale IV, which is now known as The Bards Tale IV: Barrows Deep. Also the backer Alpha will be available next week.

Greetings Citizens of Caith,

Chris Keenan here, VP of Development at inXile, and we come to you with two pieces of very good news.

First off, next week will be the release of the backer Alpha, and backers’ first opportunity to go hands-on with the game!

This demo showcases many of our core features that we have highlighted in previous Kickstarter updates. This twenty minute Alpha Systems Test includes looks at combat, puzzles & traps, puzzle weapons, Songs of Exploration, and more (including one often asked about Easter egg).

We know many of you are excited to check out the game, and we hope those of you with Alpha reward access enjoy this first hands-on look at it. We’ll have more information next week on how to access the Alpha Test, as well as how to leave feedback for us. We’re excited to get the game into the hands of those Alpha backers!

For the rest of you, there are plenty of ways to get in on the action. Next week marks the start of this year’s Game Developers Conference, one of the game industry’s biggest and most important events. As part of the conference, from 03/21 - 03/23, we will be demoing The Bard’s Tale IV using the backer Alpha Test. There will also be plenty of press coverage of the game, so keep your eyes open (and we’ll be sure to link to some of the coverage in a future update, too).

The second big piece of news you might have caught at the beginning of this update. We are proud to announce the full title of our game and share it with you first - The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep! We tossed around a number of possible subtitles for a long time. The Destiny Knight and Thief of Fate described important story hooks for those games, but for the return of The Bard’s Tale after so many years, we wanted a name that captured the essence of a dungeon crawler.

From the catacombs beneath the Mad God’s temple to teleporting between realms, The Bard’s Tale series has always been about seeking out places that only adventurers would dare, descending into the depths, overcoming monsters and puzzles, and defeating the evil within... and to be heroes worthy of a tale sung by a bard. Exploring the dark corners of the world is the essence of a dungeon crawler, and in Barrows Deep, your adventure awaits!

We hope you like it, and please let us know what you think! We’ll return with David’s look at the Practitioner archetype soon, but for now enjoy the ride over the next couple of weeks as GDC and the backer Alpha Test take center stage! Thanks to all of you for helping us make The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep a reality.

Cheers,
Chris Keenan
VP of Development

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A new update for The Bard's Tale IV takes a look at the Bard classes, announces the Archetype Poll 2 winner and updates Backers on rewards.

Hard Drinking, Rabble Rousing Bards

TL;DR: A Look at the Bard classes, Archetype Poll #2 Winner, Backer Rewards Update, Crowdfunding Corner

First Round's On The Bard

Howdy, everyone!

David here, back again to give you the first of our class breakdowns. Everyone at inXile was a little proud that you chose The Bard for the first preview. That character class was what helped set the series apart from its contemporaries such as Wizardry and Ultima, and the image of a bard quaffing a drink as he heads into battle has been an enduring one. We have had some fun ideas updating the character class for the new game. Today, we’ll be talking about two of the six classes that bards have access to: The Brew Master and the Rabble Rouser.

Brew Master ("Just one more test, and then we are ready for the world!")

Bards are only as powerful as the brew that fuels them. In the original trilogy, bards must wet their whistle. When they’ve sung too many songs, they’d have to return to the Adventurer’s Guild for a drink. Caith is a big, wild place, and the adventure extends well beyond the walls of Skara Brae! With that in mind, we didn’t want to force the player to stop what they are doing and backtrack to the Guild every few fights. Still, we also wanted to hold true to the booze-fueled theme of the Bard's Tales of old. In The Bard's Tale IV, the Bard drinks as they fight to gain useful generate Spell Points, which are in turn used to sing their magical songs.

Brew Masters are not only masters of brewing beers and spirits, they’re masters of drunken brawling. The bard’s Basic Combat skill teaches a bard to not only swing a hatchet, but also how to chug a drink in the heat of combat and craft Trow Squeezins, a drinkable power-up. Trow Squeezins, and really all brews in The Bard’s Tale, do two things: grant Spell Points and build up the status effect "Drunken." The Spell Points can be saved up or spent on one of the bard’s magical songs (which we’ll cover below). As for the latter, being drunk also carries its own risks and rewards.

How well a bard can hold their drink is based on their Intelligence stat. While your Drunken status effect is equal to or lower than your Intelligence stat, you’re fine, dandy, and fighting-fit. However, the moment your Drunken status exceeds your Intelligence, your bard goes into a drunken fury, gaining a huge burst of Strength before blacking out for a few turns. Overindulging limits how many songs your bard can sing in a fight before going out of commission, but can also be used strategically to get yourself out of a jam. The boost in Strength they receive before blacking out empowers both their attacks and their songs, allowing for huge damage/defense spikes in a time of need.

The next skill in the Brew Master line is Battle Brewer. Battle Brewer grants +1 Intelligence, allowing you to hold your liquor that much better. You’ll need it, because it also teaches you how to craft Elven Wine. Elven Wine is notoriously potent. It grants +2 Spell Points, but also grants +4 Drunken. Since you can only chug booze once per turn, and some songs cost 2 or more Spell Points to sing, Elven Wine is your fastest way to pull off that clutch song. It’s also your fastest way to end up asleep in a nearby gutter when your party is being bashed by some giant monster. Please drink responsibly.

Mean Drunk is another optional skill bards can pick up along the way. It’s not required to achieve the title of Brew Master, but it sure is handy for them. The Mean Drunk skill grants your Bard a passive effect which causes them to throw a mug at the enemy after every drink, for a little extra tick of damage.

The next skill in the Brew Master skill line is Town Drunk. Through this skill you learn to brew beer. It’s not just any beer though - it's Dwarven Stout! This grants +1 Spell Point and +2 Drunken, but it also causes your next melee attack to be empowered with Dwarven belligerence, causing knockback to enemies you hit. The fact that some boozes grant bonus attack effects makes Bards very versatile. Knockback can be used to disrupt enemy positioning, causing a channeled attack to miss, or exposing a weak wizard that would have otherwise been protected by their ally.

Lastly, we have the capstone skill in the class line: Brew Master. Brew Master grants the bard extra Strength, Intelligence, the recipe to brew Lowland Park Whisky, and the Shot of Courage passive. Lowland Park Whisky is the finest whisky in all the land, and in addition to granting Spell Points and Drunken, those who drink it are empowered with pompous indignation that causes their next melee attack to deal Mental Damage. That’s a huge buff, as Mental Damage is used to break the focus of enemies and ignores Armor. Generally, attacks that deal Mental Damage are on the weak side, but when a bard is swigging Lowland Park Whisky, they can pump out the highest Mental Damage in the game. The Shot of Courage passive is nothing to sneeze at either. At the start of each combat, the bard takes a free drink, granting them a free spell point and a Drunken level.

Brew Masters are powerful allies, able to choose the right brew for the job. A clever Brew Master also knows the exact moment to over-indulge for a huge burst of power to wipe out an enemy party. It’s also useful to note that bards can drink any booze they come across, so if your party contains more than one bard, only one needs to go down this path to brew booze for the others.

[...]

Brian Fargo is asking on Twitter which collectors box cover you prefer for the Collectors Edition.

We are mocking up the new Bard’s Tale box and I’m guessing you all might have an opinion. Register your vote below:https://t.co/pe8lPGCWrw pic.twitter.com/uluOa7IUEf

— Brian Fargo (@BrianFargo) February 13, 2018

InXile updates us on The Bard's Tale 4 with news on development and new pictures to view.

Season's Greetings from The Bard's Tale Team!

A Quick Check-In on The Bard's Tale Development

Season's Greetings, citizens of Caith! Chris Keenan, VP of Development, here to provide a status update on the production of The Bard’s Tale IV.

As you have seen in our previous updates featuring puzzle weapons, grid based movement, classes, etc., the Bard's Tale is hitting and passing a major critical milestone of all features and sub-features being completed and implemented into the game. Most of the elements of the game are built and where they need to be.  

Now we are at the fun part of getting a feel for the game in its entirety, and most importantly in 2018 we are upping our QA efforts to minimize all blocker bugs, hangs, and crashes. We are proud to say that we wanted to get all community backer content into the game as soon as possible, and have been aggressively tackling everything from backer items, to item descriptions, to modeling our barfly heads! This also includes our stretch goal promises, and we continue to deliver those items as production rolls along. Furthermore, to our other backer promises, key team members are now focused designing our physical goods. Paul Marzagalli has done excellent job of collecting everyone’s information and bridging the gap of backers’ requests with our production team. One example of your fellow design backers is Scott Brown aka “Scorcherer”, who has backed several inXile’s projects including The Bard’s Tale IV. In this game, Scorcherer is an informative ghost NPC in the world of Caith.  

Here is small quote from Scott Brown about his "Design a NPC" character:  

“It was really fun working with Paul and the Bard’s Tale team to create my NPC Scorcherer. While I used that name for characters that I built in other crowdfunded games, this was a coming home party in a way – Scorcherer was the name of my main character when I played the original Bard’s Tale games as a kid. I decided what was most important to me was that it was actually my old character here to pass along his wisdom to the new adventurers of Skara Brae and I let the team choose what fit best. We had a few conversations and they came up with the idea of him being a ghost, which I think is truly fantastic. Now Scorcherer will live for eternity!"  

I am very excited about these upcoming months. This is the best part of game development: furthering the “fun factor." We have all our puzzle systems in, we're polishing the core combat loop, we've turned a corner, and now we're just playing the game and making it more fun. Lastly, with this year-end update, the team wanted to provide some new "stocking stuffers", give a look ahead to what you can expect for both backer updates and the game itself, and to get all of you as excited about 2018 as we are!  

Have a wonderful and safe holiday season!

Chris Keenan
VP of Development

[...]

"Tuning Up The Legacy" Preview  

Hi again, everyone! Greg Underwood, Senior Programmer here. 

First up, thanks to one and all for the response to my discussion on the Grid Movement system. It spawned an interesting (and lengthy) thread on the forums and I wish I had enough free time to dig through it all! Since then I’ve also had a chance to return to the problem and do some work on generating movement nodes in our more fluid, curve-filled overworld levels. It’s a little outside the scope of this update, but I’ll see if I can sneak some of the fun technical bits into a later one. It was quite a technical challenge that led me to a few interesting discoveries and insights. 

Our original idea for my updates was to focus on different aspects of the new games that harken back to the original games, with movement and the grid/nodes as an obvious first choice. It’s not ready yet, but for our next entry I’m working on a discussion of how Magic Mouths will feature in the new games. They were an important part of the original series – often conveying information critical to solving a puzzle or advancing your quest - so of course they have to make an appearance in the new games! This feature requires meshing together technology, art, design, and writing, so not surprisingly a lot of people have been involved. It’s taking a little time to coordinate with everyone and find moments where our schedules align enough to have a quick chat. I’m looking forward to bringing you the results in an upcoming backer update! 

 Until then, cheers and happy holidays! 

 -Greg

Deck the (Walls) with Pictures of Bard's Tale  

Hi everyone, Paul here with some stocking stuffers for our backers: a pair of new screenshots showing off a couple of locations and creatures in the game. Special thanks goes to Art Director Maxx Kaufman and the art team for pulling these together.

[...]

For those of you who are getting the High-Res Digital Wallpapers reward (tiers $50, $70, and above), we're also making lossless 4K resolution versions of these available for you to download and use as desktop wallpapers! If you're one of those backers, keep an eye on your email inbox shortly for the download link. Look for another batch of wallpapers coming in a future update, too.

Backer Site Update  

Speaking of CrowdOx, thanks to all of you for your fantastic response to the new backer portal. It was absolutely fantastic seeing so many of you lock in your pledges and watching our Twitter feed flood with "I just helped make The Bard's Tale IV a reality" notifications! The backer portal re-launch was a great success for the vast majority of you, and we continue to work with those of you who have had some issues. Thanks for your patience as we get everyone caught up and locked in for the remainder of the journey.  

Coming Soon: A New Trailer!  

Be sure to follow our social media channels for a head's up when the trailer goes live in the new year, and we'll be sure to include a link to it in our next backer update as well.

Thanks to all of you who have helped get us to this point! In 2015, you helped us make a long-held dream a reality. In 2018, the Bard will be back!

Happy Holidays,
Paul Marzagalli
Public Relations & Community Manager
@phimseto   

Follow Us:
Facebook | Twitter

The latest update for The Bard's Tale IV focuses on Puzzle Weapons, the backer portal and a vote.

Update 39: Puzzle Weapons, Backer Portal, and a Vote!

TL;DR - Puzzle Weapons, Backer Portal Reopens, Contest Winner, Backer Rewards Update, Crowdfunding Corner

Greetings, citizens of Caith! David Rogers here with another update for you. Today I'd like to talk about puzzle weapons in The Bard's Tale IV, one of our features that we teased during the Kickstarter campaign that is now beginning to take shape. What are puzzle weapons exactly, and how will they work? That's what I'm here to talk about today, so let's dive in!

The Hidden Power of Puzzle Weapons

Puzzle weapons are our spin on magic weapons in the world of The Bard’s Tale, and part of the Enhanced Crafting System stretch goal that you helped achieve. We want the sense of discovery to begin anew when you loot a magic weapon, rather than end as soon as you look at the tooltip. If you think back to the Kickstarter, you might remember this concept video:

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We used that mockup to explore several core concepts about puzzle weapons that really enchanted us. We loved the idea that a weapon could hold dormant power, and that you could be holding onto one of these weapons for hours or days without realizing exactly how powerful the weapon truly was. We loved the idea that not every part of the weapon was fully obvious, and that you might have to poke around to find how to unlock the next step. We also liked the idea that your weapon would transform in some way when its true power was finally unlocked. These are all core tenets we held onto when designing the full puzzle weapon system for The Bards Tale IV.

                                 A puzzle weapon in full 3d glory

This is what a puzzle weapon looks like now. Puzzle weapons were crafted by the elves in ages past, and left in the realm of men. They’re infused with powerful magic that can only be unlocked by the worthy. When the player finds them, their true power lays dormant. To unleash that power and allow it to flow fully through the weapon, you must manipulate and examine the item in 3D. Components of the weapon may be missing, puzzles might be scrambled, and riddles are most definitely accounted for.

Behind the scenes, puzzle weapons are generated from a large set of components, and found as high-tier loot as you adventure through the world. For example, a puzzle mace is constructed from a pommel, grip, collar, and bludgeon head. Each part features its own type of puzzle, and each puzzle has multiple variations and difficulties. The higher quality the item, the more ways to unlock its power you might find. The difficulty of the puzzles are based on your progress in the game, and how many other puzzle weapons you've previously solved.

The anatomy of a puzzle weapon

In addition to self-contained puzzles that see you manipulating components on the item, there are also puzzles that interact with other elements of gameplay. Some puzzle weapons have you scouring merchants for magic gems for your weapon; others having you seeking out ancient shrines; while others still have you seeking to defeat specific enemies to feed the weapon with their blood; all the while you’re looking for hidden buttons, secret compartments, and manipulating small elements.

An In-Depth Look at Puzzle Weapon Mechanics

Let's go through an example. You've just found an Elven Mace with an empty power gem slot, and a set of interlocking rings around it. Rotate those rings the right way, and you'll spell out a riddle written in Elven language. The verse might read something as obvious as “As pure as snow and bright as moon, thy shining light is evil's doom.” - but many may be more cryptic.

Using the riddle, you'll determine which of the five differently colored Elven Seed Gems need to be inserted. Of course, finding one might require you to explore the world, barter with a merchant, or defeat a powerful enemy guarding it.

With the correct Elven Seed Gem inserted into the pommel, the weapon now has its power source, and begins glowing with magic! So what happens next?

Each time you solve a component on a puzzle weapon, that weapon earns a boon. Boons are special effects that come in multiple strengths, and can evolve as you continue to unlock your weapon's powers. One boon category is the Elder boon, which has three strengths: Elder, Of Ancient Slumber, and Ancestral. Your elven mace may become an Elder Elven Mace, meaning that its ability gains damage every single turn. Solve another component, and it becomes an Elven Mace of Ancient Slumber, which means that the first time it’s used in combat, it’s awoken, and deals a massive amount of bonus damage. Fully unlocking the weapon's true power could turn your mace into an Ancestral Elven Mace, which would cause this weapon to accumulate a large amount of bonus damage each turn it goes unused. And just to drive the point home, when you achieve the final tier of boon, the weapon visibly transforms to indicate that its magic is fully realized.

[...]

Brian Fargo shared a screenshot from The Bards Tale IV on twitter.

I'm very happy with the visual progress of Bard's Tale 4 and just had to share a screen. Enjoy! pic.twitter.com/ymnebOwXle

— Brian Fargo (@BrianFargo) November 21, 2017

The Bard's Tale IV has a new update that tells us how grid movement will work. There is also some news on the backer portal and an introduction to the senior programmer.

Tuning up the Legacy: Grid Movement

What are the duties of a Senior Programmer on Bard's Tale IV? Well, it varies a lot from day to day. A lot of the code I’m working on is plumbing-level stuff – handling loading and in-memory storage of game data, building the components we’ll use to make the puzzles and traps in game (kind of like Lego-bricks for code), save and load of game data, etc. I also range up to do some UI implementation or bolt in the occasional player ability. Another aspect of my job is to act as a voice for the fans on the team – my experience as a player and fan of the original games is part of why they hired me. And so far, they’ve been great about listening to my suggestions and working to incorporate them. A few of those are in the works and today I'd like to introduce you to the first returning mechanic: grid movement.

RPGs back in the day were built on a grid, both because it was familiar (via table-top games like D&D) and because computers and software wouldn’t be able to handle proper 1st person free movement for another 10 years or so.  Early RPGs like The Bard’s Tale not only used a grid, but the fact that it was a grid was often part of the puzzle of the game.  You knew there were hidden areas on the map because it was a grid and your careful mapping (on graph paper, no less!  No automappers yet) shows there’s a spot you can’t see how to get to.  That’s an aspect we wanted to bring forward into this new Bard’s Tale game, so supporting a grid-based movement mode has always been a high priority.

However, time has moved on and we want to take advantage of the many benefits of free movement, too.  For instance, it allows for more natural, organic, outdoor areas.  It also helps areas you wouldn’t think of as being overly organic or natural, like castle or dungeon interiors.  A nicely laid out building interior has a lot more soft corners and curves to it than you’d at first think based solely on the floorplan.  More importantly, while parts of the building align on a grid seldom do level designers align the entire floorplan to a grid.  Finding a system that works with both a free-flowing world and grid based movement presents some interesting challenges.  Take for example this screenshot of the interior of one of the castles:
picture here
As you can see, the floor plan might be a straight hallway with 90 degree turns, but the art team has done their job in decorating the area and making it feel lived in. This landing with columns, candle stands, benches, and the stag statue create various obstacles to the movement grid system (visualized here as black squares with the yellow arrows connecting them). This layout is a first pass, partially automatically generated using a system I built to take some of the workload off our designers. This allows us to spend more time later on fine-tuning the level to our satisfaction.

You can see how the grid of nodes coming up the stairs wouldn't work well continued down the area between the columns. We will most likely adjust the grid to have a single path go down the center of the columns, and it may or may not line up cleanly to let you walk between the columns in grid movement mode (I've drawn the likely path in red below).
picture here
Another concern is how combat relates to movement nodes. A natural assumption is that combat can only happen on a movement node, but movement nodes and combat placement have somewhat conflicting requirements. Movement needs to feel regular and natural, following halls and turns. Combat needs to be placed such that all enemies can line up on their combat gird positions and not be placed inside of a wall. So we decided we needed to split out a separate combat placement grid from the movement grid. I then built tools to help identify if a given combat placement would have concerns with overlapping props or be too close to a wall. This lets the art and design teams go through a level and adjust the placement or collision settings on various objects and make sure there are viable combat start positions available.

Here is an example of the movement grid (changed to green lines here) and combat grid (red, with obstructions noted by the yellow lines). This particular area obviously still needs some attention from level design and art to clean up so combat can be sure to have enough space to start.
picture here
picture here

As you can see, even with a tool that generates nodes for you, there's still a fair bit of work to make it all fit and feel just right, something worthy of those players who remember the graph paper days. This is just some of what I've been working on for The Bard's Tale IV and I'm looking forward to talking about more in the weeks and months to come.

-Greg

PCGamer takes a gander at The Bards Tale IV.

We go to inXile for an exclusive inside look at Brian Fargo's return to the world of The Bard's Tale.

We're standing in the most beautiful dungeon I've ever seen in a game-which happens to be a lush green forest peppered with highlights of orange and red, not the dank catacombs I think of when I hear the word ‘dungeon.' And when we start walking forward, peering side-to-side and climbing a set of stony stairs, there's something else odd: our free, unconstrained movement, a far cry from the rigid step-by-step, block-by-block exploration of classic dungeon crawlers. This is what it looks like to build a new game in a genre as old as PC gaming itself.

Developer inXile has invited me to its studio for an early look at The Bard's Tale 4, the first game in the series since 1991. After the blinding glare of a bright southern California morning, the inXile office, a floor above a local surf shop, feels a bit like a dungeon itself. But a cool one-it's small and intimate, decked out with Christmas lights and artwork for Wasteland 2 and only the occasional baby doll hanging from the rafters. For the next hour, I'll get to see a game that feels at once delightfully old-fashioned and tantalizingly new. The Bard's Tale 4 is the first dungeon crawler that's really grabbed my interest since I sat on my dad's lap playing the original Bard's Tale circa 1993, getting lost in the endless streets and abandoned houses of Skara Brae. Partially because, damn, is it ever pretty, but mostly because inXile is walking a tricky tightrope of nostalgia and innovation.
[...]

The Bards Tale IV has received a new update about the series lore and how it is being updated. Michael Cranford is back to assist InXile and there is also a progress report here about The Bards Tale Remaster from Olde Skuul.

Updating the Legacy

First, we've got a write-up from Brian Fargo on updating The Bard's Tale series for the 21st century:

Hard to believe it's been nearly two years already since the game's Kickstarter campaign. I want you all to know that I'm very pleased with the way The Bard's Tale 4 is shaping up. The visuals are outstanding, the level design is strong, the puzzles are clever, and much of the personality and charm is starting to make it in. We've also worked out a deal to have someone very special provide input - you can find out about him at the end of the update. It's really coming together now and I can't wait to show you more.

Games today demand a deeper lore and sense of world than back in the day. My goal is to broaden the Bard's Tale world without losing the key people, places, spells, bard songs, etc. When we created Bard's Tale back in 1985 we were young and excitable...more interested in mapping dungeons and torturing our players with teleporters, brutal combats, spinners, and darkness areas, than we were in telling a coherent story. We threw everything except the kitchen sink into those games - Nazis, ninjas, zen masters, robots, vampires, lizard men. We weren't exactly concerned with it making sense. Why did Mangar trap Skara Brae in ice? Does anybody ever say?

Well, we're for sure going to keep all the villains: Mangar, Lagoth Zanta, and the Mad God Tarjan. And we gotta keep Roscoe's and Garth's and the Adventurer's Guild. Skara Brae's in there too, and the bard songs, the old spell names, along with all of the character classes including the ever popular Archmage. But knowing the lore is a bit thin and inconsistent (a lot of players made up better stories during their play-throughs than the games actually told) we needed to add some depth to the world. How do we stay true to the spirit and substance of the original games while adding the depth, history, and personality that today's players expect from a modern game?

Maybe we should start by figuring out how the events of the first three games fit together. How are Mangar, Lagoth Zanta, and Tarjan connected? What ambition drove them? Where did they come from? In what kind of world would beings of such power exist? What is the history behind it all? And can we give it all a unique flavor that will allow it to stand out from other fantasy games?

[...]

The Bard's Tale IV will be released in 2018 and has a new community manager:
Paul Marzagalli.

Bits of Bard's Backer Business

TL;DR: Release Date info, Community Update & Survey, Backer Rewards updates, and E3 news

The Bard's Tale IV Production Update

inXile president Matt Findley here. Many of you have reached out to ask, so we want to take this opportunity to confirm that The Bard's Tale IV will be releasing in 2018. Thanks, too, to our work on The Mage's Tale, we have increased the visual scope of the game in ways that we could not have with just the Kickstarter. With everything now in place, it is simply a matter of taking the time to make the game right, make sure we implement all the stretch goals and backer content, and hit the level of detail we want. The world of Caith is a beautiful one in both sight and sound, and we want our approach to capture that.

Newest Member of the inXile Team

As inXile continues to expand, with more games coming and a growing back catalog, we are receiving more and more requests for Kickstarter and backer news, customer support, and general information. Thus, it's time - some would say long past time - we upped our communication game. So here we go.

First, for those of you with questions, troubles with your backer rewards, or who need assistance with Bard's Tale IV and our other games, we have launched a new Help Center page which will serve as a one-stop support location for all the info you need. It also includes an upgraded ticketing system, so we can better keep track of your direct emails and social media messages.

Second, and more importantly, we are pleased to announce that we have hired a brand new community manager, Paul Marzagalli. Paul has been active in the gaming community and industry many years as a games writer, consultant, and member of various game-related advisory boards such as the National Academy of Video Game Trade Reviewers, the Boston Festival of Indie Games, and the Gerontoludic Society. Paul is also a long-time gamer, playing titles like Bard's Tale and Wasteland during Interplay's golden age, and he remains a huge fan of RPGs from the 80s, 90s, and today. Beyond that, Paul is a great communicator with deep knowledge of inXile and the wider gaming community. We are happy and excited to have him on board, and you can expect to see him popping up in Kickstarter updates, forums, social media, and more going forward.

And now, to kick off this new era of better communication, here's Paul with some important and exciting info for backers of Bard's Tale IV!

Matt Findley
inXile President & Studio Lead - inXile New Orleans
@BayouBard

The Bard is Taking Requests! Have Your Say in Our Backer Survey!

Hi everyone, Paul here. Thanks to the inXile team for the warm welcome! It has been an outstanding (and fast) first month.

Though this is the “official” announcement of my arrival, I have been out in the community for the past few weeks so I may have already spoken with many of you. Whether in the forums, on our game Facebook pages, or on Twitter @phimseto, please pop by and say hello!

With The Bard’s Tale IV, inXile is bringing back an iconic franchise for old fans and a new generation. In getting to know our backers and the greater inXile community, I put together a survey to help me understand where you are coming from as a RPG fan. This survey isn’t something that I will be sharing publicly, rather it is to help me better identify who our Bard’s Tale IV backers are and what they like in a Bard’s Tale game. This will help us with development not just of The Bard’s Tale IV, but with how we consider and develop future projects! You can find the survey below.

[...]

A new Kickstarter update for The Bard's Tale 4 and more information on the combat system.

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Lead Designer David Rogers walks through the details of our previous Bard's Tale IV video, breaking down each scene and going into detail on all the gameplay features being shown.

The Bard's Tale IV returns to the classic fantasy RPGs of years past. Featuring dynamic turn-based combat, a full party of characters to build and customize, and first-person exploration of maze-like dungeons with devious puzzles and riddles, The Bard's Tale IV is a true successor to the original Bard's Tale trilogy, and is crowdfunded by thousands of fans. Help us bring back the dungeon crawl and return to Skara Brae - the city that started it all.

https://bardstale.inxile-entertainmen...
https://www.facebook.com/TheBardsTale
https://twitter.com/Inxile_Ent

[...]

Sound Design Update - Introducing Brian DiDomenico

The Bard's Tale has always been well known for its presentation. It was one of the first titles to include music as a gameplay feature, and at the time its visuals were highly expressive and detailed compared to other dungeon crawlers of the day. Our goal is to continue carrying this torch forward on The Bard's Tale IV. You've seen our visuals and art design, which we've detailed a few times previously. Early in our crowdfunding campaign, we also announced the involvement of Julie Fowlis and Ged Grimes contributing the game's unique highland-tinged music, as well as our plans to bring back some of the classic Bard's Tale songs.

Sound design is one key aspect we have not touched on as much yet. Music can stay in your memory for years, and graphics are certainly important for drawing players into the game world. But more than anything else, it's sound that reinforces a game's atmosphere and feel. As a dungeon crawling experience, the audio is what immerses you into the experience, creating a sense of ambiance which is impossible to convey through music and art alone.

The Bard's Tale IV is deep in production, and many of our game systems and environments are rapidly coming together. At this stage, it's critical to have sound design work with our team and capture the unique mood of Skara Brae and the wider world of Caith.

To do this, we're bringing in Brian DiDomenico. Brian is a composer, songwriter and sound designer. Throughout his diverse career, Brian has contributed to many titles you might recognize, including Myst V: Revelation, Jade Empire, Mass Effect 2, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Lost Planet 3, Ninja Gaiden Z and most recently Here They Lie. Outside of games directly, Brian has performed and recorded music with Mankind is Obsolete, Dismantled and is currently the keyboardist in the Megaman-themed rock band, The Megas. He has also performed at several festivals and conventions including Video Games Live, MAGfest, BitGen, Nerdfest, the Capcom Cup. You can read more about him on his own website.

We're extremely excited to welcome Brian DiDomenico, and we can't wait for our designers and implementers to collaborate with him, and hear what he will be contributing to the game.

That's all for now, but as we barrel through production and start knocking down our internal development milestones, The Bard's Tale IV is looking better and better every day. We'll have more goodies on the game's progress and community updates to share with you soon!

David Rogers
Lead Designer

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.

The latest update for The Bard's Tale IV shows us some gameplay.

Greetings Exiles,

I'm excited to finally be able to show you our vision for how exploration and combat in Bard's Tale IV will be presented and played.

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Combat is the core of a dungeon crawler and our goal has always been to make sure that it is tactical, deep and pays off visually. We also knew to stay with our roots with combat being party based and phased based, yet we've come up with a unique way to present this style of gameplay. You'll note that we still support six characters for the player to command along with two empty slots for summoned creatures.

Obviously, this is still in development and there are things we're not in love with yet. Namely, the characters on the HUD are still at a first pass. We will be updating their visual look and likely not have them bouncing around as they speak. And the visuals will only continue to improve as we layer on more VFX for world atmosphere, spells and combat effects, add additional post processing, upgrade the materials for the character models and greatly dial up the ambient life in scenes. Already you can see small touches in our use of planar reflections in the puddles of water, and what you can't see is our system for dynamically corrupting the forest based on the actions of the player. We want you to feel the effects you have on the world constantly.
[...]

A new update for The Bards Tale IV and some more information on monsters and InXile review the year thats been.

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Bard's Tale Monsters

We haven't kept all of the monsters from the first three Bard's Tale games. There were a lot - A LOT - and to be honest, some were a shade on the goofy side, but we're incorporating the coolest and most iconic into The Bard's Tale IV. And there is none more iconic than our first contender...

Berserker

In the original games Berserkers were famed as much for their numbers as their battle rage. You never encountered just one. In The Bard's Tale IV, berserkers are worshipers of Vidlsvin the Boar, the Einarr god of War. While the rest of the Einarr people are content to be fishers, farmers, shepherds, and good neighbors to their Baedish and Fichti cousins on the mainland of Caith, the Berserkers crave a bolder, bloodier life. Whipped up to a frothing fury by the priests of their cult, they seek to bring back the ancient Einarr traditions of raiding, pillaging, and slaughter, and thus restore the lost glory of the Jarls of the Stanish Isles.

Dragon

Dragons in the first three Bard's Tale games came in many colors - blue, green, copper, white, etc. - and there will be quite a variety in the Bard's Tale IV as well.

Dragons are originally natives of the realm of the Dwarfs, and one of the reasons that dwarfs build underground. (Castle walls aren't much use when a dragon can drop right into the courtyard, are they?) Unfortunately, a few of these monsters escaped into Midgard, the human realm, during Ragnarok, the war of the gods, and they and their offspring have been menacing humankind ever since.

The dragons of Caith are not, however, sentient beings. They're just the alpha-predators of all alpha-predators. Fire-breathing, mountain-dwelling stealers of cattle, killers of men, and wreckers of village, town, and castle. They fear nothing, and vigorously defend their territory and their kills. Worse, they are not immune to corruption, and their simple animal minds can be taken over by practitioners of dark magic and made into living weapons. That is when you really need to fear them.

Skeleton

Another nasty and numerous enemy in the three original Bard's Tale games was the skeleton. In The Bard's Tale IV, skeletons are the servants of necromancers, summoned to fight and die to protect their masters. They are merciless, relentless enemies who feel no pain and know no fear, and worse, if you see a skeleton, you know a necromancer isn't very far away.
...

The latest update for The Bard's Tale IV is about exploration.

Recently, lead designer David Rogers and I have been working on what we've been calling the "Adventuring Tools and Content Keys" systems for the game, and for this update we thought we'd share some details about how it all works.

Basically, what the adventuring tools and content keys do is give us some control over how you explore and experience the world of Bard's Tale IV. Now, right from the beginning, we made the decision that BTIV would be a game of free exploration. You'd be able to go in any direction you chose, ignore the main story to do side quests if that's what tickled your fancy, or just noodle around and find cool stuff. We therefore made Skara Brae and the land it resides in, Caith, big places with lots of space and lots of story, scenery and secrets to get lost in. Skara Brae is a city now, with multiple levels of sewers, catacombs, and crypts below it, while the lands that surround it are vast and varied, with broad fields, haunted villages, deep forests, treacherous fens, and looming mountains, all riddled with caves, ruins, dungeons, and hidden places, all ripe for exploration.

However, another decision we made early on was that we didn't want you to be able to grind through any of these areas all in one go. We wanted there to be doors you couldn't open the first time you found them, or rivers you couldn't cross, or ruins you could see but not reach. We wanted there to be mysteries that you couldn't unlock until you'd traveled to new areas and learned new things. We wanted to make sure there were always places you wanted to come back to, and that returning to previously explored lands would always be rewarding and fun, unlocking new areas, secret content, interesting lore, and of course, awesome loot.

On top of that there is also a new video:

This clip is meant to illustrate the tone that we are looking to capture for our environments and creatures in The Bard's Tale IV – a captivating and expansive landscape for you to explore, and a menagerie of creatures inspired by myth and Celtic folklore. We’ve also been feverishly working on the combat system and have made some amazing progress, but we don’t want to show our hand on it quite yet. For now I hope this gets your imaginations running wild and sets the mood for what I'd like to talk to you about today.

Fluent reached out to InXile to learn more about The Bard's Tale IV and came back with an interview with Systems Designer David Rogers, with Brian Fargo answering the first question.

RPGWatch: Since you've announced that the game will feature 30 (or more?) levels, many people are excited. Will every level be a unique dungeon to explore, or will some styles of dungeons be re-used?

David: I think it goes without saying that if two dungeons are identical, we've done something wrong.  The similarities between dungeons can largely be drawn down cultural lines.  The style of architecture, puzzles, and traps used by the elves may be common amongst Elven or Ficti dungeons, but share little in common with the dungeons of the Charn or Dwarves.  However, no two dungeons of the same culture should be combining their cultural elements together in exactly the same way.

The dungeons in the main quest line in particular are given extra care, with a focus on giving each cool set pieces and memorable design.

 

RPGWatch: Combat is a very important factor in a good dungeon-crawl RPG. How do you plan on managing things such as re-spawn rate, random encounters and general encounter design inside a dungeon?

David: While epic boss battles against giant monsters will still exist, Combat in The Bard's Tale IV is focused on group vs. group combat.  This allows us to build enemies with really distinct capabilities and then combine them with other enemies to create something that feels like a wholly unique challenge to overcome.

For the most part, we still haven't fully decided on how we want to manage enemy respawning, or the lack thereof, but we have a lot of ideas.  This is a great question, but I don't think it's one I can give a satisfying answer to right now as we're still iterating.

Learn something new about the combat system of Bard's Tale IV in Kickstarter update #29:

Glorious Combat

Hello Citizens of Caith. My name is David Rogers, and I'm the Systems Designer on The Bard's Tale IV. I know I don't have to tell any of you that combat is a core pillar of The Bard's Tale. It's where all of our choices about race, class, gear, and party composition combine with our own sense of strategy, leading to either glorious victory or humiliating defeat. Combat design is what I've been primarily focused on, and what I'm here to chat with you about. Before we dive into the real meaty bits, I need to give the obligatory disclaimer that what you're about to see is all a work in progress, and changes may occur between now and the final release of the game.

Combat Basics

One of the great things about designing for a dungeon crawler is your ability to quickly build the game on paper before you build it out digitally. We've put a big emphasis on proving out our designs by playing them out on the tabletop. Similar to playing a game of D&D, we're able to play out the bard's tale on the tabletop and make sure what we're doing is fun, strategic, and ticks all the boxes we're looking for in The Bard's Tale IV. We started from a foundation of classic blobber combat, distilling down the parts that truly compel us. But we also make note of missed opportunities for rich strategic decision-making, and brainstorm how to capitalize on them.

One area we really want to improve on is the kind of decisions the player has to make during combat. It was a common trend in older blobbers that most of your decisions were made out of combat and once you entered combat you did the same actions over and over again. That old chestnut of "attack, attack, attack, defend, defend, fireball" is something we want to disrupt. Gaming has come a long way since the heyday of old school dungeon crawlers and we're dead set on bringing the genre back into the spotlight.

We discussed our 4x4 battlefield grid in a previous Kickstarter update. Accentuating the role that the battlefield plays in combat is one element we're focusing on. To briefly recap, during combat our battlefield is a 4x4 grid where the players' party occupies one half of the grid and the enemies' party occupies the other half. Because we want to show your enemies (and the bloody pulp you beat them into) in all of their glory, their half of the grid exists in 3D space. Your party, in classic blobber fashion, lives on your HUD. [...]

In the Bards Tale IV Kickstarter update #28 some of the in-game models are shown:

Character Art Progress

Hi everyone,

I'm Maxx Kaufman, Art Director on The Bard's Tale IV. The world of Caith is a place of fantasy, adventure, and a bit of mystery and magic as well. In our previous updates and in our original Kickstarter text and touch points document, we've talked a bit about the game's art direction, and how we are building a world that is inspired by Scottish culture.

The Bard's Tale IV is based on legends and folktales, and our artwork and designs are meant to be evocative of all the beauty and artistic traditions of the Celtic and other pre-Christian peoples of the north. This world and its inhabitants are accented everywhere with Celtic elements that we are using to bring a particular personality and design that feels unique to the game, with its own mystical and ancient flair – while also still feeling true to the high fantasy feel of the classic Bard's Tale games.

But you came here for art, so I'd like to share a few new examples of that with you today.

Characters & Monsters

The last few months, we've been churning away on new character art for the game. We've shown you a fair number of environments previously, but now we'd like to show you some of their inhabitants, too. Some of these are familiar to old fans, while others might be new faces.

With all our characters, we're instilling a sense of personality into everything, with ever-so-slightly exaggerated features that touch on their most iconic elements. We're also using things like varied clothing and equipment (with either animation or simulated physics) to avoid repetition and give a sense of physicality to them.

Note that the shots below are renders of our in-game models, but are still works in progress so may change. And, while we are peppering in some hints at gameplay ideas below, bear in mind those details may change as well.

[...]

The Fichti of Bard's Tale IV are introduced in Kickstarter update #27:

Lore Update – The Fichti

Nathan here.

Caith is the land in which we set our story, the land of Skara Brae. It is a land of stone-fenced fields, vast forests, windswept mountains and rocky shorelines at the northern end of a island in a northern sea. In Caith's lowlands live the Dael, ruddy, hardy farmers with a feudal society of knights, dukes and castles. In Caith's great northwestern forests live the Fichti, short, dark haired hunters and gatherers who keep to the older ways of tribe, clan and totem. On the shores and isles of Caith's rugged north east coast live the Einarr, descendants of Norn raiders, but now settled fishers, shepherds, and sailors. The three cultures don't mix very much, but they all think of Caith as their home, and occasionally, if the threat is great enough, they all come together to defend it.

Right now, I'd like to talk to you in detail about one of those cultures, the Fichti.

Culture of the Fichti

The Fichti are a tribe of nature worshiping humans who see themselves as the guardians of the deep forests of northwest Caith. They are a small, wiry, dark-haired people, known for painting themselves in woad and wearing clothes made from skins and pelts. They live in small villages protected by wooden palisades and survive primarily by hunting and gathering, though they also sell furs, antlers, honey, and game meat to their Dael neighbors to the south.

Though the Fichti are a matriarchal society, both men and women lead. Each village has both a Mother and a Father, as well as a Grandmother. The Mother and Father are often married, but don't need to be - they don't even necessarily need to be the same sex as their title - although the Grandmother is always a woman.

Village Mothers are the leaders in all things pertaining to organization and justice in the tribe. It is they who settle disputes among villagers and who negotiate with other villages. They are the lawmakers and peacekeepers. The village Fathers - regardless of sex - are the leaders in all things pertaining to defense. They maintain the village's fighting cohort and investigate all threats. They do not have the power to make war on their own, but once the Mother orders that war be fought, the Father is the one who leads the fight.

The village Grandmother is a priestess of Mother Hazel and Father Oak, tending to all matters spiritual and ceremonial, making sacrifices, consulting auguries, presiding over rituals, healing both the body and the mind of her flock, and seeing to the burial of the dead.

[...]

Thanks henriquejr!

The Kickstarter page for The Bard's Tale IV brings us news on the new studio in New Orleans a short pre-production update and news that The Bard's Tale classic trilogy is now available to backers (in emulated form only at the time).

During the initial Kickstarter campaign we were happy to announce the re-release of our Bard's Tale Classic Trilogy of games to our backers, coming in both emulated and remastered forms. We have now made the emulated version available to all applicable backers – if you're getting The Bard's Tale IV in any form with your pledge, that's you!

This release contains the original DOS versions running in DOSBox, and includes a custom launcher to make playing the games easy. Through the launcher, you can also do things like change graphics filtering to fit your perfect definition of "nostalgia", and transfer characters between the games without the hassle of swapping floppies.

To download it, visit your Rewards page after logging into your backer account, and look for the "Downloads" button on your specific reward that includes the Classic Trilogy. And if you haven't yet, now's a great time to register for your Bard's Tale IV backer account so that you will be able to access more rewards as they become available.

Speaking of rewards, Old Skuul and Rebecca Heineman are still hard at work on getting the remastered version of the classic Bard's Tale games available. We will let you know when we are ready to share them with you, but so far they are going well as we've shown in previous updates, with many new features taking shape, including updated music.

If you are a Bards Tale 4 backer you can register and manage your Kickstarter goodies now - from the Kickstarter page:

Backer Site is Now Live!

Hello Exiles,

As we mentioned in our last update, one of our big tasks after the Kickstarter wrapped up was getting a backer site together so you guys could register, provide us with your information and claim some of your bonus rewards and goodies for your generous support during the Bard's Tale IV Kickstarter campaign. Good news: the backer site is ready for you right now!

Sign Up & Get Your Goodies!

So how do you get your hands on your backer bonus rewards? You will need to create an account on the backer web site, although if you already have a Torment account, you can use that on the Bard's Tale site as well (Ranger Center accounts for Wasteland 2 don't carry over).

When creating your account, please be aware that we link your pledges up based on your email address. For those of you who sign up under one email and used a different email to pledge, or may have changed your email address since pledging, remember that you can visit the Email Addresses page on your account to add any secondary emails. These will get linked to your account along with any rewards and pledges made under them.

If you have any further questions on our backer web site works, you can consult our backer site FAQ and help section.

Once you've signed up, you will be able to claim any available bonus rewards you qualify for (including the first 48 hour games and the inXile Loyalty Rewards bonus) by clicking the "Bonus" tab near the top of the Rewards page.

For more information on the bonus rewards and promotions available, and how to claim them, please refer to this page.

Please note that while Wasteland 2, The Witcher and The Witcher 2 bonuses are available for applicable backers, unreleased games such as Torment: Tides of Numenera and the emulated and remastered version of The Bard's Tale Classic Trilogy are not ready yet. But, once they are, you won't have to wait until the release of The Bard's Tale IV to get them.

More generally, you can check our Reward Status page for a look at when many of our rewards will be made available to you; this will be kept up to date as we have more information to share.

A Word on Points

Many of you will be familiar with our Torment backer web site, which uses a points system to display pledges. This has not changed for The Bard's Tale IV. When you sign up, your Kickstarter pledge will automatically be converted into XP (inXile Points). We treat this as 1 cent equaling 1 inXile Point, so, for example, a $20 pledge would give you 2,000 XP.

You can still view your full records on the Pledge History page if you want to see it listed in USD instead. For a bigger breakdown of the pledge system and how it works, you can check here.

Remastered Trilogy Progress

Some of you who have been following Rebecca Heineman closely will have seen her posting a few screenshots on social media. These versions, as you might recall, will be native ports rather than run in an emulator, and will be based on the Apple IIgs versions of the games, with a few enhancements and improvements.

One in particular Becky has added is a new automap mode which has been brought into all of the games, as well as a redrawn interface. We think it's looking sharp!

Odds and Ends

Finally, we mentioned our official news system near the top of this update. We will be using it to post news and updates in the future, very similar to how we already used social media such as Facebook and Tumblr. This gives us a way to put all our latest news in one spot, though obviously we will continue to use social media and Kickstarter updates too.

Of course, as we move forward with development we will begin posting more information on the game itself. We know many of you are hungry for more, but as we continue to hammer out the game's details in pre-production, remember that it may take a while yet before we can start pulling back the curtain. We will be sure to provide you with news and information as things begin to solidify in the coming weeks and months!

Thanks,
Eric Schwarz - Line Producer

Today Rebecca Heinemann confirmed an automap feature for the original Bard's Tale trilogy.
The remake will be released together with Bard's Tale IV.

Green Man Gaming and Brian Fargo talking about Kickstarter, immersion, and free-form exploration:

[...]

You guys are Kickstarter veterans now, and great success stories. What's been the key to nailing that balance on the crowdfunding platform?

We certainly have some advantages of being in the games business for so long. Crowdfunding is the ultimate test of trust when people give you their very hard earned money up front and count on you to come through with them. We've also struck a nerve for a certain kind of game/genre that was perhaps underserved and that gamers wanted to see more of. The goodwill we try to foster goes way beyond the Kickstarter campaign.

The Bard's Tale is back! It's a series that introduced many to the RPG genre, what's the plan for this 4th instalment?

This kind of RPG was eventually called a "dungeon crawl" and it's one of my favorite types of games. I grew up playing them and I hope to grow old doing so. There is a simplicity to the exploring that draws me in and when combat starts it becomes tactical but not so much like a strategy game. The closest analogy I can use for today's game is Hearthstone in which you make all of your decisions first and then the other side get its attempt to strike back.

You've spoken a lot about immersion being key to The Bard's Tale IV, could you elaborate on that point?

Immersion or suspension of disbelief is the hallmark of good entertainment to me. When a film is great you forget you are in a theater and when a game is great I don't realize I'm looking at a monitor anymore. This feeling comes about when the visuals, audio and interface come together perfectly. I think a dungeon crawl type RPG is perfect in its simplicity of movement, you don't need to fight with the camera and your focus on wholly on the world when exploring. Walking around a mystical torchlight dungeon and listening for audio cues about traps and enemy movement is a grand time to me.

The dungeon-crawling genre is pretty packed these days. How will The Bard's Tale IV stand out from the crowd besides is storied history and series acclaim?

I'm not sure I would consider the genre packed but there is certainly some choice in the category. We have a major focus on what the latest technology can offer making the visuals a key component of the experience. We are making sure to utilize the latest in particle physics, photogrammetry, hair works, fabric modeling etc to make a game that looks as good as the demos you see from Nvidia or Unreal. A dungeon crawl has some unique aspects to it that allow us to push the hardware. I'm also feeling quite confident that our combat system will be both visceral and deep. And I might add that our musical approach with the Scottish talent and Mark Morgan will give it extra flair. I'm really about making the game.

Can you tell us a little more about The Bard's Tale IV's free-form exploration?

Freedom to go where you want, when you want is a key to RPGs for us and The Bard’s Tale IV will be no different. We don’t stop you from going where you want, but on the other hand we don’t protect you from that choice either. So don’t be surprised if an Ogre Brute comes up to you and smooshes your low-level party into the ground. There will also be some puzzles and challenges you can not yet pass at early levels so it won’t be free-form in the sense of a Skyrim, but neither will we guide you through linear corridors.

Wasteland 2 was a narrative-heavy, text-stuffed experience – will The Bard's Tale IV be more mechanically focused, and how will that feed into questing and combat systems?

Traditionally the dungeon crawl genre has been focused almost purely on the mechanics side, heavily focused on detailed character systems and challenging combat as well as devious dungeons. We’re maintaining a lot of that so yes, the game will be heavily focused on combat and exploration, but we’re also believers in telling a great story so the Bard’s Tale IV will be more story-heavy than its predecessors, though not as story-heavy as Wasteland 2 or Torment.

In terms of the game's story, will The Bard's Tale IV directly follow on from the previous games? Where do we pick things up in this game?

Yes, The Bard’s Tale IV is a direct follow-up. It is one hundred and fifty years after the destruction of Skara Brae, and a new town has been built on top of the old. The practice of magic is a sin and the old races have been banished, and even the Adventurer’s Guild closed by the Church of the Sword Father. But adventurers still gather in the dungeons beneat Skara Brae, the old city, seeking to survive in a land that now wants them dead.

Reconciling past and present is often a question raised with longstanding series such as TBT, but as Brian's mentioned in previous interviews, you're playing modern games all the time. Is there almost too much choice in determining how to modernise a game such as this, and how do go about reconciling nostalgic experiences that come with decade-old franchises like this with the need to cater to new players and potential fans?

There are definitely a lot of choices but I don’t think you can often have too much choice. The important thing is realizing what the core of the experience that people loved was and then unapologetically embracing it. We don’t really want to cater to anyone other than the hardcore RPG fans that continue to back us on Kickstarter, and that allows us to craft games that take advantage of modern technology and design ideas without ruining what makes these kind of games great.

What's the most awesome thing about The Bard's Tale IV?

It’s a bit too early to say what my favorite part of the game is, you really need to see a game come together to discover what those moments are where you truly struck gold. Personally what I’m most excited about now is getting the combat system in, we have some great ideas to make encounters a real experience both visually and strategically.

Peanut butter or Nutella?

Since my favorite crepe is banana and Nutella.. I must choose Nutella.

Charles Husemann (Gaming Nexus) has interviewed Brian Fargo about Bard's Tale IV:

For a lot of old school gamers the Bard's Tale series holds a special place in their heart.  Either for it's twist on the dungeon crawling genre or the fantastic writing. Well the series is getting a remake thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign so we reached out to inXile and were able to get a few questions answered by Brian Fargo, the company's CEO and a legend in the gaming industry.

What are your favorite memories from the original Bard’s Tale games?
Having worked on each of these games myself my perspective tends to be a little different. I mostly look at it in what we were trying to accomplish and how well we did at that. No one at that time thought we could make a game that could rank up there with the biggest titles of the day, and yet we did, by pushing graphics as far as they could go and introducing innovations like the eponymous bard class and evolving magic user classes. But when it comes to favorite memories, nothing can beat facing death in the form of 99 Berserkers, 99 Berserkers, 99 Berserkers and 99 Berserkers.

What differentiates the Bard's Tales franchise from the other RPG’s on the market?
The first-person dungeon crawl with deep phase-based combat has not been a genre that we have seen a lot of in the last years, that alone makes us stand out. Our goal with The Bard’s Tale IV beyond offering a more intuitive, smoother but still challenging and deep gameplay experience is to make it a graphical leap forward for the genre, much as the originals were, while introducing some innovations into combat and the way the world’s puzzles work. [...]

Congrats for InXile - we will see a new Bard's Tale in 2017! TechRaptor on the successful Kickstarter:

InXile Entertainment’s The Bard’s Tale IV Kickstarter has come to a close and has been successfully funded, ensuring that the classic RPG franchise gets it’s first official sequel in almost thirty years.  Yes, there was a Bard’s Tale title originally released in 2004 on PS2 and Xbox, that had also been developed by InXile.  That, however, was not an official sequel in the franchise, and presented a more humorous, light-hearted tone with more action-focused gameplay that set it apart from it’s more traditional dungeon crawling predecessors, which were explained in detail in Robert Grosso’s recent retrospective of The Bard’s Tale series.

The Bard’s Tale IV managed to rake in just above $1.5 million.  While not exactly a paltry amount, this is a considerably smaller sum compared to the $3 million that Wasteland 2 brought in after factoring PayPal donations, along with the massive $4.1 million haul ($4.4 million after Paypal factored in) of Torment: Tides of Numenera, at the time the largest Kickstarter funding in history, which is scheduled for release in December of this year after significant delays.  However, like with Wasteland 2, InXile has promised to match the Kickstarter initial goal funding, as well as dedicate revenue from the sales of their other games to ensure that the game has a workable and realistic budget to deliver on their promises.

Despite the smaller haul, The Bard’s Tale IV campaign did manage to pass through a few stretch goals, which will add more complex NPC and crafting systems, as well as bring a few additional designers on board to create more dungeons for the game.  The Bard’s Tale IV estimates a delivery date of October 2017, giving it another 2+ years of development time to be worked on.  Slacker Backer donations are still open through Paypal, and the possibility remains that they might meet additional stretch goals through that. [...]

The Kickstarter campaign for The Bard's Tale IV is in its final hours, with just 14 hours to go at this point in time.

Including the Paypal donations, the 1.5 million stretch goal has been reached, but the stretch goal for having MCA designing anything in the game (1.9 million) appears to be out of reach.

Forgot to mention this video, which shows all the wonderful things you can get by pledging in the The Bard's Tale IV Kickstarter.

There are just 62 hours left, at the moment of this writing, for the The Bards Tale IV kickstarter, so it is time for a new update.

First off a behind-the-scenes video was made showing what went into the making off the in-engine gameplaying demo.

If anyone is near Beachport California, you can go totheir Kickstarter wrap event.

Our Kickstarter is ending this Friday, so just 3 days to go! As always, we want to end with a bang!

We will be having a Kickstarter wrap event in Newport Beach this Friday, between 4 PM and 9 PM PST. If you are in the Newport Beach, California area and would like to attend, we have reserved some openings exclusively for Bard’s Tale IV Kickstarter backers. The spots are limited and it will be first come first served, so respond quickly!

If you wish to attend, let us know at support@inxile.net or using our support form, and we’ll get you more information on the location.

But we won't be keeping all the fun to backers who can attend personally. During the same event, we'll also be running a Twitch stream hosted by renowned Twitch streamer Quill18! You will not want to miss it!

You can check in on the festivities during our Final Day Stream which kicks off at about 4 PM to 6 PM PST, by watching on Quill’s channel or hosted through our own channel. We will make it available on our YouTube channel afterwards.

Also, don’t forget Brian’s Creator Hangout with Kickstarter is tomorrow. We'd love to see you there and you’re more than welcome to join us!

And they also have the option to pay with Paypal.

In her first ever Twitch broadcast (now on YouTube) Rebecca Heineman talks about the upcoming The Bard's Tale trilogy conversion based on her old Apple II GS versions.

Rebecca gets the video up to speed right away by explaining why Bard's Tale IV had to become Dragon Wars and by unboxing her old tuned Apple 2 from way back then.

The final week of The Bard's Tale IV Kickstarter has begun. Brian Fargo wants to turn up the heat - Kickstarter Update #17:

Final Week! Campaign Recap

Hello Exiles!

It’s time for our final week! As you may know we’ve run a few Kickstarters before and we’ve always found the final week to be one of the craziest, most exciting ones. The hours tick down and everyone is excited to see what our final amount will be, and we’ve always seen our fans come through to kick us into over-drive for this final week and we hope that’ll be the case again!

We have quite a few things to share this week, but today we wanted to recap our Kickstarter so far and talk about what you’re all getting for supporting us. Before we jump into that, I have a new concept piece to share with you.

This is a 3D model of one of the enemies you will run into in the game, the huge and dangerous Ogre Brute. We did not use this particular model in our video, but crafted it very early in our prototyping stages, as a test of what we want to do stylistically and graphically. When you see this hulking monstrosity come down the corridor towards you, will you stand and fight, or flee?

Tier Changes

We looked at some of our tiers and decided to tweak our some tiers a bit, all to your benefit of course.

$400 will now also come with the Collector’s Album Box, making it a great collectables tier if the Reliquary is outside of your price range!

We’ve decided to cut the price of The Puzzle Master tier by 50%! It is now $750. We really want to see some of the nifty and creative ideas our backers could come up with, and would love to have you jump on board for this tier!

Kickstarter Creator Hangout

Recently, Kickstarter contacted us and asked if I would like to attend a hangout session that they're running. Called "Creator Hangouts", they're an opportunity for the Kickstarter community and our own fans to ask questions about crowdfunding, our games, our campaign, and more. As someone who loves the concept of crowdfunding, how could I say no?

To check out the full details on the Hangout session, you can find the event on Facebook here. The event is on July 8th, 2015, at 1 PM Eastern time. Check it out, and I hope to see you there!

[...]

The Bard's Tale IV Kickstarter has reached the 1.4M goal:

Monte Cook Adds His Voice To The Song!

Happy 4th of July weekend for all our American backers. In the US, this weekend is about family and celebration and we’ll use it to recharge our batteries before our final week, but before we check out we wanted to give you one final quick update.

The biggest news as of yesterday: The first of our stretch goals to put together the ultimate RPG super team has been hit, and Numenera creator Monte Cook is joining The Bard's Tale IV!

This Kickstarter update for The Bard's Tale IV teaches us that the part size has been increased to six.

First off, we have read your arguments regarding expanding the party, and heard you! So we have decided to expand the player party size to six, one of which will be a companion NPC. Additionally, you will have summoned creatures and the like to aid you, which will not count against your party cap. Currently, our plan is to allow you to summon as many additional creatures as there are available grid slots.

There is this on classes.

As discussed in a previous update, we're bringing back a lot of the classes and races from the original trilogy, with your options expanding to ten character classes and over seven unique races. Furthermore, we're also planning on expanding the class evolution concept from the classic games' classes to cover all of our character classes – leading to huge amounts of depth and customization. You'll be able to further define, specialize and tinker with your character as he or she reaches certain levels, choosing groups of unlocked spells, abilities and talents in order to best suit your needs or party make-up. We'll have more precise details to share on this in a future update.

There is a touch point document covering what the current vision on the game is, which has this scope:

• Over thirty beautiful levels to explore.
• Locations including Skara Brae and the catacombs beneath it, towns such as Torr Fion and Fettercairn, wildernesses, castles, ruined temples and lost cities, as well as the legendary realms of the Elves, Dwarves and Trow.
• Over a hundred different enemy types, including dozens from the original trilogy, as well as dozens of new creatures based on ancient Scottish, Orcadian, and Pict mythology. All-new enemy factions will oppose you: the Fecti, the Einaar, the Lestradae, and the Fatherites. We'll speak more on this lore in future updates!
• Hundreds of usable items, many of which can be used in our crafting system to create consumables and special items.
• Hundreds of unique weapons and armor to find; most can be enhanced through crafting, and many will be physically manipulated as a 3D model/puzzle to become more powerful.
• Dozens of powerful magic spells, including some that allow the user to summon creatures to fight by their side.

And there is some details on the poem that is sung in the in-engine video and that they have teamed up with the Xounts sound system.

As some have guessed, the participation of Chris Avellone to design a dungeon is now a stretchgoal for The Bard's Tale IV. In this case a stretch goal at $1.9 million dollars. In addition Colin McComb will join the team to design a dungeon at $1.7 million.

Some exciting news today. You asked for him, now help us get him, the one and only Chris Avellone!!

If you’re not familiar with Chris, he and I go back together to the mid-90s when he worked on the legendary cRPGs Planescape: Torment (as Lead Designer) and Fallout 2. Afterwards he co-founded Obsidian Entertainment and was the Creative Director. There he worked on many of their games, including being the Lead Designer of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and a senior designer on Fallout: New Vegas. We have very successfully worked with him before on Wasteland 2 and Torment: Tides of Numenera, a co-operation that is still ongoing to the joy of both parties!

Chris’ involvement will be locked in the moment we pass the $1.9 million mark on the Kickstarter, where he’ll be designing the Cairn of Horrors, an all new dungeon built from the worst things that live in the imagination of Chris Avellone. The Cairn has one purpose, and that purpose is to kill you. Here’s what Chris had to say:

"I owe my career to seeing Bard's Tale II on a Commodore 64 at a friend's house. When I saw the streets of Skara Brae up and running (gasp - in simulated 3D! And in color!), I suddenly realized I didn't have to be the game master all the time in order to get my RPG fix, there was finally someone out there who had done the formidable job of creating a digital dungeon master for RPG aficionados with the same amount of lazy players as I had. So I have Brian Fargo to thank three times - first for the game itself (and all the Interplay RPGs I played to follow, including Bard's Tale I, Bard's Tale III, and Wasteland), second, for hiring me at Interplay, and third, for asking me to be a part of Bard's Tale IV - with your support, I hope we can make it happen!"

Additionally, at that funding level we’ll also make representations of your characters in your inventory screen and you’ll be able to see the gear, clothing and equipment they’re wearing, rather than a paper doll.

Along with Chris, we’re also bringing back the second Designer of Planescape: Torment and Creative Lead of Torment: Tides of Numenera, the inestimable Colin McComb! He will join our team at $1.7 million, designing a dungeon set in the Realm of the Elves, because we all know no one has mastered the craft of the Elves as Colin has. 

And there is news of a new wilderness area, the Wilds of Lestras.

The Bard's Tale IV Kickstarter achieved the stretch goal Advanced Crafting and in update #12 a mysterious person is announced for next week...

Kickstarter update #11 for the Bards Tale IV - some snippets:

In combat, The Bard’s Tale IV will have a similar feel to first-person phase-based combat games going all the way back to The Bard’s Tale I all the way up to Might & Magic X – Legacy. While we can draw a connection to the combat of those games, we’re going to heavily improve on many aspects of that style of combat system. One example of this is by decoupling the animations from the inputs. Once you’ve learned your characters, it will allow you to play at a quicker pace, without having to wait for the same 5 second fireball animation to finish before you can make your next move. We’ll have more to say on combat in future updates.

(...)

Each class has a unique function within the party, though that comes with some flexibility depending on the class. Some, like Warrior, Monk or Paladin, are best taking the direct approach, jumping straight into the fray, but their particular role in that position is unique for each. Warriors can use just about any weapons or armor and do very well taking and dealing as much damage as possible. Monks will embrace a bit of a unique combat concept, where they will continue to get stronger as fights or even dungeon exploration progresses, making them more powerful the more you push on (incidentally discouraging rest spamming!). Finally Paladins (with requisite +1 Holy Sword) serve as your faithful shield, protecting the party and providing various status modifiers to your party or enemies. It will be fun to explore more of these concepts with you moving forward.

(...)

The original Bard’s Tale games also let you pick a race for your characters, a system we plan to return and expand upon. Your race choice will be represented in gameplay modifiers, though we intend to do so in a way that avoids forcing you towards a set of particular race/class combos.

One of those expansions will be that the races you pick will have an influence in certain spots in the game, with NPCs reacting to the presence of a Trow in your group in certain, perhaps not always favorable ways. Some options may open or close to you depending on who you have in your party. As you know, we're huge fans of reactivity in our games, and that's one way we can use the character system to add more depth.

Speaking of the Trow, we’re looking to make some new additions to the roster of races based on the specific lore of The Bard’s Tale IV. The Trow is one such example of a mythological creature from Orkney Island folkloric tradition that we’re making available as a playable race.

As you may be able to tell from all the above, we’re not looking to make The Bard’s Tale IV a simpler game than its predecessors. We’ll have clever ways to introduce you to the game’s systems and ease into it for newer players, but if you are the type who loves building a full roster of heroes, carefully going over the options and considering your possibilities and spending hours to craft your perfect party, then The Bard’s Tale IV is very much the game for you!

(...)

The first stretch goal for The Bard's Tale IV has been unlocked, which means two more companion NPCs are added to the game and enhancing all companions with unique personalities, backstories and the ability to open up additional side content and reactivity.

Also a stretch goal at 1.5 Million dollars is added, which adds three new designers who will design one dungeon each.

First up, we have Sean K Reynolds (the right head), a veteran tabletop game designer who many of you may have heard of. Sean was born in in southern California. A resident of Seattle off and on for the past 18 years, he has designed for TSR, Wizards of the Coast, Paizo, and other publishers, working on tabletop RPGs for D&D, Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Birthright, Ravenloft, and Pathfinder.

Next, we have Wolfgang Baur (the left head), who, among other things, is author of the award-winning Kobold Guides to Game Design, and has created dozens of tabletop adventures and sourcebooks including Hoard of the Dragon Queen (with Steve Winter), Dark*Matter (with Monte Cook), Kingdom of the Ghouls, Fortress of the Stone Giants, Herald of the Ivory Labyrinth, and Courts of the Shadow Fey. He also did foundational work on the Planescape and Al-Qadim settings for Dungeons & Dragons, and is the creator and keeper of the flame for the Midgard Campaign Setting and the upcoming Southlands Campaign Setting, and has contributed monsters to both D&D and Pathfinder.

Third, Bruce Cordell (the middle head), an award-winning game designer working at Monte Cook Games, writing for The Strange and Numenera RPGs, both launched via wildly successful Kickstarters. Prior to that, Bruce worked on Dungeons & Dragons over the course of 4 editions as a writer and developer, writing over 100 D&D products, including the Expanded Psionics Handbook, Gates of Firestorm Peak, Return to the Tomb of Horrors, Expedition to Castle Ravenloft, Gamma World, and the Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide. He is also a novelist, and has penned many books for the Forgotten Realms setting, including the Abolethic trilogy.

Next to that is the information about the InXile loyalty program and the achievements on social media.

You can now get even more free games by backing The Bard's Tale IV kickstarter no later than June 26. Here is the press info:

The Bard's Tale IV Kickstarter Promotion Brings FREE Ultima Underworld Games, Bonus Rewards to Backers

Newport Beach, CA - Backers of The Bard's Tale IV have even more to look forward to! inXile Entertainment announced today that as part of the new inXile Loyalty Rewards promotion, all returning Torment: Tides of Numenera or Wasteland 2 backers who also back The Bard's Tale IV no later than June 26th, 12:00 AM PST, will receive a selection of exclusive gifts as additional thanks for their generous support.

Any returning backer will receive a choice of special bonus rewards valued at up to $15. These bonuses include Digital Novella Compilations, Digital Soundtracks, Digital Concept Art Books, and more!

Additionally, all returning The Bard's Tale IV Kickstarter backers at the $33 reward tier and above will receive both Ultima Underworld 1 & 2 FREE with their pledges, redeemable on GOG.com at the conclusion of The Bard's Tale IV Kickstarter campaign. This special offer comes thanks to a partnership with Otherside Entertainment, which launched its own dungeon crawler Kickstarter campaign, Underworld Ascendant, to great success and acclaim in early 2015.

Both inXile Loyalty Rewards promotion offers run to 12:00 AM PST on June 26th, 2015, and are retroactive for previous backers. Full details can be found at this page: http://thebardstalerpg.tumblr.com/inxile-loyalty-rewards

This bonus offer comes in addition to other free extras previously offered, including the recently announced re-release of The Bard's Tale I-III Trilogy for all backers $20 and above, regardless of whether they backed previous inXile games.

The Bard's Tale IV campaign is currently fully funded thanks to nearly 30,000 backers, and is headed towards unlocking its stretch goals. Featuring an expanded companion system, crafting system, a dungeon created by legendary RPG designer Monte Cook, and more to come, inXile hopes to make The Bard's Tale IV a truly epic sized experience.

"Once again the RPG fans have come through and supported our efforts to bring our unique style of RPG to the market." said CEO Brian Fargo. "We are honored by their trust and support. Our games would not exist without our fans and for that we thank them."

More details can be found here.

In this update for The Bard's Tale IV we learn that Monte Cook will join the team at the $1.4 milion stretch goal.

Monte will be taking charge of the design for one of our dungeons with your support. We look forward to working with him to deliver some mind-bending designs!

Furthermore there is this song from Mark Morgan.

And there is some information on the lore.

In a hundred and fifty years even the bravest deeds become nothing more than bard's tales. Most people today in Skara Brae don’t believe Mangar, Lagoth Zanta, Tarjan, or the brave adventurers who defeated them and their horrors were ever more than legends - and those that do still believe keep silent.

Ever since the Church of the Sword Father civilized the land of Caith and chased out the heathen a hundred years ago, the new Skara Brae, built on top of its ruined predecessor, has become a god-fearing town, where it is dangerous to admit to harboring such superstitious notions or knowing anything of the old ways.

Which is unfortunate, because it's starting to look like the trolls and bloodfiends and hobgoblins from all those fairy stories have returned. Terrible things have been happening in Skara Brae - people slaughtered in their beds by unseen beasts, holy sites desecrated, folk disappearing between field and home, statues of the Mad God found in bloodstained back alleys, and the Song of the Maiden heard again for the first time in a generation. And worse, the people most equipped to deal with these old threats have been made outlaws.

Brian Speaks on Saves and More, PayPal Pledging Open, Social Media Achievements

So in case you missed the big news: we fully funded over the weekend, and we couldn’t be happier! You guys have been awesome, helping spread the word and giving us great feedback on both the campaign and the game every step of the way. And on that note, we know you've had some additional questions on The Bard's Tale IV's design. As before, Brian is here to answer! This time, he tackles the hot topics of save games, grid-based vs. free movement, and more!

PayPal Pledging Open

Now that we’re fully funded on Kickstarter, we’ve opened a page where you can pledge using PayPal. Simply select your desired reward tier from the dropdown menu, select your shipping region if applicable, and then click the reward tier image that appears. You can check our reward matrix on Tumblr for a full overview of all the reward tiers.

Social Media Achievements

Ever since we introduced them last week, you guys have been knocking it out of the park on our social media achievements. As of right now 11 achievements have already been unlocked, with number 12 tantalizingly close! And remember that you can check out the full Enclave of the Fairy Host dungeon story right here!

Congratulations inXile - The Bard's Tale IV is funded!

For Auld Lang Syne! The Bard's Tale IV is funded!

These are always my favorite updates... we did it!

Nearly 30,000 of you have put your belief in us once more, and we are forever grateful. You've heard me wax poetic on the subject of crowdfunding enough, but truly we would not be able to make these games without your support every step of the way. Your social media love you have given over the course of the campaign has been invaluable, and your continued support will let us make The Bard's Tale IV bigger and better than ever.

But for now let's just enjoy the moment of reaching our goal!

The Bard is back!

Brian Fargo
Leader inXile

Martyn McLaughlin (The Scotsman) likes the way the Bard's Tale series is bringing Scotsland's most historic sites to life for a new generation:

An eagerly anticipated computer game will allow players to explore a fantasy version of Skara Brae, one of the world’s best preserved Neolithic settlements.

While the prehistoric village has inspired generations of artists and filmmakers, the new game will seek to bring the Orkney site back to life as a bustling town.

The upcoming title, The Bard’s Tale IV, will use cutting edge photogrammetry technology to recreate Skara Brae’s features, while a degree of artistic license will imagine vast, dangerous catacombs below.

Those behind the venture say they hope to celebrate Orcadian folklore and Scottish culture in the game. Already they have hired the celebrated singer Julie Fowlis to play a part in the production.

The title is the long awaited sequel to one of gaming’s best loved role playing series. Originally released in 1985, the inaugural Bard’s Tale was a critical and commercial success thanks to its 3D style graphics and gripping fantasy narrative. However, since the release of the last sequel in 1988, the franchise has lain dormant.

Although the Skara Brae that will feature in the game is not an exact replica of the one on Orkney’s Bay of Skaill – its narrow passageways are peppered with various traps and monsters that must be overcome – Brian Fargo, the chief executive of InXile, said the history of the settlement and Scotland as a whole would form an integral part of the game. He and his team have already visited Orkney and other locations to take photographs to convert into 3D objects that appear in-game.

“One of the important aspects of The Bard’s Tale IV is its connection with Scottish heritage. It is very much based on Scottish culture and specifically the Orkney folklore.

“In both its music and visuals, it draws heavily from many elements of Scottish culture. We plan to integrate Scottish architecture in the look of Skara Brae and the game’s dungeons and wilderness. (...)

Communication media expert Brian Fargo pulls out all the stops for the Bard's Tale IV Kickstarter:

We have less than $60K still to go to be fully funded! You all have helped us craft our vision of The Bard’s Tale IV and very soon, it will officially be a reality. As we get closer to E3, we’re going to be facing an uphill battle of getting the word out about the game. Gaming press will be covering the E3 announcements and The Bard’s Tale could get drowned out. This is where we need your help!!!

During the next few weeks, anything you can do to help spread info on our game will be paramount to our success. We have seen over the last few years the impact of our passionate fans and have no doubt that if you kick it into overdrive, it will be a massive boost to the project we all love. So share our videos, talk about it on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, forums, or anywhere else you think there might be interest. If every backer got a single other person to join the team, we would be breaking records. So without further ado….Release the Kraken!!!

Calling All Adventurers

Let’s dust off those chairs in the Adventurer’s Guild and start exploring! We thought we’d do something fun, encouraging you to spread the word and giving you cool stuff to unlock by doing – including some bonus rewards as a thank-you to our backers! As we reach the milestones shared below, a story will unfold detailing our collective journey through the Enclave of the Fairy Host. Each time we complete an achievement, a new piece of story will appear, detailing the struggles and triumphs of the excursion. Along the way, we might even have some interactive decisions that will modify where we go. So here is what you can do to aid in our quest…

• Facebook Likes: like The Bard’s Tale IV on Facebook and get your Facebook friends to do the same!
• Twitter Followers: follow @Brianfargo on Twitter and encourage others to do the same!
• Tumblr Followers: follow our brand new Tumblr page and reblog our posts to spread the word!
• YouTube Subscriptions: subscribe to inXile’s youtube page and spread the word!
• YouTube Video Views: spread the word on our in-engine video everywhere to rack up those views!
• Retweet Brian’s Message: retweet this tweet and encourage others to do the same!
• The Bard’s Tale Fan Art: send us your fan art drawing or sketch through a Kickstarter message or Facebook post/message.
• A Bardic Song: record video or audio of you performing a bardic song, upload to YouTube or elsewhere and send us the link through a Kickstarter message or Facebook post/message.
• Kilt Photos: take a photo of yourself or a group of people in a kilt with a sign that says #BardsTale4 and send it to us through a Kickstarter message or Facebook post/message.

Kickstarter update #5: Rebecca Heinemann helps Brian Fargo!

The Original Trilogy Coming FREE

Exciting news today: every backer of The Bard’s Tale IV ($20 or more) will get free digital copies of the original The Bard’s Tale, The Bard’s Tale II: The Destiny Knight and The Bard’s Tale III: Thief of Fate!

Even before we launched the Kickstarter, we were constantly asked "can you do a re-release of the original The Bard’s Tale trilogy" and we heard you. We have been hard at work behind the scenes looking at ways to make it happen! The first step was getting Electronic Arts to sign on as they own the publishing rights to the old games, having originally brought them to the market in the mid-80s. EA very graciously had no objections at all, a big thanks to them for their help in making this giveaway happen.

The emulated versions of the classic games will be released for free at the end of the campaign for every backer at $20 or higher, and distributed through our backer web site. This is our way of giving our thanks back to you for all your support and helping us bring back The Bard's Tale.

Some of you may know that the emulated versions of these games work on most modern machines, but are a little rough around the edges. Thus, we have an agreement with the original The Bard’s Tale III programmer Rebecca "Burger" Heineman and her company Olde Sküül to update the games for modern machines! She will be working to make the games run natively, without needing emulators, on PC or Mac. This re-releases will be primarily based on the Apple IIGS versions of the games, along with updated art.

We’ll get you the emulated versions of the trilogy as soon as the Kickstarter ends and our backer site is up. 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!

Of course, playing the originals will not be necessary to follow the story of The Bard’s Tale IV, but we hope you’ll jump on the opportunity to experience them as thousands of fans did back in the day!

Deluxe Double Album Soundtrack and Add-Ons!

We've been looking at our plans for the soundtrack and realized that with multiple musicians working on this (including the very talented Julie Fowlis who you heard in the in-engine video) we're simply going to have too many songs to put on one CD. So we're expanding the soundtrack to a Deluxe Double Album!

If your tier already contains the soundtrack (that is tiers $50, $70 and $95 and up), whether digital or physical, you are now upgraded to the Deluxe Double Album! Physical tiers receive two CDs and digital tiers receive both albums digitally.

New Tiers

We have rolled out new reward tiers for you guys to choose from. First up, we have the $33 Guide to Skara Brae tier that includes the Digital Guidebook and Digital Artbook, and by popular demand, we have brought back the Supreme Box Collector tier at $675 for those who want to fill out their shelves!

The Kickstarter for The Bard's Tale IV has passed the 1.1 million mark and is trotting onwards to the 1.25 million Kickstarter goal. Over the weekend Brian Fargo spent some time answering questions.

And the first stretch goal has been announced.

Another question was regarding stretch goals. Where are they? We certainly have a number planned and ready but it just doesn’t feel right to put them out before we know we’re going to fund. Now that we’re comfortably heading to being fully funded we can no longer resist sending the first of these your way!

At $1.3 million, we will add an enhanced companion NPC system and add 2 more CNPCs, including Lioslaith the Shadow, a legendary Spear Daughter of the matriarchical Fichti people, the dark haired, woad-painted nature worshippers who live in the deep forests far to the northwest of Skara Brae.

With this enhanced companion NPC system, all recruitable NPCs will have unique personalities and backstories which will open up interesting side content and add rich and surprising reactivity to your adventure. In addition, these CNPCs will voice their thoughts and asides, giving their take on the people, places and events that you encounter as your party moves through the world. No two CNPCs are alike and they carry their own reputations with them. While they can add some additional firepower to your party, some might even get you into more trouble than you were expecting…

Bard's Tale IV already has a video out showing off the game's engine and art style. Very pretty, and seems much freer in its movement than other recent grid-based games like Grimrock and MMX. But need we fear a downgrade?

Update:

Here is the corresponding Kickstarter information:

We finally put the finishing touches on the video for The Bard’s Tale IV In-Engine Video. The biggest question we get is how we plan to bring the genre forward, and this video should answer the question. Exploring in the world is a major part of the experience and we wanted to make use of the full screen and all that Unreal has to offer to make it as compelling as possible. Once combat starts, the combat shifts out of the first person mode. We are still debating the best ways to present combat as that is ultimately dictated by the final budget, but rest assured it will be party and turn/phase based.

The song you’re hearing was written and performed by multi-award winning Gaelic singer and multi-instrumentalist Julie Fowlis, who you may know from the two songs she contributed to Disney Pixar’s major motion picture, Brave. You may also know her from her own albums, too. Julie Fowlis grew up in a Gaelic-speaking community immersed in Scottish culture, and the songs she will contribute to The Bard’s Tale IV’s soundtrack will make the setting that much richer.

From Julie herself: "Éamon and I are delighted to have contributed music for the iconic game The Bard's Tale. For us, it has been a fascinating journey exploring and creating music, drawing from the depths of our ancient Scottish Gaelic tradition, and marrying it with the fantasy world of a renowned computer game, now 30 years old." We hope you enjoyed this first look at The Bard’s Tale IV!

The offer to get a free game (The Witcher, The Witcher 2, Wasteland 2) for pledgers to The Bard's Tale IV, has been extended with another 24 hours.

As we’re entering day 2, we’re still going strong! We had massive interest in our free game offer, and now our good friends at CD Projekt Red and GOG.com have graciously agreed to allow us to extend the offer for another 24 hours! Anyone who backs The Bard’s Tale IV on Kickstarter in the first 48 hours of the campaign will receive a FREE copy of inXile’s Wasteland 2, or CD Projekt Red's The Witcher, or The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. To be exact, this offer ends on June 4th, 6am PST. To be eligible for the free copy you have to back at the $20 reward tier or above.

Help us spread the word! Be sure to tell anyone you think might be interested in this deal and was on the fence about backing, as this will be the last chance to get your free game from us!

We’ve been getting a few questions, so to clarify: We’ll deliver your Steam or GOG.com key for Wasteland 2 or your DRM-Free GOG.com key for The Witcher or The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings after the Kickstarter campaign ends and all pledges are collected. Once the campaign is over, we'll have our backer web site ready to go, where we’ll distribute all our backer rewards, including your free game. With Kickstarter’s aid, we are able to track exactly when you first pledged, so if you pledged at $20 now but later on want to upgrade, don’t worry, we’ll still know you were a backer in our first 48 hours!

Twenty one hours later, the counter for The Bard's Tale Kickstarter is at 785K of the requested 1.250K and Brian Fargo shares some of the things that are coming to us in the near future.

Upcoming Prototype Footage!

We have some great surprises in store for you over the next month, the biggest of which is in engine footage for Bard's Tale IV. We're feverishly working to clean up a few more things, but it will be ready in the very near future. It's over 3 minutes long and should give you a good sense of what the world will feel like. I hope you are as impressed with it as I am, so look for it this week.

Tiers and Add-Ons

Our team is reading all of your comments and direct messages. Please keep them coming! We've seen a large demand for a tier that contains the Premier Collector's Edition as well as the Album style box, along with a few other goodies. For this reason, we added the $230 Tier, where you get both boxes as well as Alpha Access and all kinds of digital goodies. As well, we introduced our first Add-On, an extra digital copy of The Bard's Tale 4. This can be added on to any pledge of $20 or more. The details of which are on the bottom of the Kickstarter page.

Much More to Come!

This is just the beginning. Along with the video, we've got some great concept images and a few other surprises along the way that should please fans, both seasoned and new. We're so glad to have you along for the ride...

The Kickstarter for The Bard's Tale IV has started. A little of a half hour into the race and almost 10% of the amount asked has been covered already.

The Bard's Tale IV Launches on Kickstarter
inXile Entertainment and RPG Fans Go for Three-Peat on Kickstarter - Previously Funded Projects Include Game of the Year Winning Wasteland 2 and Upcoming Torment: Tides of Numenera

Newport Beach, CA - June 2, 2015 - 30 years ago, The Bard's Tale put Interplay on the map and launched Brian Fargo's long and storied career of crafting some of the most beloved cRPGs in gaming's history. Today, inXile entertainment needs your help to return to Skara Brae for the long-awaited dungeon-crawling sequel to the genre-defining Bard's Tale trilogy, and has launched a new Kickstarter campaign looking to raise $1.25 million to make The Bard's Tale IV happen, with plans to invest at least another $1.25 million from their own funds on top.

The Bard's Tale IV will feature labyrinths and dungeons chock-full of dangerous traps, puzzles, and challenges, as well as the winding streets of the city of Skara Brae and its outlying environments. Exploration will take place in the first-person dungeon crawler style of the original trilogy. With full rights to everything from the original games, the story of The Bard's Tale IV will center on a new Skara Brae built upon the ruins of the old, returning familiar gameplay concepts such as No-Magic Zones and Magic Mouths.

Utilizing the Unreal 4 engine, The Bard's Tale IV will also represent a graphical leap forward in the genre, immersing you in a highly detailed and lush world you'll want to map to its farthest reaches. The Bard's Tale IV enriches the setting from the original trilogy with Scottish culture, including a soundtrack inspired by Gaelic music.

inXile plans to use photogrammetry to create in-game 3D objects from photos of architecture, taken right in Scotland. With such detailed assets, The Bard's Tale IV will have intricate interactions, allowing for detailed physical puzzles in the game world, or while inspecting your own items in your inventory to find hidden compartments, latches, and more.

Of course, Skara Brae is not always a friendly place. The Bard's Tale IV will update the classic gameplay of the originals, featuring a dynamic phase based combat system. Combat will utilize the complex decision-making opportunities of traditional phase based combat, but with a constantly evolving enemy strategy and a pacing that keeps you on your toes.

Now in its 12^th year of business, inXile entertainment has fully embraced the crowdfunding model, having successfully funded Wasteland 2 and Torment: Tides of Numenera, releasing the first of those to fan and critical acclaim. With those previous successes, inXile will co-fund this game with their fans, matching the $1.25 million goal with their own money if it is met.

"It's been an amazing last 30 years and I feel so fortunate to continue in the games business for this long.", says Brian Fargo, CEO. "And it is only because of the incredible support our fans have given us that I'm still here today working on these great role playing games. After so many years, I couldn't be more excited to revive the classic Bard's Tale."

Check out the Kickstarter now!

About The Bard's Tale IV:

The original The Bard's Tale was a surprise hit in 1985, putting Interplay on the map and launching the career of Brian Fargo. Now, 30 years later, inXile has full access to the name and contents of the original The Bard's Tale, making it possible to make a true sequel to the originals, living up to the rich dungeon crawler heritage it helped build.

Tomorrow sees the Kickstarter for The Bard's Tale IV going life. If you pledge within 24 hours, you will get a free copy of Wasteland 2, The Witcher or The Witcher 2.

Back The Bard's Tale IV in the first 24 Hours
Receive FREE Copy of Wasteland 2, The Witcher or The Witcher 2

Newport Beach, CA - June 1, 2015 - With The Bard's Tale IV Kickstarter launching on June 2^nd, inXile Entertainment is proud to announce an unprecedented crowdfunding offer: anyone who backs The Bard's Tale IV on Kickstarter in the first 24 hours of the campaign will receive a FREE copy of inXile's Wasteland 2, CD Projekt's The Witcher, or The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. 

Released to widespread critical acclaim in September 2014, Wasteland 2 is the riveting sequel to 1988's Wasteland, the classic RPG and grandfather of post-apocalyptic gaming. Set in a devastated and harsh alternate reality, Wasteland 2's version of Arizona is rife with dangers and threats, and as a Desert Ranger, players will help bring peace to the highly reactive world through force, diplomacy and skill. Wasteland 2 was made possible by the generous contributions of over 70,000 backers. The PC version will receive a free Game of the Year Edition update significantly improving the game in late summer of this year. 

Based on the acclaimed novels by Andrzej Sapkowski, The Witcher and The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings were released for PC platforms in 2007 and 2011 to critical and commercial success, with The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings gathering over 50 rewards ranging from Best Graphics, to Best Story, to Game of the Year. Furthermore, CD Projekt has shown the kind of dedication to fans that fits the crowdfunding model as well, as it has previously released Enhanced Editions of both games as free updates. 

If you back The Bard's Tale IV in the first 24 hours at any reward tier from $20 upwards, you will receive a choice for a copy of Wasteland 2, The Witcher or The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings once your pledge is collected at the end of the Kickstarter. 

The Bard's Tale IV Kickstarter will launch on June 2^nd, 6 AM PST. inXile is looking to raise funds to revive the dungeon crawl, bringing you a single-player, party-based experience, rich with challenging dungeons filled with dynamic phase-based fights as well as devious puzzles and riddles. 

"This is our way to show our gratitude to those who continue to support us," says Brian Fargo, inXile CEO. "We're also very happy to be working with our friends at CD Projekt, who have shown they understand the right way to treat your fans!"  

Wasteland 2 copies available for Steam or GOG.com. The Witcher and The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings copies available for GOG.com

The Rampant Coyote shares his thoughts and opinions on the announcement of The Bards Tale IV going to Kickstarter and into development.

It was a reasonably big deal for me. I was still waiting for a port of the Wizardry series for my Commodore 64, and instead here comes what was arguably its successor, sporting much better graphics, animated enemy portraits… wow! As a result, when Wizardry finally made it to the C-64, it was kind of a non-event for me. I was too busy playing Bard’s Tale 1 and 2, or Ultima IV.

Although – I never played The Bard’s Tale III. So jumping straight to IV? I guess I’ll risk it. I’m not positive I really want to play the third one. I did play The Bard’s Tale Construction Set (even made a complete dungeon!), and I remember reading a Bard’s Tale book written (or co-written) by Mercedes Lacky. Sorry, I couldn’t tell you if it was any good or not. It has been a long time.

All I can say is… this looks right up my alley. Speaking as a guy who is involved (on a MUCH lower budget) in this modern revival of classic old-time CRPG gameplay, as much as it intimidates the living hell outta me, I’m excited.

His article also links to the proposed backer levels.

Eurogamer share with us the vision Brian Fargo has for The Bard's Tale IV.

Fargo will be hoping nostalgia for the series fuels the Kickstarter for The Bard's Tale 4. The Kickstarters for Wasteland 2 and Torment: Tides of Numenera were successful in part because of backers' desire to play new games in series they loved while growing up.

"A lot of people grew up playing The Bard's Tale," Fargo says. "There was a great article recently in Forbes magazine about Notch and how he grew up playing The Bard's Tale. People have a lot of fond memories of it. And it's important for me to make sure that people who are fans of the original trilogy are comfortable and happy with what we're doing."

And, Fargo says, inXile is keen to make fans of the original trilogy happy with the new game.

"When I make these games for me I move onto the next one and onto the next one, but for a lot of these people it's like they finished playing it yesterday," he says.

"You have to recognise that. There are some things you have to do in order to be a true sequel.

"The things that made it work are it's a party-based role-playing game; it's not an action game - you're using your brains not your reflexes; exploration is a big part of that, and being able to map dungeons out square by square.

"And those games were very difficult; in that particular case you couldn't save your game anywhere but we were teleporting you and giving you no magic zones and magic mouths and there were puzzles and riddles, so to me, it's got to be all of those things that made those great.

"But what it's not going to be is where the dungeon is in the upper-left-hand corner and the text is scrolling by. That would be a huge mistake."

The Bard's Tale should not be considered an open-world game, such as Skyrim or Witcher, Fargo insists. It's "a little more tightly contained". Legend of Grimrock is perhaps a better comparison.

As mentioned in the interview at RPS, the Kickstarter for The Bards Tale IV will start on the 2nd of June. Here is the official press announcement:

The Bard's Tale IV coming to Kickstarter June 2nd on the 30th anniversary of the original game

Newport Beach, CA - May 18, 2015 - inXile Entertainment is proud to return to Kickstarter for their next big cRPG project, The Bard's Tale IV, launching Monday June 2nd at 6 AM PST/13:00 UTC. Return to Skara Brae for a true dungeon-crawling sequel to the original The Bard's Tale trilogy that helped define the cRPG genre!

On the 30th anniversary of the original Bard's Tale, what better time than now to go on an adventure worthy of song? The Bard's Tale IV will feature challenging maze-like dungeons with devious puzzles and riddles to explore in the first-person dungeon crawler style of the original trilogy. inXile has the full rights to use everything from the original trilogy, so the game will be rich with callbacks and old favorites such as teleporter zones and magic mouths.

Utilizing the Unreal 4 engine, The Bard's Tale IV will also represent a graphical leap forward in the genre, immersing you in a highly detailed and lush world you'll want to map to is farthest reaches. inXile plans to use photogrammetry to create in-game 3D objects from photos of architecture, taken right in Scotland.

With the Bard leading the way, the game has a strong focus on music and sound design. Inspired by and involving Gaelic musicians, the soundtrack and lyrics of The Bard's Tale IV take cues from Scottish culture, which will be used to enrich the existing setting from the original games.

Of courses, you'll need to contend with all matter of hostile beasts, monsters and brigands as you explore the world. The Bard's Tale IV will feature a dynamic phase based combat system, utilizing the complex decision making opportunities of traditional phase based combat,  but with a constantly evolving enemy strategy and a pacing that keeps you on your toes.

Check The Bard's Tale IV website to follow along as we count down to the Kickstarter launch, or sign up to receive news and info directly from inXile!

·         The Bard's Tale IV Website: http://bardstale.inxile-entertainment.com  

·         The Bard's Tale IV Sneak Peek: https://cdn.inxile-entertainment.com/bardstale/img/press/SneakPeek.jpg

About The Bard's Tale IV

The original The Bard's Tale was a surprise hit in 1985, putting Interplay on the map and launching the career of Brian Fargo. Now, 30 years later, inXile has full access to the name and contents of the original The Bard's Tale, making it possible to make a true sequel to the originals, living up to the rich dungeon crawler heritage it helped build.

About inXile Entertainment

Founded by long-time industry veteran @BrianFargo in 2002, inXile Entertainment develops interactive entertainment software for all popular game systems, personal computers and wireless devices. The most current projects under development are Wasteland 2 and Torment: Tides of Numenera, both financed by its fans via @Kickstarter.

Having successfully brought Wasteland back to life with the help of 61,920 of its closest friends, Brian Fargo and inXile Entertainment are turning their attentions to another classic RPG – The Bard’s Tale.

Fargo: If you remember, back in the day the dungeon crawler used to be the biggest RPG category – Might and Magic and Wizardry and all those – and it’s always been near and dear to my heart. [...] I love the tightness of mapping things out, and being teleported and put in dark areas and all that. [...] We like to torture you just a little bit. [...] And the ones where the players can blame themselves are even better – they pushed on, knew they shouldn’t, paid the consequence. 

You’ll need to wait until the start of June to see it in action unfortunately, since inXile still finishing up their presentation for the Kickstarter, but it’s a fully 3D world of both indoor and outdoor locations that looks like a 3DMark demo. 

Fargo also speculates about incorporating Oculus Rift. Whaa?

More information

Brian Fargo announced via Twitter what everybody already expected: The Bard's Tale IV is in development. More details as they become available.

Thanks Lemonhead!