RPGWatch Feature - Bard's Tale IV Interview

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.