Support NeoGAF

[Virgman]

So has there been an announcement on when they'll be giving out Wasteland 2 keys for early backers?

 

[itllgrobak]

So has there been an announcement on when they'll be giving out Wasteland 2 keys for early backers?

From the Kickstarter comments page;

As a general note: reward distribution will happen through our backer site for all rewards. Kickstarter will have to charge, process pledges, and finalize them which takes a while (at least a week if not two), before providing us a final download which we then process, plus process who backed when so we know what freebies to distribute. No exact ETA on this but it'll take at least this processing time before we can give you your rewards such as Wasteland 2.
Thomas

 

[hemtae]

New update: Thanks To You, We Are Funded! What's Next?

We did it! Thanks to you, we did not just fund The Bard's Tale IV, but went past the base goal to raise a total of $1.5 million! We can't thank you enough for your backing and your passion for classic RPGs.

So what's next? The Bard's Tale IV can now continue its pre-production stage before moving into full development. Most of the studio is currently working on Torment: Tides of Numenera, and a smaller team is on Wasteland 2 Director's Cut. As those projects wrap up we'll move people on to The Bard's Tale IV. We will of course keep you updated along the way!

Many of you have asked, now that the Kickstarter is over, if we will still be taking ongoing funding. The answer is yes! We will continue to take pledges on our own web site.

 

[hemtae]

New update: Progress Update; Enclave of the Fairy Host Concludes; Underworld Promo Offer

As you know, it's been a couple of weeks since our campaign concluded, and we've been working behind the scenes on pre-production as we work to solidify details on the game. You can expect our updates to slow down for the coming weeks and months until we have more tangible details to share with you guys. But for today, we have a quick update to cover a few odds and ends.

The Story Concludes

During our Kickstarter campaign our backers were able to unlock a series of social media achievements. With each achievement unlocked, we in turn updated progress on a dungeon map, along with an ongoing story told by our lead writer Nathan Long.

With the campaign now concluded and 21 achievements/rooms unlocked total, Nathan concluded the Enclave of the Fairy Host story, which gives a bit of insight into the game's tone, lore and characters. You can see the final two chapters below, and for those who haven't been following along, the full story and dungeon map are available here.

 

[itllgrobak]

Update: The Backer site is now up

Hey guys, as some have noticed, the backer web site is online now. We're still working out the kinks, but if you want to give it an early look and help us identify any remaining issues and bugs, please do so!
https://bardstale.inxile-entertainment.com
Feel free to sign up. If you backed Torment as well, you can use that account to sign up. Wasteland 2 Ranger Center accounts are not compatible, unfortunately.
Your pledge will need to be associated via email address. If you sign up under a different email than what a pledge was recorded under, then you will need to make sure you link up your email as a secondary address (you can do this at the Account -> Email Addresses page).
Note: not all rewards are available just yet. We're still waiting on the Witcher 1 & 2 keys, as well as the Wasteland 2 GOG keys. But Wasteland 2 on Steam can be claimed now, and many other rewards and bonuses are available too (like the Loyalty Rewards promo and Ultima Underworld 1+2).
Thanks,
Eric

Claimed my wasteland 2 steam key just now.

 

[~Kinggi~]

Thats an interesting backer portal......they gamified it. lol

That site is hella confusing. I just figured out where to claim bonus rewards, but i thought they mentioned there were giving Bards Tale 1-3 games away as well as Wasteland etc.

 

[hemtae]

Thats an interesting backer portal......they gamified it. lol

That site is hella confusing. I just figured out where to claim bonus rewards, but i thought they mentioned there were giving Bards Tale 1-3 games away as well as Wasteland etc.

I don't think they're ready yet.

 

[~Kinggi~]

Just redeemed my Wasteland GOG key. They gots the supply.

 

[hemtae]

New update: Welcome to NOLA

New Location: inXile NOLA!

First off, we are excited to announce that we have opened a new studio in the beautiful city of New Orleans!

There are several reasons why we have done this. First and foremost, we are always looking for ways we can make our game budgets go further. When we cut our costs it allows us to put more people onto the project for a longer period of time. This directly results in an improvement to the games we are making. Our creative process involves iteration. Iteration takes time. Time takes money. The lower our burn rate, the longer we get to work on the game and the more iteration all the features of the game receive. With the support of State of Louisiana and the general lower cost of doing business in New Orleans we are able to stretch our budgets and put an increase of man months into our projects.

The second reason why we are excited about the new NOLA studio is gaining access to a talent pool in the south and on the east coast that we just didn’t have access to in California. We are currently interviewing for positions in NOLA and there are a bunch of new hires that we are going to get that are people we never could have talked into moving to the west coast.

Why should you care about all this? Because the first project that we are going to be making in New Orleans is The Bard’s Tale IV! It might sound like an impossible task to setup this new studio, hire a bunch of people, and make The Bard’s Tale IV awesome. How can we do it? Easy, I am going to cheat. I am not in New Orleans all by myself - we have a core group of people who are making the move from our HQ in Newport to New Orleans with me.

This team and I just spent the last couple of years making Wasteland 2 together and we are continuing our work on The Bard’s Tale IV. The only difference is that now we are going to be doing it in New Orleans. By moving this team here we are going to be able to add to it with new hires and end up with a larger team than we ever could have had in Cali.

Pre-Production Update

The last few months have been very busy and fruitful for us. We're happy to announce that at this time, we're halfway through our pre-production phase on the game. But what does this mean, exactly?

Pre-production is the phase of development where we do our initial design and technology work on the game. This mean, through both prototyping as well as work on paper, defining the game that we intend to make in as full detail as we possibly can, so that we can get a grasp of our final project scope and feature set. All sorts of things are taking shape, from our technology, to our game mechanics, to our story.

Right now, this means that the major foundational components of the game – the story and world-building, our setting and characters, have for the most part had the groundwork laid down. You saw glimpses of these during our previous Kickstarter updates, including snippets of lore and story from Nathan Long, and design ideas from Brian and other team members, and we have continued to build on these to flesh out the world of The Bard's Tale IV.

Going forward, we are getting deeper into the nitty-gritty of the game: the play mechanics and combat system, core character classes, spells and abilities, and other higher-level elements like our quest structuring and ideas for reactivity in our game world and story. It is too soon to talk about this stuff in too much detail but in future weeks we will introduce you to more of the team and let each of them talk in more detail about the things they are working on.

The Bard's Tale Classic Trilogy Emulated & Forum Badge – Now Available!

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.

 

[~Kinggi~]

Interesting. Basically took core people from the West and straight moved them to New Orleans, and are now doing a recruiting drive on the cheap.

 

[Dsyndrome]

Looking forward to playing the first game eventually, probably won't happen until after the new year though.

 

[BrokenFiction]

New Update!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/the-bards-tale-iv/posts/1490489

Moving into the office, finishing it up, lore update.

Also, alpha screenshot:

 

[~Kinggi~]

Pretty good looking screen.

 

[BrokenFiction]

Update!

Character Progression!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/the-bards-tale-iv/posts/1636433

Howdy citizens of Caith. David here, back to share some juicy details about The Bard's Tale IV. Taking a short break from combat mechanics, during this update we'll be covering a subject that I'm sure is very near and dear to all RPG lovers' hearts - character progression. Specifically, we'll be talking about character advancement: gaining experience, specializing your adventurer, being judged by the Review Board, and lastly the role equipment plays in your character's growth. The details we go over are all subject to change as we continue to playtest and tune the game, but should provide a good sense of the overall direction of The Bard's Tale IV's character progression system.

Experience is a concept that RPG fans should be very accustomed to. Besting foes, solving ancient riddles, and rediscovering forgotten parts of the old world all grant experience, which naturally leads to leveling up. In The Bard's Tale IV, our goal with character advancement is to find a balanced system that always provides a meaningful amount of growth at even its smallest increments, while also being fun to use. For us, this centers around our skill tree.

The original Bard's Tale trilogy had a character progression system closely tied to your starting class, plus the fascinating idea of evolving into different types as you reached higher levels. A budding Conjurer could progress down that track, or change professions and learn to be a Magician, Wizard, Sorcerer, and ultimately an Archmage. We are retaining this strong class-based focus in The Bard's Tale IV. We’re also opening up this more in-depth character progression to all the classes, allowing each class to specialize into their own set of sub-classes. By merging the sub-class concept into a tree structure, we are better able to give each adventurer meaningful and impactful choices each time you level up.

Mockups (lots of interesting description in the post):

 

[adversarial]

I completely missed that this was even a thing. Can't wait!

 

[JSR_Cube]

That level progression looks just like Salt and Sanctuary. I liked that system.

 

[~Kinggi~]

New trailer, actually looks pretty good.

 

[BrokenFiction]

Yeah, this is coming along very nicely. inXile is getting my vote as a kickass developer.

 

[jimboton]

I'm liking this a lot. Also the new video on Eurogamer is quite cool.

 

[BrokenFiction]

Year-End Message from Brian, A Monstrous Menagerie

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/the-bards-tale-iv/posts/1747138

Year in Review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YtznmjJMSs

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.

Scottish Monsters

Scottish monsters have a grotesque, nightmarish quality about them unique to the land. Maybe it's got something to do with whisky being Scotland's national drink, or sheep intestines its national dish. Whatever it is, you will not find a more twisted, bizarre collection of creepy-crawlies in Western mythology.

Of course, The Bard's Tale IV versions of these horrors are not exact translations of their Scottish kin. The artists have re-interpreted them to fit the tone of the game, and we writers have adapted their lore so that it weaves smoothly into the world of Caith and Skara Brae.

Fachan

There are actually few mentions of the Fachan in old Scottish lore, save one tale where Murachadh MacBrian, the King of Ireland, won a footrace against one of them, and a suggestion that they might have come from muddled tales of druids standing on one foot while they cast spells. In all the tales, however, they are described as fierce creatures having one leg, one arm, one eye, and a stiff tuft of hair sticking up from their ugly heads.

Our Fachan are twisted monsters of corruption and darkness, the result of a botched summoning by the Fichti outcasts known as the Siambra Du. No one knows how their numbers have multiplied since that first malignant mistake (perhaps by regeneration from severed limbs?) but now Fachan are seen all over Caith, and populate the hellish realm of Malefia too, from whence evil conjurers can call them forth to fight for them in battle.

Ghilli Dhu

The legend of the Ghilli Dhu is much more recent than the other Scottish tales we've plundered, and may have some basis in an actual incident. In the 1800s, a young girl got lost in the woods and was cared for and returned to her village by a shaggy person who might have been a hermit. Out of this grew the idea of the Ghilli Dhu as a benevolent forest spirit, wild of aspect, but gentle in manner, a caretaker of the forest.

In The Bard's Tale IV, the Ghilli Dhu are exactly that, gentle giants who watch over the forest and those who travel through it. Unfortunately, some Ghilli Dhu have been corrupted by the Siambra Du outcasts, and are now the opposite of everything they once were. Now they spread corruption and death, and attack all who enter the forest, and shall continue to do so until the curse that poisons them is lifted.

Anthropophagie

Also known as Blemmyes, Anthropophagie are not as particularly Scottish as the other monsters on this list, but we liked them too much not to use them. They come from medieval books such as the Otia Imperialia, a "book of wonders" that presented garbled translations of earlier works about far off places and peoples. The Anthropophagie were said to be giant headless cannibals from Syria whose faces were in their chests.

For The Bard's Tale IV, we have made them denizens of Malefia as well - monsters out of your worst nightmares who can be summoned to fight against you, and our artists have really emphasized their hellish aspects, with not just their mouths displaced, but hands, teeth, and eyes. Horrifying.