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Tale as old as time.

Bard's Tale IV: Barrow's Deep, is coming soon, DRM-free to GOG.com.
More than 100 years later, evil is back, as it tends to do. Pick one of four available classes (yes, you don't have to be a bard) and before you know it you'll be crawling through cavernous dungeons or the legendary city of Skara Brae, solving puzzles, bopping beasties in a turn-based fashion and having a grand ol' time. Along with your party and your shiny gear, of course.
Post edited May 04, 2018 by maladr0Id
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reative00: "Didn't communicated those changes" is a funny way of saying "they lied for months about available features, they took money for features they never planned to implement".
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Tarhiel: You must be very bitter about it, aren´t you?

Saying they didn´t meant to implement features they took money for is outright lie - they stated it several times they wanted to, they didn´t manage to do it because of the changes (read difficulties) during production, but what could be salvaged they implemented in patch 1.1 (Oom, Codex, etc.).

Again, I am not saying not communicating that is cool, but it´s not true they didn´t plan to do that.
Companies like Failbetter almost bankrupted to keep kickstarter promises; much smaller studio with much, much smaller budget. In-Exile got shitton of money on kickstarter, then they took money for another game (and another game). They successfully sold Wasteland 2 and they still failed to keep their kickstarter promises for TToN. All In-Exile is doing is to capitalize nostalgia while doing as little work as possble.

I'm not bitter. I'm just not a fan of companies that want to fuck me in the ass.
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reative00: Companies like Failbetter almost bankrupted to keep kickstarter promises; much smaller studio with much, much smaller budget. In-Exile got shitton of money on kickstarter, then they took money for another game (and another game). They successfully sold Wasteland 2 and they still failed to keep their kickstarter promises for TToN. All In-Exile is doing is to capitalize nostalgia while doing as little work as possble.

I'm not bitter. I'm just not a fan of companies that want to fuck me in the ass.
Are you seriously claiming, that there was "as little work done as possible" for TToN? You don't have to like the game, that's your right, but there was obviously a lot of work done for it. The script alone is massive. And while there were things they didn't deliver on, I do think some of them were better left out from the game, like the stronghold. For such a story driven and linear game, a stronghold would have been fairly bad tack on. At best it would have been a disposable distraction like what ended up happening with Pillars of Eternity that didn't manage to do anything interesting with theirs.
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reative00: Companies like Failbetter almost bankrupted to keep kickstarter promises; much smaller studio with much, much smaller budget. In-Exile got shitton of money on kickstarter, then they took money for another game (and another game). They successfully sold Wasteland 2 and they still failed to keep their kickstarter promises for TToN. All In-Exile is doing is to capitalize nostalgia while doing as little work as possble.

I'm not bitter. I'm just not a fan of companies that want to fuck me in the ass.
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tomimt: Are you seriously claiming, that there was "as little work done as possible" for TToN? You don't have to like the game, that's your right, but there was obviously a lot of work done for it. The script alone is massive. And while there were things they didn't deliver on, I do think some of them were better left out from the game, like the stronghold. For such a story driven and linear game, a stronghold would have been fairly bad tack on. At best it would have been a disposable distraction like what ended up happening with Pillars of Eternity that didn't manage to do anything interesting with theirs.
PoE delivered what it promissed; medicore game that was funded because people can't stop living the past and they wanted modern copy of BG; another medicore game that was OKish for it's times.

TToN promised to be spiritual successor of Planescape Torment and delivered nothing of what made original Torment good game; memorable story, companions, dialogues instead of textwalls; the only thing that TToN did better was design; but just because you put lecutte in a chocolate box doesn't make it a chocolate; it helps, however, to sell product.

"As little work as possible" doesn't mean they didn't put any work into it; that would be a crazy claim to make. It means, however, that they're putting just enough work to deliver working product; and that's all. That's the same prinicple as for Ubisoft with their cashcows, with EA.

Agree to disagree. If you like TToN there's nothing that's stopping you. I didn't like the game very much and I liked devs attitude even less.
Backed it, won't be able to run it, but I'm happy it's coming out soon!
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tomimt: Are you seriously claiming, that there was "as little work done as possible" for TToN? You don't have to like the game, that's your right, but there was obviously a lot of work done for it. The script alone is massive. And while there were things they didn't deliver on, I do think some of them were better left out from the game, like the stronghold. For such a story driven and linear game, a stronghold would have been fairly bad tack on. At best it would have been a disposable distraction like what ended up happening with Pillars of Eternity that didn't manage to do anything interesting with theirs.
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reative00: PoE delivered what it promissed; medicore game that was funded because people can't stop living the past and they wanted modern copy of BG; another medicore game that was OKish for it's times.

TToN promised to be spiritual successor of Planescape Torment and delivered nothing of what made original Torment good game; memorable story, companions, dialogues instead of textwalls; the only thing that TToN did better was design; but just because you put lecutte in a chocolate box doesn't make it a chocolate; it helps, however, to sell product.

"As little work as possible" doesn't mean they didn't put any work into it; that would be a crazy claim to make. It means, however, that they're putting just enough work to deliver working product; and that's all. That's the same prinicple as for Ubisoft with their cashcows, with EA.

Agree to disagree. If you like TToN there's nothing that's stopping you. I didn't like the game very much and I liked devs attitude even less.
They changed a lot of things during developement and actually discarted some of the promised rewards. For instance some translations were removed because they added too many lines of text to the game. Ideally they should have kept all the languages and refrain from adding too much text. They got financed for that in the end. They also failed to communicate it as soon as the decision was made.
Many stretch goal unlocked content were discarded too.
Same happened for the Collection Edition content.
Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep Full Demo Walkthrough
enjoy!
Post edited May 26, 2018 by mike_cesara
There were supposed to be sort of a remastered solo release of the original Apple Bard's Tale trilogy (separate from the versions in The Bard's Tale 2004 re-release that included them) with new features announced few years ago. Anyone know what happened to that?
Can you play the Alpha/Beta on GOG?
I would gladly buy a pack from the official site ^^

Edit:Found it!
Steam only T_T
https://inxile.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002835594-The-Bard-s-Tale-IV-Alpha-Backer-FAQ

I'll wait for the GOG release then...
Post edited May 26, 2018 by Reglisse
Looks weird.


EDIT: Not neccessary bad...
Post edited May 26, 2018 by BeatriceElysia
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Lucian_Galca: There were supposed to be sort of a remastered solo release of the original Apple Bard's Tale trilogy (separate from the versions in The Bard's Tale 2004 re-release that included them) with new features announced few years ago. Anyone know what happened to that?
Still happening, but since the original remastering team was really taking their sweet time, inXile parted ways with them and handed over the reins to another developer:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/the-bards-tale-iv/posts/2188974
Post edited May 26, 2018 by Grargar
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Lucian_Galca: There were supposed to be sort of a remastered solo release of the original Apple Bard's Tale trilogy (separate from the versions in The Bard's Tale 2004 re-release that included them) with new features announced few years ago. Anyone know what happened to that?
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Grargar: Still happening, but since the original remastering team was really taking their sweet time, inXile parted ways with them and handed over the reins to another developer:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/the-bards-tale-iv/posts/2188974
Much thanks for the update.

I remember seeing a post about it from Rebecca Heineman somewhere some years ago, and she said something about they were supposed to use the Apple II gs versions or something which had or had added an in game mapping feature for the remasters. I guess that path feel through. Hope there's an option to use original graphics too.
Post edited May 26, 2018 by Lucian_Galca