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Bard's Tale Sequel In Development?
Thanks to the forum regulars at Gaming Age for pointing out online reports that a company called inXile, headed by Interplay's ex-CEO Brian Fargo, has acquired the license to the classic RPG The Bard's Tale from Electronic Arts. No news on when the title is due, but this Bard's Tale page has further facts which seem to back up this hypothesis. Interestingly, Fargo was a designer on the original Bard's Tale, which was developed by Interplay back in 1987.
http://www.bardslegacy.com/main.html
Bard's Tale I-III, Ultima III-VII, Thief & Thief II.
My all time favorites.
Now where is that Thief III Eidos!!!!
I don't know about the rest of you, but this has me very interested. This franchise has been aching to have another installment. The good news is that Fargo is involved, which is a great sign. The question remains if a game, whose last sequel came out in 1988, can be updated to the standards of 2003.
I loved that game nearly as much as "real" D&D. Of course, there were those tedious moments (days), such as leveling up outside the NW tower, using my frost horn on the 4 groups of 99 mobs of Red Dragons or whatever they were, entering the tower and back out for repop. Mmmm. Good, clean fun. Doubt the remake will stand up to the memory... I'll probably buy it anyway.
Mod me down and I shall become more trollish than you can possibly imagine!
Fargo also brought us Wasteland, IMHO one of the best RPGs to ever hit production Fallout was a series inspired by the greatness of Wasteland, but that fell short of a true WL2.
You can only be young once, but you can be immature forever.
99 Berserkers, 99 Berserkers, 99 Berserkers, 99 Berserkers.
On a side note, Bard's Tale was so great because of the whole team; something that will be difficult to reproduce. In addition, to the genius of Michael Cranford, the team also included Lawrence Holland who later moved on to create Totally Games (X-Wing games, Star Trek: Bridge Commander), Joe Ybarra, the veteran game producer, and Bing Gordon (currently the CEO of Electronic Arts).
Interestingly, Fargo was a designer on the original Bard's Tale, which was developed by Interplay back in 1987.
I remember Bard's Tale from high school. I finished in 1986. I think it was released about 1985.
I think I've just been MIBLed!! Seriously, I've lost a large percentage of my life to the Bard's Tale series and would love to see what technology advances could do for it. Caution is the key though. A nearly-pure text game would not survive in today's market, but changing the game engine too much risks eliminating the essence of a Bard's Tale adventure and becoming just another run-o'-the-mill RPG. Best of luck to the developers.
My friend (not me, honest) teleported up and down levels over and over again to kill the 396 berserkers and get the experience points. He spent weeks doing this until even his magic users had >9999 hit points!
:(
Here's another one tho... did you ever say "burger" in the temple in the square in the town?
The priest said something like "That's the most offensive word utterable, DIE!".
You were faced with 396 nasty creatures, and if you killed them you were faced with 396 even more nasty creatures. I never managed to kill the second lot, all my characters got turned to stone
For those who don't know, "burger" is in reference to Burger Bill Heineman, now over at Contraband Entertainment. Everything he worked on had some type of burger reference.
Alright I will go ahead and say what I would like to see, in this and future rpg's.
Time.
Time becomes important, meaning that the "evil wizard" is actually gaining power as the game progresses. Maybe in the beginning of the game, you have a few missions.
Choose one and your guys can handle it, but while your characters get stronger so does the enenmy on the other missions.
This would make it less linear and increase re-playability.
Are any games already doing this type of thing?
I'll stop here.
Cmon, I bet that was slashdotted in like 2 minutes.
I loved the original Bard's Tale, though I doubt a new one would be written to run on my Linux machine. At least I'll have Magicosm.
I had a party of 6 characters, one of them being a monk named "Green Booger". Hey, I was like 10 at the time. Give me a break. It was funny.
Anyway, there was this tower in the upper left hand corner of the map -- I can't remember what it was called, but it had one of those dragon statues (or was it some kind of guardian?) guarding it. The tower was pretty high level for my characters, so my forays were usually pretty short and limited, and my characters were wiped out fast and often. Usually Green Booger was the last standing due to his incredible AC. In case you don't remember, monks in that game lost an AC every level (with lower being better -- silly old school AD&D conventions!).
Well, one day I entered the tower and actually made it through a couple of battles. Upon trying to find my way back to the entrance, I stumbled upon some kind of trap which caused a few members of my party to go insane. My party mutinied. Of course, Green Booger was one the insane ones. After a few minutes of infighting, everyone was dead except Green Booger.
"Finally!", I thought. Now I could load my saved game and try again. But no such luck -- Green Booger-the-now-raving-lunatic turned his evil fists upon himself. Unfortunately, his AC was so low, he couldn't hit himself.
I watched for at least ten minutes as messages like "Green Booger punches at Green Booger but misses!". "Green Booger tries to strike Green Booger but misses!". Finally, after the amusement from the whole situation wore off and realizing this was an infinite loop, I rebooted.
I think it was the first time I realized that sometimes things happened in games that not even the game designers anticipated. It was, for all intents and purposes, my very first experience with design-level game flaws.
Starflight III
BT was my first RPG ever. It is amazing how, 16 years after publication, it still has a 'brand name'. I have to say, even if I saw "Bard's Tale 2004" in stores next year, I'd have a hard time not buying it just based on the original. I still remember picking up my copy for the C64 from a computer expo.