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.

Comments

Here's A BT Clone Almost Done

[JohnDeHope3]

http://www.bardslegacy.com/main.html

3 Things I Want Remade

[javajames27]

3 Things I Want Remade:

• Bard's Tale (yay!)
• Mail Order Monsters from the C=64
• Starflight - there are way too many fantasy RPGs out there and not enough Sci-Fi ones

Correction

[NetDanzr]

The lead designer of Bard's Tale was Michael Cranford, not Brian Fargo. Fargo was credited only with level design. While still important, as a level designer, he didn't have to work on game rules, spells, the story, etc. In fact, he never designed games on his own, even though he helped with the design of Bard's Tale I and II and Wasteland, after which he became a game producer. I'd love to see him as a producer of the game again, while leaving the design to a seasoned designer.

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).

Re:Bard's Tale,

[c64cryptoboy]

99 Berserkers, 99 Berserkers, 99 Berserkers, 99 Berserkers.

Yeah, but do you remember the coordinates in Harkyn's Castle where that happended? :-)

Re:Bard's Tale

[lanroth]

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 :(

I remember playing Bards Tale I

[Tarindel]

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.