Bard's Tale The Bard's Tale IV Pre-Release Thread [RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Zombra]

For those not watching videos, new information indicates that there are no random/repeatable encounters, at least in the early game. Also, newly created characters start at level 1. So: making a new party means your characters might start off 6 or 7 levels behind where you'd be if you stuck with the premade "narrative" party.

In personal news, I should have my beta key shortly ... just in time for me to leave my PC to go to the beach for 3 days. Will be back to check out the game and pursue any questions you may have about it Sunday night.

 

[Nyast]

Currently playing. Too soon to have an opinion. Except one thing: the treasure chests. No. Just no... ( I'm speaking of the little opening animation ). Those who've seen it will understand.

 

[miles teg]

Came to this thread expecting to see "decline" shouted at every post, contempt and suggestions to Fargo to retire early.
The fact that you guys are actually playing the game for more than 5 seconds before judging, is already proof that this game might have something to say

 

[Nyast]

After a few hours of playing, I can safely say it's not horrible. It's a weird mix of old-school and modern with quite a bit of nasty decline ( quest / NPC markers etc.. ), but it has some charm too.

My #1 issue so far isn't gameplay related, which I guess is a good thing. Being open-world-ish, there's a decent amount of backtracking to do, and the loading times between areas are pretty bad. Expect 30s to a minute of waiting on a loading screen. Combine that with movement that is pretty slow, and that makes moving around areas you've already visited a chore.

I'll eloborate more on the game as I get further ( city zones done now, I'm about to reach the first major dungeon ).

 

[Darth Canoli]

My #1 issue so far isn't gameplay related, which I guess is a good thing. Being open-world-ish, there's a decent amount of backtracking to do, and the loading times between areas are pretty bad. Expect 30s to a minute of waiting on a loading screen. Combine that with movement that is pretty slow, and that makes moving around areas you've already visited a chore.

30 seconds to one minute is bad but bearable if the game is good, if it turns out the loading time are equivalent to tyranny's ones, i'll just replay wizardry 8 again ...

Now, travelling option is gameplay related and after seeing those console game saving spots, i doubt they implement smart and user-friendly travelling options (like The Quest's "Lloyd's beacons" which comes from Might & Magic )
Anyway, fast travelling options are somewhat wasted on a game with heavy loading time.

Well, i'm having so much fun with M&M3-4-5 and The Quest, i'll have no remorse to pass on this one if it comes to that and The Quest 2 is coming.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.gamecrate.com/hands-bard’s-tale-iv-fresh-take-fantasy-roleplaying-tropes/20120/

HANDS-ON: THE BARD’S TALE IV IS A FRESH TAKE ON FANTASY ROLEPLAYING TROPES

Reviving a classic game series isn’t easy, but it seems like inXile Entertainment has sort of made it their sole purpose in existence. Last year’s Torment: Tides of Numenera was an engaging and entirely engrossing tale set in a dark, unique world and Wasteland 2 (coming soon to Switch) reminded us why Brian Fargo and company are so well-known in the RPG world. Now with Wasteland 3 coming along, the company looks back even further to its roots in the classic Bard’s Tale series.

The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrow’s Deep is a Kickstarter success story to the tune of a whopping $1.5 million and serves as the first true entry in the franchise in a staggering 30 years. Three decades. A lot has changed in the gaming world over those years, but luckily it seems like The Bard’s Tale won’t get left behind by the cruel passage of time.

Still Old-School At Heart
The Bard’s Tale IV takes place 100 years after the events of The Bard’s Tale III: Thief of Fate. This means that even though it still takes place in Skara Brae and longtime fans will see references and familiar areas, enough time has passed that newcomers can easily jump in fresh without any prior exposure to the series. I have a feeling that will be the case for most people that play the game.

From the title screen of The Bard’s Tale IV you immediately get the sense that this is nothing like most modern RPGs on the market. As a throwback to the original game’s cover, you’ll see a bearded man holding an instrument with people gathered around -- just like a bard would do. But then once you click New Game, the image springs to life with beautifully colorful animations and singing.

When I met with David Rogers, Lead Designer at inXile Entertainment, he explained that these musical moments at the start of each play session are used to classically convey the bard setting, but also to serve as a unique recap of your adventures. This sort of charming spirit oozes from every inch of The Bard’s Tale IV.

Once you’re into the game you eventually get the chance to create your own main character if you wish -- and they don’t even have to be a bard. There are four archetypes to pick from, including bard, fighter, practitioner (mage), and rogue. All of them play extremely differently from one another in terms of not only their abilities, but how they level up across skill trees and the strategies used in combat.

Storytelling is a huge focus in The Bard’s Tale IV and each and every character has a litany of recorded voice over lines -- including your created characters.

Turn-Based Redefined
Combat in The Bard’s Tale IV takes place on a small turn-based grid system. Mechanically it’s actually similar to turn-based tactics games like Final Fantasy Tactics, but the grid is just much, much smaller.

You have to pay attention to and use the grid to your advantage at all times. For example, if an enemy is in the back row of their side you can’t hit them with melee if you’re in the back row on your side. Some enemies charge up attacks that devastate entire columns in front of them, forcing you to move out of the way. Early on things are relatively simple, but the door is wide open for some really inventive and challenging combat encounters.

At the start of combat you’ve got a certain number of “opportunity points” that are shared across your entire party. For example, moving a character a single space costs one opportunity point, while chugging a powerfully brewed beverage is a free action. In the case of the bard I played in the demo, chugging drinks increased my drunk stat, but also granted me a spell point that could be used to cast my magical bard hymns, like Sanctuary Score, which grants an ally temporary buffer health for incoming damage.

When you’re not in combat you walk around the map just like you would in most other first-person RPGs, but you can feel the inspiration of old-school designs seeping through here as well. You’ll come across lots of puzzles, notes to read, and people to talk to. From a moment-to-moment gameplay perspective The Bard’s Tale IV could be compared to Legends of Grimrock, except each party member is controlled independently on a grid in battle and this game actually has a story with characters to care about. That’s a big differentiator in this subgenre.

---

If you want to know more about The Bard’s Tale IV, then you can actually get your hands on the game right now. Starting today, all backers will have access to the beta this preview is based off of and if you pre-order either the Platinum or Ultimate edition you can gain access right now.

The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrow’s Deep is slated for release later this year on PC with “future platforms” getting announced at a later time.

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

Here we go.

 

[aweigh]

Decline is in mechanics, not in UI stuff... just wanted to throw that out there because it seems people only think decline = highlighted objects / markers.

 

[fantadomat]

I skimmed trough the video,a story about racism,saw a few diversity people....ohhh boy this will be a ride.
Also that mazing dialogue system....

 

[Bester]

Here's my free consultation for inXile if they're reading the codex:

- Bad decision to use deferred rendering with TXAA. Going for forward and baked lighting, with MSAA and 10% super sampling would've given you a crisp image.
- Not a good mix of certain marketplace assets with studio made assets, they stand out. Re-texture them.
- Bad re-use of assets in level design, repetitiveness stands out. Was the same with with TToN.
- Don't like the quality of some textures, more quality control needed from art director.

Pros:
- UI looks impressive, good job. Html5?
- Particles look good.

 

[aweigh]

Since you seem to know your stuff, why is it that games nowadays no longer support standard anti-aliasing and we have to put up with these vaseline-shit filters?

I'd much rather have less bloom FX or whatever if it means I can elminate fucking jaggies.

 

[Bester]

why is it that games nowadays no longer support standard anti-aliasing

Cryengine does very crisp AA, and for example Far Cry 5 looks crisp. It's UE4 based games that look blurry, because Temporal AA not only softens the edges, but also blurs everything inside the object too, i.e. blurs the textures (and is expensive, by the way). On UDN (devs-only ue4 answerhub), studios often point it out and ask what to do about the blurriness, and UE4 devs swing by and say "hey, just use a sharpen filter on top of it". Which is horrible, because first you lose information by blurring the image, and then you sharpen it with a filter, but it's superficial, you don't get the original information back, you just get some weird shit. Try blurring and then sharpening an image in photoshop to see how it works out.

Epic have this idea that deferred + blurry TXAA looks awesome, and they're very firm on this point. It looks good on materials like metal (i.e. car games) or in cartoony games like Fortnite, but it looks like shit on everything else. I think it was Nvidia that implemented forward rendering for ue4 and Epic simply merged the commit, thank god. Forward is required for normal types of AA. Then the creators of Vanishing of Ethan Carter (Redux) uploaded their fork of the engine with an implementation of SMAA that apparently looked decent. Still, for small studios that couldn't afford to write their own AA, it was a viable solution since July 2016. Then, Epic eventually just wrote decent MSAA later in 2016 I think. Larger studios can hire professionals to write their own if they want.

But it is possible now for everyone, that's the bottom line. It has been for at least two years to output a more or less crisp image. Nobody cares. Devs have shit in their eyes. Latest example, Vampyr came out like that too, what a shame. I had to play it with AA turned off not to go blind.

 

[aweigh]

sharpening filters are also further performance hogs.

 

[theSavant]

This must be it... the reason why the environments and textures look like shit (blurred like PS1 graphics and even then weirdly ugly). I hope there is an option to disable this.

 

[Strange Fellow]

For those not watching videos, new information indicates that there are no random/repeatable encounters, at least in the early game. Also, newly created characters start at level 1.

 

[Bester]

This must be it... the reason why the environments and textures look like shit (blurred like PS1 graphics and even then weirdly ugly). I hope there is an option to disable this.

Depending on how they package the game, .ini files may be exposed or not. If they are, it's possible to fall back to FXAA (a cheap and sort of crisp form of AA for deferred rendering) - it's pretty jaggy, but at least you won't have to suffer the vaseline. The downside is that haircuts will probably look bad, since their shader often depends on Temporal for transparency, because deferred doesn't do transparency, since it doesn't know sorting. So they use masking (binary!), and Temporal allows dithering the mask, because it has motion blur in it, which gives you an okay looking fake transparency. It's a hack. And as soon as you turn off TXAA, transparency is gone, and all haircuts that aren't just a solid mesh - they're all fucked.

So, we'll see.

 

[DosBuster]

- Bad decision to use deferred rendering with TXAA. Going for forward and baked lighting, with MSAA and 10% super sampling would've given you a crisp image.

When this game started development UE4 didn't have forward rendering and besides that's still unfinished and lacks support for a few features. Also, UE4 uses a more simple TAA, TXAA is Nvidia's mix of MSAA and TAA.

FYI, you can actually get TAA looking decent in UE4, https://de45xmedrsdbp.cloudfront.net/Resources/files/TemporalAA_small-71938806.pptx this is a presentation given at Siggraph by one of Epic's graphics engineers who details some tweaking methods to get it to look good. Problem is, devs tend to just use it out of the box most of the time.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Here we go.

Spoiler

Nekot-The-Brave

Thank you very much, very pleasant recording, didn't feel the urge to skip anything contrariwise to the hysterical Bikeman's video.

 

[Nyast]

Finished the beta today. Short review:

First of all, forget all these clown journalists comparing BT4 to Grimrock. A better point of comparison would be Might & Magic X. It has a high amount of similarities and feeling to that game, just with free roaming and the BT lore. Which isn't a bad thing IMO

The good:

I was expecting a pretty linear dungeon crawling experience, so I was positively surprised to see that you get an open-world experience. It's still relatively linear in its structure, but areas open up after a while and everything is interconnected. There are numerous side quests, traders, the loot feels right ( there's always a better item to be found in a chest or in behind a secret wall ), and while the skills aren't exactly all that deep or original, they just work.

Combat is one of the best I've experienced in the past decade. The cartoonish portraits for your team members don't exactly work well but you forget them after a while. The spell effects, enemies etc.. are actually pretty well done. Animations and voices are exagerated, a bit on the cartoony side, but it works. Combat is fast and responsive and you can rush over simple encounters in less than a minute. Tougher mobs/bosses require more thinking and you'll have to care about positionning, switching your characters from the front and back rows to minimize damage, some spells require channeling for a turn or two, etc.. Basically, the combat simply works. It's fun and engaging and didn't get repetitive even after 6 hours of game. Color me impressed.

The game is polished and pretty much bug-free at this stage.

The bad:

Performance isn't exactly great for the given visuals. I have an i6700K, 32 GB of RAM and a GTX 1070, and at max quality I can barely sustain 30 fps with frequent stutters as assets get loaded. Graphics range from good to under average ( especially in shadows with no direct light, everything looks flat ) but certainly nothing looks like it's worth the performance cost. Maybe they'll optimize the game after beta.

Loading times are pretty bad ( I already mentionned it in my last post, 30 seconds to a minute ) which wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't combined with lots of backtracking. In a case I had to backtrack to the adventurer's guild to talk to an NPC to complete a quest, and had to cross 3 areas each with a minute of loading time. During these moments it feels like you're more staring/waiting at your screen than actually playing. Movement speed is quite slow, even when holding shift ( run ), and this game has no physics to speak of, so don't expect jumping around / platforming, this is no Ultime Underworld.

The game feels slightly "theme-park-y" as there are no major optionnal areas, or things to discover simply there because they make sense for the world to be in. You'll have to visit almost every nook & cranny of each map by the time you're progressing in the main story, with previously artificially blocked paths suddenly opening. There are various secret areas, but they typically are dead-ends so the progression is still pretty linear by design.

I also think pacing is a bit out of place, which sometimes makes the game fall off the boring side. Enemies do not respawn, so after you've emptied an area, there is a lot of running around until you figure out what the next objective is. The city parts, for example, overstay their welcome ( both on the upper side, and the underground side ). Even the first major dungeon is filled of puzzles and seems to never end, despite the occasional combat. And don't get me wrong, I like puzzles, but 2 hours of straight puzzling in the same dungeon map makes my head hurt. More variety and smaller areas would have helped, but the game seems done at this point so I'm not sure it can be changed. Also, the way it is right now, this game is going to lose all the RPG beginners in this first dungeon. Some of them can be pretty repetitive and challenging.

It's in direct contradiction with tutorials and a fair amount of hand-holding, with quest markers and glowing NPCs, you know the deal by now. You get used to them.

Summary: There are some performance issues coupled to heavy loading times and pacing/backtracking issues, but if you have the patience, the core elements of the game seem surprisingly solid.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

Would love to try it out but my fucking key hasn't come yet.

 

[Infinitron]

I was expecting a pretty linear dungeon crawling experience, so I was positively surprised to see that you get an open-world experience. It's still relatively linear in its structure, but areas open up after a while and everything is interconnected. There are numerous side quests, traders, the loot feels right ( there's always a better item to be found in a chest or in behind a secret wall ), and while the skills aren't exactly all that deep or original, they just work.

This is a good time to recall the very informative PC Gamer preview from last year: http://www.rpgcodex.net/article.php?id=10686

That's a good opportunity for an early dose of nostalgia. "In the first Bard's Tale there was a map of Skara Brae and you would expand it," Fargo says. "[In Bard's Tale 4] Skara Brae is now the first dungeon. A town has been built on top of Skara Brae. If you remember what Skara Brae looked like, in the grid, it's exactly the same."

To the south of Skara Brae is the trap-infested Forest of Inschriach, with a civilization of woodpeople inspired by the Scottish Picts tribe. Skara Brae and the forest are two of the game's ‘culture centers,’ locations with their own personality and history and races. Rogers rattles off several others that will be in the game: Elves, Trow, Einarr, and Baed. Though I don't see any friendly NPCs in my demo, only enemies, they'll be in the game to talk to for quests and lore and bits of useful information.

"These are places where friendly (or at least not murderous) NPCs reside," Rogers elaborates. "This is where you shop, get quests, talk to people about local rumors, etc. Cultural centers are the one place in our game we don’t consider dungeons. They tend not to be trap-ridden or teeming with monsters. It’s a place where you can catch your breath and not worry about being jumped at every turn."

Rogers says there are more than 20 dungeons in The Bard's Tale 4, and the forest gives me a rough idea of how its world will fit together. It's made up of five dungeons "that are connected to one another, and to some extent have relationships to one another," he says. "There's the hub dungeon, and then that branches off to these other dungeons that are connected to it. And then connected to that five dungeon super-dungeon are two other dungeons that you delve into through a level load. So where one dungeon starts and where one dungeon ends, to a player might be kind of hazy, but we plan them out in discrete chunks of challenge, and each one sort of has its own narrative arc that it goes through."

inXile wants exploration in The Bard's Tale to let you stumble upon what it calls "aspirational content," which is one of my favorite bits of game design that I've never put a name to—an alluring, insurmountable challenge discovered early on that makes you feel like you've discovered something off the beaten path. If you're bold and skilled, you can push through at a low level—like, say, braving the skeleton graveyard in Dark Souls or defeating the Midgar Zolom that prowls Final Fantasy 7's world map—but you're more likely to return 30 hours later and beat your former tormenter into the ground.

"It is nonlinear, so we allow people to go in and get their ass kicked and kind of learn a lesson," Keenan says. "Go OK, mark that on the map, make sure I come back later."

That's our cue to dive into the first live demonstration of The Bard's Tale 4's combat system inXile has shown to anyone outside the studio. We load up a new area, Castle Hangskall, and Rogers sets the stage: Tarjan, the villainous Mad God from The Bard's Tale of old, has sacked the Einarr Isles and holed up in the throne room of Castle Castle Hangskall. The King has asked you to retake it, and the ghost of a former castle worker clues you in that a key you need was dragged off to the torture chamber in the pocket of another unlucky soul. We set out to go find it.

 

[Strange Fellow]

For those not watching videos, new information indicates that there are no random/repeatable encounters, at least in the early game. Also, newly created characters start at level 1. So: making a new party means your characters might start off 6 or 7 levels behind where you'd be if you stuck with the premade "narrative" party.

From InXile forums:

OK, I take it back, i see now that my 'mercenary' is a lower level - but that level designation seems worthless, as I was given the same number of skills to select as my higher level party (8) - and given that levelling gives you nothing except an extra skill point, and my now level 2 bard has the same number of skill points as my level 7 party and so isn't any weaker than they are.

Seems to be a bug.

Short review:

the loot feels right ( there's always a better item to be found in a chest or in behind a secret wall ),

That sounds great. Is there a random element to loot placement/quality, or is it handplaced?

 

[Ysaye]

I loaded up my Beta copy last night onto my laptop and had a whirl for about 3 hours. In true RPG tradition, I probably spent a decent part of that in character creation once I got to it. Some initial thoughts:

Linking in with what Nyast said:
(1) Agree this should be compared with Might and Magic X - in many regards my initial impression is that it feels like a "successor" to that game. Maybe also the remake of the Realms of Arkania games (although I was so utterly disappointed in the Beta of Blade of Destiny that I still haven't gone back to have another look yet...)
(2) Agree that the combat actually is good. Despite my reservations from the Alpha, I like the spell system, I think it helps balance the magic elements of combat.
(3) Agree about the performance - I have a brand new i7 laptop with 64GB of RAM (not sure about the comparison with graphics cards) but lots of lags / stutters when walking around (battles seem alright). Load times between areas have been okay for me however.
(4) Talking of bugs, items in my inventory went invisible for a period of 30 minutes (Visible if I moved my mouse over them) then came back;
(5) Agree so far fairly linear, but not as bad as I had feared. The map highlights a lot of stuff and the quest markers; not that big a fan of that but that's just catering to younger audiences.
(6) I do hope they will put a respawn of the enemies in the final version...please?
(7) They do look like they have gone to town with puzzles but they are seem fairly same-ish; Inexile threatened to put lots in and as Nyast said it is in stark contrast to the tutorials and to the same catering they do in other areas.

Other thoughts:
(1) Overall this was better than what I was thinking it was going to be. As above, the combat is mechanically good and looks good too; it isn't Wizardry/Elminage but that's fine - it is very good in it's own right. So far (to compare to modern games) it's combat system is much better than Might and Magic X as well (whilst we are comparing to that).
(2) I liked the battle-order determining mechanism and phase into battle - liked the art style with it too. Nothing particularly new or innovative here but it stood out as working well.
(3) I was worried about the NPC aspect but thankfully so far the NPCs met are not intrusive, too talkative or annoying. I would even say that Rabbie is a fairly well crafted NPC for the "tutorial" part of the game.
(4) The inventory is quite frankly a mess and others have said I just don't get the point of the animated 3d paper doll in the inventory - it adds nothing except probably more delay. The character portraits are fine; and I wish they were used more over dodgy 3d models in NPC conversations, but they are what they are; I get that it might be important for younger gamers.
(5) The save mechanism is okay - you can sacrifice the save point for exp. I think I prefer saving at the Adventurers Guild to provide that old school spelunking feel but again we all know that that mechanic can be debated for years; it probably won't wash with modern audiences.
(6) The opening felt like a homage to the original games - well done there from me (but I can bet there will be others who go - well that looks amateurish).
(7) I am not sure what the point is of having different types of Humans apart from aesthetics on the dodgy 3d dolls but maybe that is something I will find out about later. The Trow look interesting and I don't mind the "different" dwarves.
(8) I was playing on a laptop and I really wanted to just sit in my armchair and play using only the keyboard but I found you really need to use a mouse, so I went back to my kitchen table and plugged one in. I don't suppose it supports use of a game controller? I will give that a go tomorrow.... there is no jumping (as far as I can tell) so why couldn't they have it so that the arrow keys could be used to turn and maybe a spacebar to activate stuff?
(9) I was scared that this would have remnants of the humour of that "The Bard's Tale" (2004) game but thankfully it doesn't - the humour so far is the right level.
(10) Skill trees, don't absolutely hate them but it seems you can re-skill yourself up (didn't look too much into it as I am right at the beginning) ala later Etrian Odyssey - I wish they would just force people to accept what they went with; we have all made mistakes in choosing directions for characters in RPGS but we live with it, don't we? That's part of the fun IMO; don't allow people to rub out their mistakes on their character sheets. Maybe a hard mode can be implemented where this is locked?

 

[aweigh]

It would be kind of impossible to have worse combat than MMX tho...

nice write up, btw. i also don't really understand the insistance on forcing mouselook.

ok, you use the mouse to click on stuff and pick it up, activate it, etc, so why not just have it grid-based with everything on the same plane as you and you can just walk up to the dumb book/barrel/whatever and press "E" key, or whatever, and take it.

oh right, normies. hell you can even KEEP the 3d environment and just make pressing the Confirm Key (E, Enter, whatever it it is) grab stuff in a radius.

EDIT: btw, PAPER SORCERER utilizes 3d space and mouselook, just like BT4, but PS also allows complete keyboard control and movement, just like you describe.

 

[makchanka]

Good god, I hate what's become of blobbers. Grimoire really is the best we could have hoped for, which is horrifying, because that game was made by a bargain bin david icke.