Bard's Tale The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep - Director's Cut

[Zombra]

Plenty of excellent studio musicians are lackluster performers, and vice versa.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[theSavant]

The nomination for the best song "Across the Seven Realms" is well deserved, but I still don't understand why they used the slow-motion version in the OST instead of the more catchy version in the game.
Which version do my fellow Bard's Tale IV players prefer? Here's somewhat of a comparison:

Slow-motion version from the OST: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFLkdRH1_nI&feature=youtu.be&t=1688 @time 28:08
Catchy version from the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opXscHH2taw&feature=youtu.be&t=47 @time: 00:47

Note that the catchy version from the game is different in that a male character (Rabbie) sings the lyrics and not a female character. And while the song is also performed by a female character (Fiona) in the game, it's without any instrumental accompaniment (which I found a bit unfortunate). That said, the OST version is not bad either, but just not as good in comparison imo. I definitely would have liked the versions from the game released, or better - a compilation of all versions of this song. Could have listened to that all day long.

I think "One day I'll be returning..." (true to the lyrics of the song) to the game, just to hear my preferred version...

 

[Nyast]

If I'm not mistaken, the second version ( with the female singer ) appears in the post-credits of the game. I agree it's catchier and overall better. Haven't been able to find it on youtube, unfortunately

 

[Infinitron]

Unfortunately, Bard's Tale IV's data files are ENCRYPTED (Unreal Engine 4 feature) so assets such as portraits and music can't be extracted. Sad!

 

[Infinitron]

Director's Cut coming in June: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/the-bards-tale-iv/posts/2418144

Early 2019 Update
Posted by inXile entertainment (Creator)

Production Notes
Hi all, Paul here. We hope everyone had a fantastic holiday season and is having a good 2019 so far. For us, it has been a very busy and momentous last few months. As we move into the new year, things are coming more into focus and we would like to provide some quick updates on the progression of The Bard’s Tale IV’s updated 2.0 version, as well as an update on the Mac & Linux versions of the game.

A New Journey for inXile

As many of you know, we were recently acquired by Microsoft, which is a great boon as we plan out future titles and has the added benefit of providing opportunities to improve our current and in-development game titles, including The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep. We are very happy to be part of this new federation of Microsoft studios. As creators and game developers, we look forward to leveraging and utilizing the many tools, features, and services that Microsoft can offer.

2.0 expands to become the Director’s Cut
We are still in development on the free DLC patch, which also includes a number of other player-requested features and items off of our own post-release support list. As the scope of the patch has expanded (and continues to), we decided that it warranted a more formal title than 2.0. When released, it will turn the game into “The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep - Director’s Cut”. We are introducing several new features, most notably the previously mentioned DLC and an engine update, a larger undertaking allowing us to further improve performance and optimization. Many of those features were discussed in our last update, and include:

• A new dungeon and story line featuring new enemy types
• New items (master-crafted gear and Dwarven Weapons)
• Inventory filtering
• Expanded balancing efforts across the entire game (combat, economy, abilities, etc.) based on player feedback and our own testing
• A new Song of Exploration allowing you to bypass puzzles if those aren't your jam
• Additional character portraits
• A new intro animatic
• Expanded work on improving localization
• Updated game engine
• Improved performance and stability
• Improved level art
• Reworked main menu
• Numerous bug fixes

And much more! We are also currently working with Microsoft to improve and optimize our gamepad support. The Director's Cut is scheduled to go live in June.

Mac and Linux Users:
We’ve seen your comments and hear you. The Mac and Linux builds are making great progress in co-development and parity to our main version with our development builds and current feature production pipeline. We have a full-time dedicated team for each platform (Mac & Linux), and those teams are working concurrently with our main features dev teams.

The issue we have as developers is that we are unable to finalize the Mac and Linux versions of the game and continue to simultaneously make such sweeping changes to it. We wanted to resolve the issues that affected the PC launch before we shipped Mac and Linux and this dovetailed directly into the work we began doing for the Director's Cut, effectively becoming one continuous effort since September. This is why these versions need to go live the same day as the PC version of The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep - Director’s Cut.

We know it’s frustrating that you backed us early and have such a long delay but it just didn’t make sense to stop production in order to finalize these two versions and then circle back and update them months later. The Mac and Linux users will get the benefit of all the new features we are adding along with all the optimization, stability, and performance improvements so far, including our latest UE4 engine update, and that means tracking those development cycles to the current build.

For these reasons, we are releasing the Mac and Linux versions at the same time as The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep - Director’s Cut. We greatly appreciate everyone's patience with The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep - Director’s Cut, and we believe all backers on all platforms will enjoy the new and polished features when the new version goes live.

Until Next Time,
Paul Marzagalli
Public Relations & Community Manager
@phimseto


Follow Us:
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[V_K]

• A new Song of Exploration allowing you to bypass puzzles if those aren't your jam

I guess that'll be an ok 2-hour game.

 

[samuraigaiden]

How is this game right now?

 

[Gord]

It's ok. Nothing groundbreaking, but can be fun unless you expect something specifically very much like the old trilogy - in that case play the remasters.

 

[Zombra]

Director's Cut coming in June

Nice, glad I waited.

Who is the "director"? Whose cut is this?

 

[Country_Gravy]

Director's Cut coming in June

Nice, glad I waited.

Who is the "director"? Whose cut is this?

Jews

 

[theSavant]

The nomination for the best song "Across the Seven Realms" is well deserved, but I still don't understand why they used the slow-motion version in the OST instead of the more catchy version in the game.
Which version do my fellow Bard's Tale IV players prefer? Here's somewhat of a comparison:

Slow version from the OST: https://youtu.be/NFLkdRH1_nI?t=1688
Catchy version from the game: https://youtu.be/opXscHH2taw?t=47

Note that the catchy version from the game is different in that a male character (Rabbie) sings the lyrics and not a female character. And while the song is also performed by a female character (Fiona) in the game, it's without any instrumental accompaniment (which I found a bit unfortunate). That said, the OST version is not bad either, but just not as good in comparison imo. I definitely would have liked the versions from the game released, or better - a compilation of all versions of this song. Could have listened to that all day long.

I think "One day I'll be returning..." (true to the lyrics of the song) to the game, just to hear my preferred version...

As a follow-up I'm adding that the song performed by Fiona (and with instruments) is indeed the game... well in the credits. And it's true, that the ending is "choices & consequences":
- if you choose Fiona, she will sing that song in the end credits https://youtu.be/lRw6gSJe32A?t=4602
- if you choose Rabbi, *he will sing that song in the end credits https://youtu.be/MZIdtk3Hrdo?t=1257

*This version is once again not exactly the same as the one he sings in the tavern (but closer than the OST version). I think the only difference between the credits and the tavern version is, that the tavern version has less instruments. It only has the guitar and no violins, flutes. Without these it's actually more comfortable to listen to multiple times in a row.

Aside from that: if you wonder why your name doesn't appear in the credits under "Kickstarter Backers": only +75$ backers are listed there.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Infinitron said: ↑
Director's Cut coming in June

Zombra said: ↑
Nice, glad I waited.

Who is the "director"? Whose cut is this?

Country_Gravysaid: ↑
Jews

Jews? But....I don't want a circumcision. And I like eating pork. Pork chops, ham, bacon.....sweet and sour spare pork ribs.

 

[Incendax]

why the fuck do the NPCs in this game look like this?? was that a deliberate choice of "style" or did inXile hire the character designers that worked on Oblivion? seriously, just look at them.

Just started this after Operencia, and my god the character models look like Slappy the Dummy.
Especially those cold dead eyes.

 

[Grauken]

My god, you found Chucky's dad

 

[Barbalos]

Agreed that the character models are beyond hideous, disturbing really. I turned down the graphics settings for Models to medium so I don't have to see those monstrosities in too much detail.

Not just the faces either, which are the worst part. The proportions also seem all wrong.

 

[Martyr]

why the fuck do the NPCs in this game look like this?? was that a deliberate choice of "style" or did inXile hire the character designers that worked on Oblivion? seriously, just look at them.

Just started this after Operencia, and my god the character models look like Slappy the Dummy.
Especially those cold dead eyes.

yeah, actually they've always reminded me of dolls. they just don't look like living humans. the NPCs in Realms of Arkania HD can look better than those in BT4, what were the designers even thinking??

I still have this game sitting in my backlog, haven't played since I've finished Kylearan's Tower. all those tedious, annoying, time-consuming puzzles completely drained my will to push onward.

 

[newtmonkey]

I'm 34 hours in, so nearly at the end, but I completely lost all interest in the game between the puzzles (they are not hard; I even like puzzles... just not mixed in with my RPGs) and the poor performance. I'll get back into it someday and finish it, hopefully this year.

I hated the game at first, refunded it actually, but bought it again later and came to enjoy it for the first 30 hours or whatever. The combat never gets more interesting (in fact, it gets LESS interesting because it's easy to break if you have more than one "rogue" and "mage" character in your party), the puzzles are the same from the beginning to end, and the exploration/itemization is poor: the stuff you find in treasure chests is almost always worse than the stuff you bought at a shop 5-10 hours back.

It's not a bad game, now that they've fixed the crucial bugs, but it's not a top tier RPG by any means. Back in the day, it's the kind of RPG you'd maybe see an advertisement in CGW or PC Gamer but otherwise never hear about it, and then maybe pick it up sometime on the discount table and bring it home and have an okay time with it. It's decent, now.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

LOL @ the poster above actually turning down his graphics details to medium. I play RPGs to escape from reality and the horrors of contemplating unfortunate people with medical deformities and syndromes. Save that for the monsters. Don't want to be seeing human character models one right after another in a loooong RPG with faces and bodies that are just one big ugly stick. It gets oppressive.

 

[Barbalos]

There is supposed to be a Director's Cut coming sometime in June which will add the ability to skip puzzles with an Exploration Song, along with some other stuff. I just started playing and just found out about that, I might wait til then to play much more. I'm having a lot of stuttering, UI lag, battle lag, janky little issues like that very often too, and there is supposed to be some performance improvements in the DC too so we'll see.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Still waiting for the Producer's Cut, which will add a Song of Exploration allowing you to skip combat.

After that, they can release a Publisher's Cut, with a Song of Exploration allowing you to skip the entire game!

 

[Metro]

When will the Humble Bundle $1 tier cut come out?

 

[ProphetSword]

There is supposed to be a Director's Cut coming sometime in June which will add the ability to skip puzzles with an Exploration Song, along with some other stuff.

So, like 95% of the game, then?

After that, they can release a Publisher's Cut, with a Song of Exploration allowing you to skip the entire game!

I must already have that version. I've skipped it more times than I can count.

 

[Grauken]

I'm 34 hours in, so nearly at the end, but I completely lost all interest in the game between the puzzles (they are not hard; I even like puzzles... just not mixed in with my RPGs) and the poor performance. I'll get back into it someday and finish it, hopefully this year.

I hated the game at first, refunded it actually, but bought it again later and came to enjoy it for the first 30 hours or whatever. The combat never gets more interesting (in fact, it gets LESS interesting because it's easy to break if you have more than one "rogue" and "mage" character in your party), the puzzles are the same from the beginning to end, and the exploration/itemization is poor: the stuff you find in treasure chests is almost always worse than the stuff you bought at a shop 5-10 hours back.

It's not a bad game, now that they've fixed the crucial bugs, but it's not a top tier RPG by any means. Back in the day, it's the kind of RPG you'd maybe see an advertisement in CGW or PC Gamer but otherwise never hear about it, and then maybe pick it up sometime on the discount table and bring it home and have an okay time with it. It's decent, now.

A bit like the Stonekeep of our time, eh

 

[newtmonkey]

A bit like the Stonekeep of our time, eh

I was thinking of this game exactly (also Anvil of Dawn) when I wrote that