Preview Bard's Tale IV Kickstarter Update #3: Here comes the eye candy!

[Shannow]

This thread needs more:

However the more I look at it, the more I come to the conclusion that nothing in the video shown is representative of the planned game (except the visual quality). But not the 4 players, not the headbobbing, not the way enemies appear, not the amount of enemies, not the zooming out, not the placement of characters, not the combat view itself.

You guys fucking know that nothing is set in stone at the beginning of a KS campaign. In fact the devs will usually want to keep it pretty vague so that more people can give in to wishful projection. (Of course on the Codex that means expecting the worst.) Just think about at what stage TB was decided for Torment. Or when Traits & Quirks will enter W2.
Not that the baseless bitching doesn't serve a purpose. InXile now know that limited to 4-characters parties would not sit well with the codex. (Which I'll simply define as the "hardcore fans".)
And blobber-style combat vs. pull out for iso would at least be worthy of discussion (eg. in polls).

 

[Love]

MCA passed the chance to be involved in (possibly lead?) a second Torment game. Tim Cain denied the opportunity to work on Wasteland 2. The old gods are dead.

Are Fargo and Cain on good terms (again)?

 

[Lurker King]

MCA passed the chance to be involved in (possibly lead?) a second Torment game. Tim Cain denied the opportunity to work on Wasteland 2. The old gods are dead.

The old gods are burnout.

 

[Kz3r0]

Are Fargo and Cain on good terms (again)?

Probably not, strange however that he left this opportuniity pass just because of previous disagreements, it's not that at Obsidian he has such a big role creatively speaking.

 

[Infinitron]

Are Fargo and Cain on good terms (again)?

Probably not, strange however that he left this opportuniity pass just because of previous disagreements, it's not that at Obsidian he has such a big role creatively speaking.

Re: Cain and Wasteland 2

It's unclear when he was asked this. It could have been before Kickstarter, and before Tim joined Obsidian. Remember that Wasteland 2 was originally supposed to be a publisher-funded project led by Jason Anderson.

But no publisher was interested. Tim might not have been interested in joining what seemed like a hopeless project.

 

[Athelas]

Are Fargo and Cain on good terms (again)?

Probably not, strange however that he left this opportuniity pass just because of previous disagreements, it's not that at Obsidian he has such a big role creatively speaking.

Tim Cain's husband also works at Obsidian.

 

[Dorateen]

Did anyone else pick up on the kickstarter tag-line change? Now it's "Join the RPG Renaissance!" I wonder when that happened, or if it slipped by unnoticed.

I guess Fargo realized he's not reviving Dungeon Crawlers at this point, anyway.

 

[Darkzone]

Did anyone else pick up on the kickstarter tag-line change? Now it's "Join the RPG Renaissance!" I wonder when that happened, or if it slipped by unnoticed.
I guess Fargo realized he's not reviving Dungeon Crawlers at this point, anyway.

He should from the beginning have kept it more vague. "Dungeon Crawler" is not the best advertisement nowadays. Today People have different expectations then in the Bard's Tale 1985 times. They want a deep story, interesting PC's and NPCs in intersting places and with their own story. And not just level grinding with some faceless explorations. Torment builds also on unique characters, that react according to the players decision. Perhaps this would be also good for The Bard's Tale.

 

[AstroZombie]

I thought that Legends of Grimrock 2 had great graphics and their budget was a tiny fraction of what inXile's working with. In other words, money have nothing to do with it since it's not a sandbox world.

Good point, I had forgotten about Grimrock.

 

[mondblut]

Torment builds also on unique characters, that react according to the players decision. Perhaps this would be also good for The Bard's Tale.

 

[DawnrazorDCLXVI]

I find the whole trailer pretty strange, not because it doesn't look good, but because I don't see anything of the The Bard's Tale in there. It looked more like a successor for Stonekeep, which is a bad, bad thing imo.

You'd be surprised how popular Stonekeep still manages to be even to this day. What kills it more than anything is that it appeared in an era when developers seemed to be filling out space on CD-Rom with blurry full-motion video because they didn't yet know what to do with all the new space they had to work with. And the graphics and gameplay from that era hold up worse than any other I can think of. Still, it was a hell of a lot better than Lands of Lore 2.

Hey! Stop bashing Guardians of Destiny.

That was my favorite game.

Either way, this will be the first time I suspend my use of the word epic.

Epic!

Fallout 4 = Fail.

 

[shadow9d9]

4 person party really limits replay value in these kind of rpgs imo. I loved Might and Magic X, but the max of 4 really hurt it imo.

 

[Darkzone]

Torment builds also on unique characters, that react according to the players decision. Perhaps this would be also good for The Bard's Tale.

Ok i admit, i just want simply The Bard back, and i have just to sell the idea somehow. Hey T:ToN was the most successful cRPG Kickstarter. So i try to merge this both things... Not convinced?

 

[Shevek]

4 person party really limits replay value in these kind of rpgs imo. I loved Might and Magic X, but the max of 4 really hurt it imo.

Yes and no. If there is a really strong character system and multiple classes or builds can fit the requisite roles, then a four person party is just fine. If the character system is too straightforward and you pretty much always need x classes on a given play through, then, ya, a 4 person party would suck for replay.

 

[Turok]

Either way, this will be the first time I will make a good use of the word epic.

Fallout 4 = Epic Fail!

Fixed.

 

[Turok]

This Kickstart is kinda vague for most people, i contribute with the game (right now $20 is a lot of money here in Venezuela) because is Brian Fargo, but most people are not sure if this game is going to be like the one on Xbox 1 or the 80's ones or something new.

So far the goal has not been reach, is weird.

 

[Sensuki]

I can't help but feel the KS is going a bit slower than expected. By no means bad, as it's going to get funded but I'm sort of looking at this and thinking "they want 2.5 million+", with the 1.25 minimum ask. I dunno if it's gonna get there. Maybe 2M though.

 

[Ovplain]

Yeah, this thing should definitely finish somewhere around the 2m mark. Still quiet a nice pile of money.

This is what two million dollars looks like:D They've got no business whining or feeling sorry for themselves. Torment should fucking sell well too and provide a bunch more cash.

I backed all three of their Kickstarters and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't going to back their fourth. But I really hope they take the 'Shadowrun: HK' route next time.:S Loved how they just came out and said 'This game is definitely getting made and this is the kind of game we can make with the money we have. We would also love to add this, this and this, but need X amount of cash to make it happen. Halp.'

 

[Darkzone]

This Kickstart is kinda vague for most people, i contribute with the game (right now $20 is a lot of money here in Venezuela) because is Brian Fargo, but most people are not sure if this game is going to be like the one on Xbox 1 or the 80's ones or something new.
So far the goal has not been reach, is weird.

Your investment either honors you, or tells that you are not smart. But either way it is your money and you can do what ever you like with it, as long as you do not buy a weapon to kill innocent people. About the goal: no it is for the first time like a normal cRPG kickstarter normaly is.
Fargo's WL2 or W1 / W2 for free and his promotions has only pulled more money at the beginning of the kickstarter, which is not a bad move because it is also advantageous to have as much backers as possible on the first days (you have much more nodes for growing of the backers graph).
Now the trend seems to go to the SH:HK nivea of normal daily pledges in money or perhaps even worse the T:ToN normal daily pledges in percent to the first two days of Torments kickstarter.

Perhaps it is only a bad weekend. If the growth amount of daily backers stagnates around 300-500 backers daily for the next 30 days then they will stay below the WL2 level.
Comparison of famous Kickstarters, according to their backers and money.
Overall at this time to start a Kickstarter was not so good idea, and Fargo should have waited for the release and reception of the WL2 EE and the T:ToN Beta. He is trying to avoid the sommer hole, but falls into the summer sales of GoG and later Steam. In my opinion starting the campaign at the end of october had been a much better idea. And the longer nights and the mood of Autumn and Winter would have supported the look and feel and music of The Bard's Tale. But if you live in sunny california, you don't think about europe and north america (major contributor of the kickstarters).

 

[SausageInYourFace]

I don't know if he is that flexible in chosing the right time for the KS though. He has said in several interviews that he does not want to lay off workers so he has a certain time frame to come up with a new product for people to work on before the current project is finished.

I think blobbers are just not as popular as isometric RPGs so personally I never expected it to be hugely successful (though the perfomance is certainly not bad either so far). What surprises me a bit is that Fargo said in another interview that he hopes Bards Tale will make as much money as Torment.

Edit:

Here's an interview with Brian Fargo at Digital Dragons that I missed: http://www.gamepressure.com/e.asp?ID=124

Some people are afraid that inXile Entertainment is too small a studio to simultaneously handle creating two big projects – Torment: Tides of Numenera and The Bard’s Tale IV – while also providing continuous support for Wasteland 2. Isn’t it too much to take on all at once?

I have to always operate this way because the last thing you want to do is to finish a project, fire everybody and bring them back later. 90 percent of my company is on Torment right now. On the console version of Wasteland 2 I have... three people. You’re right, making three games at once would be a lot of work but making a conversion is not nearly the same as the effort of creating a game from scratch. I have a couple of people working on The Bard’s Tale IV now. When those responsible for porting Wasteland 2 will finish their work they will come to The Bard’s Tale IV team so it’s going to be 6-7 people then. When Torment began people started slowly coming to its team from Wasteland 2 and when it finishes people will have a break and then come back for another project ready to go. Otherwise, if I were working only on Tormentand not doing anything else they would get to the end and I would have nothing for them to do. So it’s always super-important to have another project ready for them. It’s how I always worked before at Interplay and it’s exactly how we did it with Wasteland 2 and later on.

[...]

Still, there are also developers who announce a new Kickstarter campaign even before they release their previously funded game, like Obsidian Entertainment did with the rumored Pillars of Eternity 2, and Slightly Mad Studios with Project CARS 2.

We did the same thing. We announced Wasteland 2 and meanwhile we revealed Torment: Tides of Numenera. People said: “How can you do that, you haven’t delivered the first one yet.” I’ve been delivering games for 30 years so we get it, and we’ll deliver Wasteland 2. And now we are doing it again. The thing is, as I said before – you don’t want to fire everyone when you are done. I could just sit and wait until Torment is done but what possibilities would I have without money coming in? I need to have the next project ready to go before I finish the first one.

Also:

If you hired such a talented and renowned singer I assume you have a large budget for this game...

Well, we’re hoping to get a large budget for the game. Basically, I make games for the budget I can get. I hope we will raise something around the score of Torment: Tides of Numenera but I can’t count on that.

 

[Sensuki]

Hahah. Yeah right.

Torment had the advantage off coming off the tail end of the 2012 Kickstarter RPG Buzz. There hasn't been a consistent flow of top end projects since then.

 

[Athelas]

Torment had the advantage of being motherfuckin' Torment.

Those funding graphs show some interesting differences between the Kickstarter campaigns. PoE had the weakest start (relatively speaking), but its growth curve seemed to be steeper than that of the others. I'm guessing it was all those stretch goals. Those come at the risk of negatively affecting the game, though.

 

[Darkzone]

Hahah. Yeah right.
Torment had the advantage off coming off the tail end of the 2012 Kickstarter RPG Buzz. There hasn't been a consistent flow of top end projects since then.

Correct.

Torment had the advantage of being motherfuckin' Torment.

And motherfuckin correct.

Interesting is that in the article Fargo speaks about 6-7 PCs.
I would in Fargo's place invest the 500k for The Bard's Tale kickstarter and bridge over to end of October, and then tell the people that i have already invested 500k and that inXile will invest another 750k if the kickstarter gathers the 1.25mio.

Those funding graphs show some interesting differences between the Kickstarter campaigns. PoE had the weakest start (relatively speaking), but its growth curve seemed to be steeper than that of the others. I'm guessing it was all those stretch goals. Those come at the risk of negatively affecting the game, though.

PoE had it seems a good incentive for Backers at the end. Was it their stretch goals or Fargo's help?

 

[Infinitron]

"but I can't count on that" is the operative part of that sentence.

 

[Weirdstuffinspace]

Are Fargo and Cain on good terms (again)?

Probably not, strange however that he left this opportuniity pass just because of previous disagreements, it's not that at Obsidian he has such a big role creatively speaking.

Re: Cain and Wasteland 2

It's unclear when he was asked this. It could have been before Kickstarter, and before Tim joined Obsidian. Remember that Wasteland 2 was originally supposed to be a publisher-funded project led by Jason Anderson.

But no publisher was interested. Tim might not have been interested in joining what seemed like a hopeless project.

So why join obsidian?