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

[Infinitron]

https://www.inxile-entertainment.com/bardstale4




https://af.gog.com/game/the_bards_tale_iv_directors_cut_standard_edition?as=1649904300

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/the-bards-tale-iv/posts/2291620

It's Showtime!

The Tale Continues
Hello Adventurers!

David Rogers here.

The time has finally come to, once again, answer the call to adventure and save Skara Brae. Huzzah! The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep is a real work of passion; not just by our team, but by you, our backers. Thank you all for helping us to further the Bard's Tale legacy. This game wouldn't exist if it weren't for your initial and continued support.

Thank You.

David Rogers
Creative Director

Hello Adventures of Caith!

Jeff Pellegrin, Producer, here. I want to personally thank you all for continue support and patience for The Bard’s Tale IV.

What an amazing experience developing The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep has been. I believe we made some excellent development choices, and produced a title full of great design elements, content, and amazing assets in art, sound, and music.

I want to reiterate my thanks for everyone who participated in the forums, alpha and beta tests. Your feedback, comments, suggestions, and issues reported were all vital elements in the production process. Please keep them coming post launch!

Again, thank you all for bringing the the Bard back!

Jeff “Pacatus” Pellegrin
Producer

Accessing Your Backer Goods
Hi everyone, QA Lead Daniel Dean here just to wish all of you well and provide some information on how to access your digital goods. We have sent you emails from our backer site CrowdOx requesting you specify your choice of Steam or GOG.com key. Once specified, you will receive your key through email.

The game key you receive is for the Standard Edition of the game regardless of what tier you backed at. All your other extras will be available for download from CrowdOx, we have begun sending those emails and you should receive those some time today.

In terms of accessing your in-game items, the "Bardic Brian Skin" PDF comes with instructions on how to activate those items in your game.

Please use our forums and our support desk to let us know of any issues you find so that we can get working on them right away!

We hope you enjoy The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep!

Daniel Dean
QA Lead

The Voices on the Street
As we've been waiting to for the reviews to come in, we've gotten some feedback from some press that we wanted to share here. Since they couldn't be too detailed, they made it up by being especially declarative.

"The Bard's Tale does a great job of taking a modern approach while not losing its roots and old school charm. The voiced dialog, ambient sounds, and chatter of NPCs help create a very immersive adventure." - RPGamer

"'Bard's Tale IV' feels like a mix between such games as 'Legend of Grimrock' or very old 'Eye of the Beholder' series and early installments of 'The Elder Scrolls' franchise, particularly 'Arena' and to some extent - 'Daggerfall'. We have more freedom if compared to traditional crawlers, we are not doing the tango dance when fighting and we can do more things other than looking for that dagger +1 and that one pesky switch."- Gamezilla

and our personal favorite,

"It's a goddamn masterpiece." - ReviewFix/Old School Gamer Magazine

As the team was working some crazy hours to get the game ready, these comments were inspiration for us to keep going. For all the voices that we heard, though, the most important ones to be heard are yours, and today, we get to finally share with you this game that you helped empower us to create. We hope you like it, and we thank you for being a part of this amazing journey to bring back The Bard's Tale. Enjoy the game and welcome back to Skara Brae! You've been missed!

Brian Fargo
CEO/Leader inXile
@BrianFargo

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.mmorpg.com/columns/bards-tale-4-review-an-epic-timeless-tale-1000013036 - 8.8/10
http://www.thumbculture.co.uk/bards-tale-iv

Also, some reviews in progress. Maybe SophosTheWise was right!

https://techraptor.net/content/bards-tale-iv-drunkenly-stumbles
https://venturebeat.com/2018/09/18/the-bards-tale-iv-barrows-deep-review/

 

[theSavant]

Damn, I thought I could download the manual and strategy guide extra (I could in some GOG games), but there is only the GOG client or 10x4GB part files... wtf? ...muh

 

[Infinitron]

Damn, I thought I could download the manual and strategy guide extra (I could in some GOG games), but there is only the GOG client or 10x4GB part files... wtf? ...muh

Bummer, it's a 23.5GB download on Steam.

 

[Grauken]

Damn, I thought I could download the manual and strategy guide extra (I could in some GOG games), but there is only the GOG client or 10x4GB part files... wtf? ...muh

InXile just sent another backer update, we all got the standard edition and if we want the extras we have to go through their crappy portal

Hi everyone, QA Lead Daniel Dean here just to wish all of you well and provide some information on how to access your digital goods. We have sent you emails from our backer site CrowdOx requesting you specify your choice of Steam or GOG.com key. Once specified, you will receive your key through email.

The game key you receive is for the Standard Edition of the game regardless of what tier you backed at. All your other extras will be available for download from CrowdOx, we have begun sending those emails and you should receive those some time today.

 

[Bara]

Damn, I thought I could download the manual and strategy guide extra (I could in some GOG games), but there is only the GOG client or 10x4GB part files... wtf? ...muh

Check again if you haven't already I'm seeing the extras on the web page now.

Ah nevermind if you meant the backer page this one I never backed.

 

[Infinitron]

I doubt anybody expects this game to sell much, but for the record, it starts out at #3 on Steam under PUBG: https://store.steampowered.com/search/?os=win&filter=globaltopsellers

So at the very least it's not a complete unknown.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.gameinformer.com/review/the-bards-tale-iv/a-dissonant-tune - 7.75/10
https://www.selectbutton.com/reviews/the-bards-tale-iv-barrows-deep-review/ - 8/10

 

[Fairfax]

Come on, Brian.

 

[Infinitron]

That was actually a stretch goal, lol: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/the-bards-tale-iv/posts/1290451

 

[fantadomat]

Come on, Brian.

Can you beat the shit out of him?

 

[Moink]

Is there anything more off putting?

 

[Infinitron]

Premium is the only one worth buying over the standard edition (in-game items)

Platinum = Premium + Soundtrack
Ultimate = Premium + Soundtrack + Bard's Tale Trilogy Remastered

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.savingcontent.com/2018/09/18/the-bards-tale-iv-barrows-deep-review/ - 4/5

More in-progress reviews:

https://www.pcworld.com/article/3305853/gaming/the-bards-tale-iv-review-impressions.html
https://www.destructoid.com/review-in-progress-the-bard-s-tale-iv-barrow-s-deep-523195.phtml
http://gamingtrend.com/feature/prev...st-8-hours-of-the-bards-tale-iv-barrows-deep/

No major PC gaming sites, just one review on Metacritic: https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/the-bards-tale-iv-barrows-deep

SophosTheWise was right, they delivered the review keys late.

 

[Jimmious]

Downloading. I didn't blob for A LONG LONG time. Lets see!

 

[SophosTheWise]

I actually like the ACG review. Downloading now.

 

[MRY]

Man, that Destructoid review. I couldn't bring myself to go past this part:

Character models look amateur, and so do the animations. Character animation loops will often jerk back to their starting spot as I sigh and rest my head in my hands. At times things seem to have a certain stylized look to them, only to have the player turn around and be face-to-face with a butt-ugly NPC that has some serious clipping issues. As much effort as the lore and dialogue put forth to suck the player in, the visuals quickly remind everyone that they have better things to be doing.

As if it weren't bad enough to be staring at bland visuals, the PC performance is also sub-par. Framerate dips and stuttering are present immediately, which makes little to no sense given the aforementioned lack of quality visuals. I tried playing around with the settings but saw little to no difference. Plus, why the hell am I turning down the graphics on a game that looks the way The Bard's Tale IV does?!

It's a shame--I remember thinking the game looked spectacular when the first videos were shown. I guess I've been out of cutting-edge gaming for so long, though, that I have no idea what passes for good these days.

 

[Sam Ecorners]

So, is this the game that's going to sink this ship?

 

[Jack Dandy]

ACG video does really make it all sound nice.

 

[bataille]

The question now is: when is director's cut coming out? I still occasionally get PTSD flashbacks to playing Wasteland 2 on its release...

 

[Infinitron]

The question now is: when is director's cut coming out? I still occasionally get PTSD flashbacks to playing Wasteland 2 on its release...

I don't think there's going to be one. Usually "Director's Cuts" pay for themselves by being multiplatform releases for previously PC-exclusive games (Wasteland 2, D:OS 1, D:OS 2). The game is supposed to come out on consoles later this year. So I guess it'll be about done then, but that's not enough time to make it a full-fledged new edition.

 

[SkiNNyBane]

Downloading. I didn't blob for A LONG LONG time. Lets see!

I've never blobed.

 

[BEvers]

Steam rating is 15%, Negative. We need that day 1 patch.

 

[Jimmious]

Steam rating is 15%, Negative. We need that day 1 patch!

Technical issues and missing keys apparently