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

[Diablo169]

Roxy Friday is the same name that was used to trademark Torment. i WANT to believe!

 

[Crooked Bee]

...As long as it isn't a subpar isometric Bard's Tale, I'm okay with that.

 

[circ]

Wonder who owns the IP for Centauri Alliance. Maybe I forget his name, BT coder that went and became theologist or something.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Wonder who owns the IP for Centauri Alliance. Maybe I forget his name, BT coder that went and became theologist or something.

Cranford. Though I doubt he owns the IP, as it was published by Broderbund.

 

[Diablo169]

So on the off chance we do get Meantime (and I really hope we do), what would it become today? The original concept was very much Bill & Ted. Would it become something else today?

 

[Luka-boy]

I don't know, but if it's true... what if the game starts in the late 80s and at some point the party travels to the future and find themselves in Wasteland 2?

See? This is why Meantime has to happen. Imagine the crazy ideas and theories we'd talk about while it's in pre-production.

 

[Jaesun]

Maybe it will be Dragon Wars 2

I just checked and that trademark is still dead. Other than a handful of people on the codex, most people don't even know what the hell that even is.

 

[SarcasticUndertones]

I can't believe you pulled that off AGAIN.

Yeah, he had trouble sticking it back on the last time.

 

[eric__s]

Wow, so it's confirmed. Really hoping Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space 2 isn't a Grimrock clone. I don't mind the games, but there are so many now and I just don't see what Buzz would bring to the genre. But who knows, we'll see.

 

[m_s0]

I thought InXile's next RPS is going to be Torment. Why do they want to work on two projects simultaneously? Isn't InXile a small studio with incompetent developers insufficient manpower?

ToN is next. It's already happened once:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-numenera

We've discovered that the best way to create a deep and rich RPG is to begin the pre-production process long before the production team have finished their current project. If we waited to begin the design work for a large scale RPG until after the programming team has completed their work, our budget would increase by 50% or more. This would result in the hiring and firing process that happens all too often in our industry. We want to break that model and keep our great team together. This is why it makes sense for us to begin work on Torment now rather than later.

So now that ToN is in production they've got another game in the pre-production stage.

the only high profile failure was from the Planetary Anihilation devs and that was mostly their fault for blowing up trust than anything.

You're forgetting Wildman. Possibly also Shaker, unless of course you want to count that campaign as a joke.

 

[Athelas]

That does mean someone other than the Torment team will do the pre-production work. I'm not sure that's such a good idea.

We've discovered that the best way to create a deep and rich RPG is to begin the pre-production process long before the production team have finished their current project. If we waited to begin the design work for a large scale RPG until after the programming team has completed their work, our budget would increase by 50% or more. This would result in the hiring and firing process that happens all too often in our industry. We want to break that model and keep our great team together. This is why it makes sense for us to begin work on Torment now rather than later.

This isn't what actually happened since T:ToN ended up having an almost completely different team and Wasteland 2 got delayed by a year from its original release date.

 

[Infinitron]

That does mean someone other than the Torment team will do the pre-production work. I'm not sure that's such a good idea.

Let's find out who that other team is going to be first, eh?

 

[Athelas]

I'd rather whine about it now.

 

[buzz]

Wouldn't Colin and the writers/designers technically be less occupied with Torment the moment it goes into full production? They could still work on the newer title.

 

[SniperHF]

I imagine the lack of "HEY LETS GET OLD WASTELAND GUYS X&Y WHO DON'T REALLY WANT TO HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH THIS OR EVEN BE IN THE GAMES INDUSTRY ANYMORE" will help regardless of who is running pre-production. Any hired guns like KS stretch goals will be like Torment people; brought in to do specific things.

WL2 doesn't appear at all from the outside to have had a pre-production on the level of Torment. Sure they had stuff from pitches in years gone by but that's hardly the same when entirely different people are involved years later. It also clearly suffered from the same design style as Fallout 2 in terms of cohesion.

Inxile KS #3 needs a man who rules with a polite email to have some measure of control over the whole project like Saunders.

 

[Diablo169]

I want Ziets as creative lead on this.

 

[Darkzone]

Maybe it will be Dragon Wars 2

I just checked and that trademark is still dead. Other than a handful of people on the codex, most people don't even know what the hell that even is.

Dragon Wars 2 could be interesting, a drowning world with many different cultures. And it would appear as you would travel in time, if you enter a different city. Wonder if you would start over again as a gladiator.

 

[Cazzeris]

I hope they learn from Wasteland 2. Before reading the vision document, these would be my personal suggestions for Meantime:

- A pre-production time long enough to make sure all the interesting features get added in the game (things like perks/traits/stealth's absence in WL2 shouldn't happen again). Also, all the areas/quest design must be developed with all the mechanics in mind from the day 1.
- Please this time make it with 2D graphics. I don't personally hate WL2's 3D graphics (enough people do so to consider making 2D graphics because of this anyway), but rotating a camera in an old-school RPG is always a pain in the ass to me and after seeing games like UnderRail or Torment I've been reminded how sweet the 2D isometric environments can look. Unity's rough-looking assets shouldn't be a problem this time.
- I'd prefer donating to a 20h long game if it's dense, coherent, reactive, detailed, polished and enough lots of proper C&C to make it replayable than a 100h empty, soulless and linear game.
- Some of the Torment's team writers should join Meantime's one since they're very talented and could offer valuable help at making a coherent and deep storyline that features time-travelling.
- What SniperHF said is a must.
- Make sure to catch that 80's magic. Animated portraits would help.
- Be ambitious and let the player decide what epoque want to visit instead of just making another linear story just adding varied locations and epoques.
- Try to be loyal to the project's rumors and original ideas like featuring Albert Einstein in the cover art. That would be pretty cool in my honest opinion.
- Don't fuck the game's localization up this time.
- Don't fuck the physical rewards' management and shipping this time (and deliver an old-school sized cardboard box and a "true" cloth map instead of metal/wide&slim box and a synthetic-looking map).

 

[circ]

I wouldn't mind good looking rag dolls this time around.

 

[TheGreatOne]

- A pre-production time long enough to make sure all the interesting features get added in the game (things like perks/traits/stealth's absence in WL2 shouldn't happen again). Also, all the areas/quest design must be developed with all the mechanics in mind from the day 1.
- Please this time make it with 2D graphics. I don't personally hate WL2's 3D graphics (enough people do so to consider making 2D graphics because of this anyway), but rotating a camera in an old-school RPG is always a pain in the ass to me and after seeing games like UnderRail or Torment I've been reminded how sweet the 2D isometric environments can look. Unity's rough-looking assets shouldn't be a problem this time.
- I'd prefer donating to a 20h long game if it's dense, coherent, reactive, detailed, polished and enough lots of proper C&C to make it replayable than a 100h empty, soulless and linear game.
- Some of the Torment's team writers should join Meantime's one since they're very talented and could offer valuable help at making a coherent and deep storyline that features time-travelling.
- What SniperHF said is a must.
- Make sure to catch that 80's magic. Animated portraits would help.
- Be ambitious and let the player decide what epoque want to visit instead of just making another linear story just adding varied locations and epoques.
- Try to be loyal to the project's rumors and original ideas like featuring Albert Einstein in the cover art. That would be pretty cool in my honest opinion.
- Don't fuck the game's localization up this time.
- Don't fuck the physical rewards' management and shipping this time (and deliver an old-school sized cardboard box and a "true" cloth map instead of metal/wide&slim box and a synthetic-looking map).

 

[m_s0]

This isn't what actually happened since T:ToN ended up having an almost completely different team

Did it? I haven't been following it that closely, frankly.

 

[ColCol]

It's not going to be Meantime. I so certain that's it not going to be meantime that if it does turn out to be meantime I'll raffle off a copy to the codex.

 

[Taxnomore]

It's not going to be Meantime. I so certain that's it not going to be meantime that if it does turn out to be meantime I'll raffle off a copy to the codex.

Quoted. Just in case.

 

[Infinitron]

Heh, keep in mind that I don't know what exactly he meant by "recently". These were his exact words:

FYI, there's some talk about Brian Fargo resurrecting one of his old properties for a revival on Kickstarter. It'll probably be Bard's Tale 4 and not Meantime, but you never know.

but that's why I was digging up information on this

Yeah he told me the same recently about BT

Don't really wanna bug him about it.

OK, he contacted me again, so I asked him and he says July. So not really that recent.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/12/10/wasteland-2-developer-trademarks-two-classic-rpgs

UPDATE: "I truly feel fortunate that with crowdfunding and the great response to Wasteland 2 I can actually start to plot out a long RPG future for us," Brian Fargo, CEO of inXile Entertainment, told IGN. "I think it's important to remember that some of these ideas are, at best, many years away. While they are not a part of what's up next, I certainly would not have filed for them if I didn't have a deep interest in exploring these concepts."

Chances of Bard's Tale IV rising again.