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

The Amiga version did. Not quite as mindblowing as the graphics of Fairy Tale Adventure and Defender of the Crown, but still...Man, I miss those days when I could still be impressed by nice graphics.

 

Millions of dollars can't buy passion.

No passion in that art.

 

An accurate description of InXile.

 

Before you started ruining them with shitty filters eh.

 

Guido Henkel's Deathfire had the same problem with plastic looking monsters. Maybe Fargo and Guido are cooperating again? Speaking of which, what is D.W. Bradley up to these days?

 

I think it has a lot to do with, surprise surprise, the skill of the artist. Based on Obsidian's totally-not-a-pitch Star Wars UE4 project, if you assemble the shaders correctly and don't bake the wrong info INTO the textures, you can tune the shiny/matte look dynamically

And yes, the monsters looked like they were covered in plastic wrap and the fire-breather at the end was embarassing. The point-source of his fire was sitting on the front of his tongue.. they at least could have placed it in the neck, so by the time it entered into viewable space (the mouth) it had some volume and looked 'realistic'.

 

I'm pretty sure he meant mocap for dialogues.

 

What's wrong with Temporal AA? It's fairly inexpensive and while it does blur the image it's a better solution overall than FXAA or MLAA.

TSSAA is better though and I wish they used that.

 

Apparently, 80s hair metal is still quite popular in Polska...

 

That's one ugly girl.

 

Steel Panther brought it back

And yes i was talking about cutscenes as Bester was referring to those in his post.

 

From a historical perspective, the Bard's Tale series never evolved past a third game. Unlike Might & Magic or Wizardry, which reached ten and eight titles in their respective franchises. Thief of Fate was produced in 1988, and still featured viewport exploration with only character names and stats presented on the screen. When Bard's Tale IV brings all this 3D stuff and portraits or models, or however the hell they're going to represent party members, it's going to seem very unlike the previous installments. Naturally, it will then have more of a superficial resemblance to the other well known dungeon crawlers that have already breached this territory.

I think what the developers did is take the Bard's Tale lore, the history of of Skara Brae to use that as their building blocks. But the gameplay and mechanics will likely be quite different.

The update that was posted expresses content that will feature high level enemies approachable by lower level parties, secret locations that require item manipulation. The general thrust from the article is a non-linear gameworld where the player will be re-visiting areas to continue exploration. These are hallmarks that could be found in a typical Might & Magic game. I could add latter Wizardry as well, but I do not believe Bard's Tale will be going in that direction in terms of complexity.

Then there is the matter of Might & Magic X released a couple of years ago. I doubt that inXile has played many Japanese Wizardry clones recently, but I would think they have a passing familiarity with MMX, and will incorporate some similar stylistic elements. Bard's Tale IV might match or even surpass Legacy as a quality experience, though the delivery of all they have talked about remains to be seen.

 

The Bard's Tale IV combat has yet to be seen in action. Although the rows formation, and weapons with range, is still something closer to Wizardry. (Early M&M had this too, with party members able to be reshuffled, and their position in order was of importance.) But that's the point I was driving at. This will be more Might & Magic/Wizardry than the original Bard's Tales. However the focus on an open world exploration would tip it more toward the MM series.

 

No, but personally I don't believe in Fargo's ability to deliver it. And the material released so far does not convince me otherwise.
(and I hated the original BT, so there's that)

 

What's wrong with the weebshit?

 

Why do I always see this phrase in places where the answer is a very obvious no?

*90's pop song video*

"Am I the only one who prefers hits then to hits right now???"

*Seven Samurai clip*

"Am I the only one who prefers this to Magnificient Seven??"

*Hardcore lesbian anal compilation #9*

"Am I the only one who likes seeing double-sided dildo ass-to-ass???"

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Likes and Up-votes, that's why

 

There's at least four of those in development right now, which is a pretty decent spread imho.

 

Yeah, but the only Wiz-like among them is vaporware.

 

Start with Wizardry 7. Then proceed to crying for months because nothing this good will ever be released again.

Frayed Knights 2, Starcrawlers, S&S Sovereign and Grimoire.

 

I'd shamefully forgotten about S&S and counted BT4 as part of the four, so thanks for the reminder

 

I would suggest starting with Wizardry 1: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord. It's the 1st-person turn-based dungeon crawler in the purest form*, and from which many others drew their inspiration. It's relatively small compared to later titles and should be fairly quick to get through. From there, branch out to what the genre evolved into: Wizardry 6-7-8, Might & Magic 1-5, etc. These added more layers of complexity and overworld / wilderness exploration.

* Note: Oubliette and other RPGs on mainframe college computers (PLATO) in the 70s were the actual pioneers, but they might be more of a hassle to play. If you're really curious, you can play these on the revived PLATO system here: http://www.cyber1.org/

 

Don't get too excited its based on the ORIGINAL, not the 2005 classic hack and slash

 

Goddamnit, why can't Fargo go back to making musicals, lord knows that's what we all want