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

[Alienman]

If you have so little time, why even try to play an RPG? - which at least up to now have for the most part been big games. There is tons of games that are designed to be played in short sessions. And if the game feels like a job, or a slog, the game you are playing is probably poorly designed or you are just not interested enough.

 

[V_K]

If you have so little time, why even try to play an RPG?

Because I don't like other genres? Aside from adventures, but adventures are even worse for short sessions - you either use a walkthrough and end up unsatisfied, or you get deeply frustrated because you're stuck on a puzzle and will only be able to give it another go in a couple of weeks, by which time you're probably forget what you were supposed to do in the first place.

 

[Alienman]

If you have so little time, why even try to play an RPG?

Because I don't like other genres? Aside from adventures, but adventures are even worse for short sessions - you either use a walkthrough and end up unsatisfied, or you get deeply frustrated because you're stuck on a puzzle and will only be able to give it another go in a couple of weeks, by which time you're probably forget what you were supposed to do in the first place.

I understand. I don't know what to say. RPGs is one of the few genres left that haven't gone the way of 60 bucks for a 10 hour game filled with cut-scenes. It's one of the few games that actually give me a sense of journey and adventure, sure it depends on story and gameplay but also length and I would be sadden if RPGs went the same way as other games.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

Having said that, my ideal RPG would be an epic: 100+ hours, start and endgames totally different in both gameplay and scale of plot. Nothing like this has really being accomplished, despite some valiant attempts.

Divinity: Original Sin is a great example of a huge game (140 hours to complete everything in co-op) yet also introduced new elements later in the game. In fact, it was very surprising that it kept adding more, and more, and more, just when you thought you may be approaching the end. Some of those ideas were far from fully realized, but it was still quality in this regard. D:OS2 will just be ridiculous if they do even more of this and do it better.

Because having limited time means much lower tolerance to filler content, and longer games naturally have much larger amounts of it. When you only have a few hours on a weekend, and the next opportunity may not come in weeks, you really don't want to spend this time on grinding trash mobs, long backtracking or doing logistics stuff. Another thing is that when you have long "downtime" between sessions, and the game is large and open, you'll likely forget half the things you did or need to do by the next time you play it. Finally, our brains are wired in such way that we can only keep being excited about something for so long, so if a game takes too long to finish, it inevitably starts to feel like a chore.

Well, why play RPGs then? Maybe you should try a different hobby if you only have time to play a 10 hour RPG, IMO. It's like having a hobby of loving to read War & Peace length novels but only having time to read a pamphlet.

There are room for short RPGs, I'm not saying there isn't. But people with less gaming time seem to expect all RPGs now to cater to them. "I only have 5 minutes to play and I want my game to have a Win button, and if the game isn't completable in 5 hours I can't play it." Ok, cool, go find an RPG that suits you. No reason for every RPG to try and cater to this select group. IMO.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

If you have so little time, why even try to play an RPG? - which at least up to now have for the most part been big games. There is tons of games that are designed to be played in short sessions. And if the game feels like a job, or a slog, the game you are playing is probably poorly designed or you are just not interested enough.

Yes, RPGs are generally longer and require more of an investment from the player. And an RPG has never felt like a chore to me. If a game feels like a chore you are doing it wrong, IMO.

Maybe some new RPGs that are designed to be played in very short sessions would be a good idea for someone to make. Something like Knights of Pen and Paper +1 seems like a good candidate for people who have very limited gaming time.

 

[Zeriel]

Demanding hours from games is a symptom of why the medium is stil wallowing in juvenile crap. Somehow we still think "But how many pages does the book have?" constitutes relevant criteria for criticism

Like everything, there is a happy compromise. 1 hour movies are generally trash. 3 hour movies are almost always bloated. 2 hour movies are just right. Likewise... most good books I've read are at least a few hundred pages. There are exceptions to every rule, but these rules are pretty predictive of quality. The number of actually good games I've played that are only a dozen hours long can probably be counted on one hand (and actually less than that, maybe 3 fingers?). Considering I've been gaming for actually 3 decades, that says something.

 

[Grunker]

Demanding hours from games is a symptom of why the medium is stil wallowing in juvenile crap. Somehow we still think "But how many pages does the book have?" constitutes relevant criteria for criticism

Like everything, there is a happy compromise. 1 hour movies are generally trash. 3 hour movies are almost always bloated. 2 hour movies are just right. Likewise... most good books I've read are at least a few hundred pages. There are exceptions to every rule, but these rules are pretty predictive of quality. The number of actually good games I've played that are only a dozen hours long can probably be counted on one hand (and actually less than that, maybe 3 fingers?). Considering I've been gaming for actually 3 decades, that says something.

I pretty much disagree with every single word here

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

There is a happy compromise FOR YOU, maybe, but there is no perfect RPG for everybody. Simple thing using your movie example is that a 20 minute short can be great and so can a 3 episode 10+ hour trilogy. Thinking there is some "perfect comrpomise" is like thinking you can just create some "perfect" RPG by looking at analytical stats and checking off boxes. Bad idea, uncreative and sterile.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

There is no "answer" to length, though. The point I'm making is that there's plenty of room for RPGs of different lengths. This is not some issue that needs to be "solved", IMO. Some RPGs can be 40 hours, 80 hours, 100+ hours, 15 hours and so on.

Vampire is great, sure, even though my first run felt a bit short (close to 40 hours or so?). But yes, it offers a lot of re-playability in the story, faction and dialogue areas. Whereas a game like Lords of Xulima is 100+ hours and offers a bunch of re-playability in the sense of the RPG mechanics themselves, building characters and trying different classes (not so much the story area). So each game gets in where they fit in and we get a bunch of different styles and sizes to choose from.

 

[V_K]

RPGs is one of the few genres left that haven't gone the way of 60 bucks for a 10 hour game filled with cut-scenes. It's one of the few games that actually give me a sense of journey and adventure, sure it depends on story and gameplay but also length and I would be sadden if RPGs went the same way as other games.

Oh, I never said I want that. When watching cutscenes takes up half of your gaming session it's equally frustrating.
I totally get you, I used to love epic-scale RPGs and don't want them to disappear. It's just that playing them is unfeasible for me personally anymore, so it's nice to have good bite-sized RPGs like Voidspire Tactics, Grimrock or Dragonfall as well.

 

[Ivan]

Divinity: Original Sin is a great example of a huge game (140 hours to complete everything in co-op) yet also introduced new elements later in the game. In fact, it was very surprising that it kept adding more, and more, and more, just when you thought you may be approaching the end. Some of those ideas were far from fully realized, but it was still quality in this regard.

Would you elaborate? I remember almost nothing after Cyseal.

 

[Parabalus]

Would you elaborate? I remember almost nothing after Cyseal.

Cyseal has the most memorable NPC.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

Would you elaborate? I remember almost nothing after Cyseal.

Simple examples of adding stuff later in the game are:

Spoiler

Tenebrium. Not only do they add this element out of nowhere that has a very special attribute, but you get an actual skill you can level up. This is quite odd for an RPG to introduce a new skill so late in the game. It's not all that fleshed out, unfortunately, as they should have added Tenebrium crafting (or more of it), but it does add something new that is a bit different and a bit of a surprise. Leveling it up a bit and using a powerful Tenebrium weapon was pretty cool and really unexpected at that point in the game.

All the various rooms you unlock at Homestead. Also really unexpected, when you'd find little interesting things like the Teller of Secrets, an NPC who sells secrets, the various Elemental Halls with access to the best elemental skill books, and even the Chapel where you can buy some great potions. These are not the biggest of mechanics or features or anything, but they made me say, "Huh, didn't expect that!" at nearly every turn when we'd unlock a new room. I'd like to see the Teller of Secrets have some unique secrets that didn't repeat in the game world as well, for example. Obviously it could be done even better but it is a good start for this sort of thing, IMO.

Hard-to-reach secrets, puzzles for chests and this sort of thing. The game didn't overly hold your hand, and even late in the game we were trying to figure out puzzles, even some puzzles from earlier areas that we hadn't solved yet! They kept adding this stuff later into the game and some of the areas were really brain-teasing and tricky, although not *too* much so. We did spend a bunch of time trying to figure several of them out, like that dang Teleporter Pyramid one to access the Temple of the Dead! We probably spent a few hours of real-time trying to figure that out! I love that sort of thing.

This goes hand in hand with the puzzles aspect, but specifically the environmental puzzles and area traps to access certain areas. They were very satisfying to solve and added a different element to the exploration.

There's more but these are just a few quickly off the top of my head. So, while the game is not perfect (spoiler - no game is), D:OS is damn, damn good. Large scope, lots of hours of gameplay (we clocked 140 hours to beat it while doing pretty much everything) and continuing to keep things fresh throughout the game by throwing (albeit somewhat little) curveballs at you at every turn. Definitely worth playing and I can easily say it is one of the best RPGs I've ever co-oped through (and we've played a bunch).

Looking forward to D:OS2 and Wasteland 3, which will also have co-op. Good stuff.

 

[DemonKing]

I wasn't specifically talking about RPGs when I said 10-20 hours is the sweet sport for me. As RPGs are my first and true love I'm willing to compromise a bit and can accept longer game times there but it is difficult when your game time is limited to 1-2 hours/night maximum (and sometimes I don't even get to turn on my PC) it's hard to keep up your enthusiasm to complete really massive games.

There's also the lure of the new, which means if a big new release comes out I'm likely to get distracted and play that so I can keep up with the zeitgeist making it ever harder to go back to something I was in the middle of.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

Well, there is room for shorter RPGs, although I'm not sure what the point is at that point. If you just want to pick up something quick to play an RPG by default is not a great genre to do that with, IMO. But games like Undertale are 10-15 hours or so. Maybe that will be the next big thing, tiny RPGs.

 

[Iznaliu]

stuff

One of the main problems with D:OS is that the world feels more like a FO4-esque theme park than an actual living world (though the sequel does alleviate this somewhat). Compare a map of D:OS to a map of Wizardry 8 and the difference is immediately obvious: the monsters and NPCs have much more breathing room and travelling between locations feels like an epic journey rather than a slog. The IE games, and their spiritual successor PoE are probably somewhere in between the two extremes of theme park and realism.

Nevertheless, I still think it's good, but some people on the Codex seem to be reluctant to look at its flaws.

 

[Infinitron]

That means today.

 

[Doma]

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/the-bards-tale-iv/posts/1801716

New Gameplay Video


Greetings Exiles,

I’m excited to finally be able to show you our vision for how exploration and combat in Bard’s Tale IV will be presented and played.

Combat is the core of a dungeon crawler and our goal has always been to make sure that it is tactical, deep and pays off visually. We also knew to stay with our roots with combat being party based and phased based, yet we’ve come up with a unique way to present this style of gameplay. You’ll note that we still support six characters for the player to command along with two empty slots for summoned creatures.




Obviously, this is still in development and there are things we’re not in love with yet. Namely, the characters on the HUD are still at a first pass. We will be updating their visual look and likely not have them bouncing around as they speak. And the visuals will only continue to improve as we layer on more VFX for world atmosphere, spells and combat effects, add additional post processing, upgrade the materials for the character models and greatly dial up the ambient life in scenes. Already you can see small touches in our use of planar reflections in the puddles of water, and what you can’t see is our system for dynamically corrupting the forest based on the actions of the player. We want you to feel the effects you have on the world constantly.

Additionally, though the camera movement allows for and shows off free movement, we have laid the maps out such that you can snap into grid movement as well.

Getting personality and character into games is paramount to me, and you get a small glimpse of one of the moments when the party runs across the goblins. Expect more of these small scenes that show the world operating outside of what the player chooses to do.

Welcome to the Dungeon
The video above is a select portion of the Fichti Forest, one of the areas we've been building for the game. Our goal with it is to show you a number of the game's elements and give you a feeling for how the it will actually play out. Doubtless, many of you are wondering about some of the things you're seeing. So I'd like to clarify a few of the points in the video. Many of these are aspects of gameplay we hinted at in previous updates, but now we're able to talk about them in more detail.

Exploration Tools & Abilities




One of the defining features of the classic Bard's Tale games was the use of exploration-focused songs and spells. This is a feature that will be returning in The Bard's Tale IV. Songs of Exploration and Adventurer's Tools were discussed in an earlier update, and can be thought of as specific puzzle-solving or traversal tools that you'll use when going through the world. This includes usable items you will collect, such as keys, torches, and more, as well as special bardic songs that you can play. The song you're seeing in the video, The Stone Remembers, allows the party to rebuild certain rune-emblazoned pieces of architecture, opening up new paths and routes.

Party Chatter

Part of our expanded CNPC system stretch goal for the game comes in the form of our party chatter system. As you explore the world, your characters will banter among themselves, offering personality-filled insights into the events you are seeing. You can also bet some of these will feed into side content, like hidden treasure or secret rooms and puzzles in the depths of our dungeons.

Combat System

This is what many of you have been waiting to see. We talked about some of our high level ideas in previous updates, specifically with respect to our grid-based system. Now you are seeing it in action. On the game HUD, you can see your party occupying 2 rows of 4 spaces each. Enemies will line up on the opposite grid with the same number of slots. The exact positioning of enemies, as well as your own party, will determine which attacks can land, and which will swing wild past their mark.

Another system you are seeing in place is opportunity. The blue and yellow gems on the HUD represent your party's and your enemy's opportunity. Opportunity is a shared resource that each side has, and it is granted each turn in combat. Unlike some other games where you will be forced to use action points for each character (or skip their turn), opportunity is a bit like a shared action point pool. The flexibility of this system means that party members can set up multi-hit combos, reposition for multiple attacks, or evade danger more effectively.

One thing that is harder to see in the video is our input queuing system. When you take an action in combat, you can begin ordering another party member before the action has played out. Although we intentionally slowed things down for the video to keep it a bit easier to follow, in practice this keeps the flow of combat moving along faster than a traditional turn-based system.

There's a lot more to talk about here, from the way elements like health, mana, and armor interact with each other, how channeling abilities and focus work, the way that temporary status boons can affect a character's functionality, or how positional tactics can let you set up more devastating damage. These open up a lot of subtle possibilities, but we'll save more of those details for future updates.

Crowdfunding Shout-Outs
It seems it's crowdfunding season again, and a number of great projects have been taking off lately.




The first is Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, by Obsidian Entertainment, whose crowdfunding campaign just launched. Pillars shares a certain party-based, fantasy-oriented lineage with The Bard's Tale, albeit from a different sort of perspective. We loved the first one and are excited to see what Pillars II will bring to the table. The campaign quickly passed its goal but it's still possible to back if you are interested.




I also wouldn't want to leave you without a quick mention of The Banner Saga 3, which has recently launched on Kickstarter. Stoic Studio has made a name for itself making these gorgeous turn-based tactical RPGs over the last few years, and now they want to finish the trilogy. Many at inXile are fans of the first two games and this next one is looking great as well, so take a look!

Brian Fargo

 

[Hobo Elf]

Combat seemed better than what one could have initially hoped for. The opportunity system (what they are calling the shared action points) kind of reminds me of an adaptation of SMT's Press Turn; quite similar to that. Party bantz is always nice, but I hope it doesn't mean that they are set characters.

 

[V_K]

Basically, they reinvented Amberstar.
Also, what's the point of environmental interactions if the game tells you exactly what to do?

And the visuals will only continue to improve as we layer on more VFX for world atmosphere

No, seriously, that forest is Amalur-level overproduced eyesore.

 

[Alienman]

Something is off with the video, like it's pre-rendered or something. Does not look natural.

 

[Dorateen]

This is Bard's Tale trying to be Wizardry 8 and latter Might & Magic, especially with regard to characters commenting on their surroundings and in battle.

 

[Shackleton]

I don't know WTF this is, but this is not the Bard's Tale I signed up for. Christ, this just joined the Mandate as the kickstarters I wish I'd not backed. 3 minutes for one combat, most of which is watching chars do flashy effects? All this 'cutesy' banter between characters? Weird, floaty movement that looks more like it's scripted? Stupid 'puzzles' that are basically, 'click the right colour button and watch something awesome happen'? And this is coming from someone who liked MMX.

Holy shit, got to know what aweigh makes of this this. Although, what I really mean is- I hope aweigh writes an entertaining rant about it, because from what I've seen of this so far it's like Brian thought that what was wrong with blobbers was that they weren't cinematic enough, or that they needed to be more 'realistic' and less abstract.

 

[Merlkir]

The weird movement definitely makes it look scripted.