Bard's Tale IV - Kickstarter Funded, Raises Over $1.5mil @ TechRaptor

Originally Posted by Fluent
I am very, very excited for this game because dungeon-crawlers have become some of my favorite games to play in the RPG genre.

I'm sure they will deliver a good game. However, I'm concerned that there is only going to be 25 hours of gameplay in the game! That is way too short. I tweeted Brian for verification on this, and I'm hoping he tells me that they have decided to make it 80+ hours. Dungeon-crawl RPGs need tons of dungeons and tons of hours to absorb yourself in their immersive worlds. 25 hours and it will be over before you even start getting deeply into it, I'm afraid.

Shadowrun : Dragonfall is proof enough that a 25 hour RPG can be excellent.

Originally Posted by forgottenlor
Shadowrun : Dragonfall is proof enough that a 25 hour RPG can be excellent.

So is Chrono Trigger.

But I hope it doesn't become a trend to create 25 hour RPGs. At 25 hours in an RPG I'm just getting my feet wet and starting to get absorbed in the game. I want huge, epic games that span 80+ hours.

A game like Elminage Gothic has over 80 hours of gameplay, why can't Bard's Tale IV? In EG you can get absolutely lost in the maze-like dungeons and spend several hours in one single dungeon, perhaps even hours on one single run! That is the sort of thing I want to see.

When Brian Fargo announced that Bard's Tale would have 30 levels, that got me very excited. But if those 30 levels are less than one hour a piece, that is a huge letdown for me.

I guess we'll see what happens. I will let Brian know my feelings on the matter and hope others chime in as well. A true dungeon-crawler RPG with tons of replayability, complexity and depth should not be over in 25 hours.

Don't get me wrong. I'd prefer 60 hours of excellent content over 25 hours of excellent content. I'd just prefer 25 hours of excellent content over 60 hours of good content. For me an excellent RPG can be of any size, so long as the content is great. After all I have way to many RPGs in my library at the moment as it is, and some of them, like MMXL have been waiting a long time for a replay.

Originally Posted by Dragonx
I really think them matching the kickstarter was a bad idea, people didnt feel like they needed to raise much to see a decent Bards Tales 4 since 1.5 mil x 2 is 3 mil….

The game will probably cost around 10 to 20 million to make, since they decided on this FPS mode in Unreal and maybe switch to isometric mode. Requires too much work. Observe how Brians team told in the Bard's Tale PC making of video that they only had to make the 3D models looks good from above, the default unchangeable camera and how it was a good decision sparing lots of money and man hours.

Bard's Tale IV can easily take them three years if they don't find avenues to significantly curb content to push the game out early and we will feel every one of those cutting moves / decisions during gameplay.

I'm thinking Bards Tale IV will be a very good game. A shorter rpg I don't mind as long as the content is refined goodness. As an example I wish Wasteland 2 had been shorter by about 10 hours (90+ hour game according to my steam time!) so they could of refined and honed some of the content for sense, readability and consistency.

(Most areas work fine but particularly rail nomads needed to be tighter and have a higher quality overall. Plus some unimaginative forks in the content i.e cat litter part 2 comes to mind).

I think Wasteland 2 is a good game that just lacked a bit in presentation (graphics), readability (ui is kind of just okay) and ease of use features.

(i.e. checking chests for traps constantly, then picking locks could of been handled by a in-game macro like wasteland 1 - how cool would that feature have been!)

Having said that Inxile is a learning animal and I think they won't make the same mistakes twice unlike some other developers I could name.

Great news for the fans. Here's hoping it's good