Bard's Tale IV - Interview with Brian Fargo @ Gaming Nexus

For a lot of old school gamers the Bard's Tale series holds a special place in their heart. Either for it's twist on the dungeon crawling genre or the fantastic writing. Well the series is getting a remake thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign so we reached out to inXile and were able to get a few questions answered by Brian Fargo, the company's CEO and a legend in the gaming industry.

What are your favorite memories from the original Bard’s Tale games?
Having worked on each of these games myself my perspective tends to be a little different. I mostly look at it in what we were trying to accomplish and how well we did at that. No one at that time thought we could make a game that could rank up there with the biggest titles of the day, and yet we did, by pushing graphics as far as they could go and introducing innovations like the eponymous bard class and evolving magic user classes. But when it comes to favorite memories, nothing can beat facing death in the form of 99 Berserkers, 99 Berserkers, 99 Berserkers and 99 Berserkers.

What differentiates the Bard's Tales franchise from the other RPG’s on the market?
The first-person dungeon crawl with deep phase-based combat has not been a genre that we have seen a lot of in the last years, that alone makes us stand out. Our goal with The Bard’s Tale IV beyond offering a more intuitive, smoother but still challenging and deep gameplay experience is to make it a graphical leap forward for the genre, much as the originals were, while introducing some innovations into combat and the way the world’s puzzles work. […]

The bard song "Badh'r Kilnfest" from Michael Cranford's classic Bard's Tale game (1985-88), in 4 different versions
Music by Lawrence Holland / David Warhol
Thanks to Rebecca "Burger" Heineman for the Apple IIGS version.