Bard's Tale I - Launched the Second Wave

US Gamer continues its series on RPG history by looking at The Bard's Tale: Tales of the Unknown.

Cranford (along with his collaborators on The Bard's Tale, which included such future video game luminaries as Brian Fargo and Lawrence Holland) put together a game that looked a lot prettier than Wizardry, as well. The wire frame dungeons and crude monster illustrations of earlier dungeon crawlers here solidified into more concrete imagery. Labyrinths now consisted of colored walls with unique "event" spaces rendered in even greater detail. Above ground, Skara Brae's brick walls gave way to meticulously illustrated shop and pub interiors. Even the randomly encountered monsters didn't simply look nicer than in previous RPGs, they actually displayed simple animations.

[...]

Click to expand...

More information.

Looking well enough so far, if a bit too easy with its pre-rolled level 2 party. The new hires drawings are fitting, but take a while to get used to. And distinctly lack pixels.

One thing I'm puzzled about: is there a manual? I'd love to check up on some of the classes' abilities and mechanics, but I couldn't be arsed to go down 4 floors get the original's box.

Edit: Oops - just realised I replied to the wrong article. Never mind (but thanks, TomRon!)…

Neat article. I wonder what other rpgs can be considered part of the second wave?

Moorkh said:

Looking well enough so far, if a bit too easy with its pre-rolled level 2 party. The new hires drawings are fitting, but take a while to get used to. And distinctly lack pixels.

One thing I'm puzzled about: is there a manual? I'd love to check up on some of the classes' abilities and mechanics, but I couldn't be arsed to go down 4 floors get the original's box.

Click to expand...

There's a wiki of you're interested:
http://bardstale.wikia.com/wiki/Classes

Nephologist said:

Neat article. I wonder what other rpgs can be considered part of the second wave?

Click to expand...

They have a link here for what they consider a "Second Wave"

https://www.usgamer.net/articles/blood-god-rpg-podcast-diablo-2

I think its an audio webcast.

I lump BT and most of the RPG's from the 80's as part of the "Golden Age", starting with Wizardry and ending with Dark Heart of Uukrul. The end coincides with the growing popularity of 16 bit platforms, games requiring hard drives, what became known as "multimedia" back then, and all the smooth scrolling games starting with the trend in space flight simulators.

But I kind of see what they are saying in a "Second Wave" of computer RPG games - once Wizardry and Ultima were established as the way they should be done we start to see clones and improvements on them with BT, Might and Magic, and the Gold Box games - The Big 5.