The Bard's Tale

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The Bard's Tale
The Bards Tale-logo.png
developer Interplay Productions (parts 1–3)
InXile Entertainment (since 2005)
Publisher Electronic Arts
Designer Michael Cranford
Bill Heinemann
First title The Bard's Tale (1985)
Last title The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep (2018)
Platform (s) Amiga , Android , Apple II , Apple IIgs , Apple iOS , Atari ST , C64 , NES , PC , PC-88 , Schneider CPC , ZX Spectrum
Genre (s) Computer role playing game

The Bard's Tale is a series of computer role-playing games . The first three parts, developed by Interplay Productions from 1985 and published by Electronic Arts , are today considered a milestone in the development of this genre. InXile Entertainment has continued the series since 2005 . The main location of the series is the city of Skara Brae , which in the game is not designed as an image of the historical settlement of the same name from the Neolithic Age, but as a medieval fantasy environment.

Game principle and technology

The Bard's Tale is technically a first-person dungeon explorer , which means that the game world is displayed in a greatly simplified, discrete 3D view. You can include several characters in your "party", and their skills are entirely determined by their " class " (mage, fighter, bard, etc.). Battles are fought on a turn-based basis. The rule system is generally based on the early editions of Dungeons & Dragons .

Production notes

The authoritative author of parts 1 and 2 was Michael Cranford, of part 3 Bill “Burger” Heinemann, with part 3 also being Michael A. Stackpole , an American science fiction and fantasy author. The development was also influenced by Brian Fargo , then head of Interplay and high school friend of Michael Cranford. Both of them had already decided during their school days to transfer their experience with the pen and paper role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons to computer games. The Bard's Tale was originally intended to be sold by Interplay to Activision , but was rejected because it required two disks instead of one. Originally, The Bard's Tale was only intended as a subtitle for the first part, the series should actually be called Tales of the Unknown .

The games were initially programmed on an Apple II and then ported to almost all common systems at the time, including C64 , Atari ST , Amiga and PC .

In terms of content, the game series combines influences from a vast number of sources, including pen & paper role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons . The gameplay is based on Wizardry , the first first-person role-playing game of its kind (released for Apple II, then ported to Atari 800 and Commodore 64 ). Furthermore, numerous parallels are drawn: Classical antiquity and the Bible (especially in names like Ephesus or Tarjan) as well as its mythology, Alice in Wonderland (Jabberwocky), Germanic mythology, the Gothic novels like Dracula and Frankenstein , the works of HP Lovecraft , the Wizard of Oz and recent 20th century history to name a few. Many of these influences are limited to the adoption of a name or a figure.

successor

The unofficial sequel to The Bard's Tale series is Dragon Wars . This game was developed on a similar game engine , but the backstory has been completely reworked, which is why the working title The Bard's Tale IV has been dropped. Furthermore, Interplay was not allowed to continue the title simply because the company, as a developer, had no rights to the name. Dragon Wars was less successful than The Bard's Tale and therefore did not continue.

Right holder Electronic Arts also worked from 1990 on a sequel with the project title The Bards Tale 4 , in 1992 the first reports appeared in the German-language gaming press. However, the project never ended.

Between 1992 and 1998 a series of books was published, the plot of which is set in the world of The Bard's Tale .

A role-playing game that is heavily inspired by The Bard's Tale has existed since around 2003 . It is available under the name The Devil Whiskey . According to the authors, another name had to be chosen for reasons of copyright. The game structure is similar to Bard's Tale , but is not a 100 percent takeover.

In June 2005 a fourth game was released with the simple title The Bard's Tale , developed by Brian Fargo's newly founded development studio InXile Entertainment . The game was very different from its predecessors. Action and strikingly comedic, especially parodic, elements characterize the controversial revival of the saga. The background was that inXile was in possession of the trademark rights, but not the copyrights (copyright) of the previous games and their content. Fargo could therefore not fall back on the elements of the original title. The idea of ​​a humorous approach came to him when he found time to play for the first time after leaving Interplay. He found that even after 20 years of role-playing games, the player kept sending the player into the sewers to kill rats there. From this he developed the idea of ​​developing a game around a protagonist who has already played too many role-playing games. The Bard's Tale was first released in 2004 for PlayStation 2 and Xbox , from 2005 also for Windows . In 2011, it was finally released for iOS , Blackberry , Android , Mac OS and Linux .

In December 2011, on the rules of appeared The Bard's Tale (Part 1-3) based RPG for iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod touch) called Silversword , a free "Lite" version is also in the App Store from Apple available . Attempts have been made to keep the look and feel of the original game, with some improvements for use with mobile devices (control via touch instead of a (virtual) keyboard, quest log, improved auto-map and others).

In 2015, The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep was announced by Brian Fargo and InXile Entertainment and funded through Kickstarter.com . The game was released in September 2018.

reception

The computer game magazine 64'er found that the Bard's Tale series had "only really triggered the role-playing boom on the computer".

Parts

  • Tales of the Unknown: Volume I - The Bard's Tale (1985)
  • The Bard's Tale II: The Destiny Knight (1986)
  • The Bard's Tale III: The Thief of Fate (1988)
  • The Bard's Tale (2004)
  • The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep (2018)

There is also the The Bard's Tale Construction Set (1991)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Brian Fargo : Twitter message from March 3, 2012 ( English ) In: Twitter account of the game developer . Twitter . March 3, 2012. Retrieved March 5, 2012: “ I bet most people didn't know that Bard's Tale was supposed to be known as the“ Tales of the Unknown ”with Bards as sub-header only. "
  2. ↑ Michael Hengst: The Bard's Tale . (Article scan) In: Power Play . No. 09/1992, September 1992, pp. 22-23. Retrieved December 12, 2012.
  3. ^ Brian Fargo's vision for The Bard's Tale 4
  4. ↑ Kickstarter: The Bards Tale IV
  5. ↑ Anatol Locker : Fantasy and Evil Forces . In: 64'er . Special issue 60, March 1990, p. 27.