The Bard’s Tale 4 coming to Kickstarter

inXile are hoping to start development on The Bard’s Tale 4, in honour of the original game’s 30th anniversary.

Did you know that this is the 30th anniversary of The Bard’s Tale? inXile clearly do, because their announcement that their sequel to the original trilogy will be coming to Kickstarter at the beginning of June mentions it repeatedly.

The Bard’s Tale saw a party of adventurers delve into the deadly maze of Skara Brae, solving puzzles, fighting monsters, and exploring in first-person. The Bard’s Tale 4 will apparently offer much the same thing, only this time around it’s going to look extraordinarily pretty courtesy of Unreal Engine 4 and photogrammetry of Scottish architecture.

Combat is described as a “dynamic phase-based” system, which keeps the decision-making of traditional phase-based combat, but offering evolving enemy strategies and pacing that’ll keep you engaged. I think this means it’s going to be turn-based with a bit of a twist, but I suppose we’ll have to see.

This presumably means that inXile have managed to get The Bard’s Tale IP from EA. inXile previously developed 2004’s The Bard’s Tale, a top-down action RPG, but weren’t able to use any of the original characters or locations because of trademark issues. As this new title is marketed as an actual sequel, it looks like whatever rights issues there were have been solved.

The Bard’s Tale 4‘s Kickstarter is due to begin on 2 June at 6AM PST. We’ll likely find out an awful lot more about it then.