Our former John (RPS in peace) declared The Bard’s Tale IV to be “a shoddy old mess burying some nice ideas” after it launched in September 2018. Faint reward certainly for InXile Entertainment’s revival of the fantasy RPG sequence. Just below one yr later, InXile have relaunched the game as a “Director’s Cut” with an enormous load of bug fixes, tweaks, new locations to plunder, new baddies to bash, efficiency enhancements, and extra. Might this clear some off the muck off the game’s good elements and allow them to shine extra? If to procure it the primary time round you possibly can see without spending a dime, as authentic house owners routinely get the Director’s Cut too.
The Director’s Cut brings a brand new dungeon, new bosses, new weapons, new armour, an enormous ol’ rebalancing of things and the economic system, tweaks to the issue curve, interface adjustments, up to date localisations for different languages, bug fixes, efficiency enhancements, and an entire lot of different issues detailed in the launch announcement.
Eagled-eyed gamers seen the brand new model is trying slightly totally different, and a few have griped a couple of “downgrade.” Enter InXile communications director Micah “whippleshuffle” Whipple to explain why that’s.
One fast concern is that the dynamic lighting isn’t engaged on characters, when it ought to be – and is in their very own inner builds. “We believe it should be a fairly simple fix, but it is a legitimate bug,” he says.
Beyond that, inXile have deliberately altered the look. Following quite a few complaints in regards to the authentic model’s poor efficiency, Whipple says they made “a visual trade-off” by switching some shadows from dynamic to baked. That won’t look as fancy, however Micah says InXile assume the change “leads to an overall improved experience.” They’ve additionally, he says, “made some stylistic changes in the Director’s Cut to certain areas of the game to change the coloration, lighting, atmospheric effects, etc. to address some complaints from the original release and create a more consistent stylised look.”
So sure, it appears totally different: partially owing to a bug; partially to enhance efficiency; and partially to straight-up look totally different.
Anyway! The Bard’s Tale IV: Director’s Cut is out now on Steam and GOG for £25/€35/$35. They’re beginning recent with new retailer pages, which I suppose clears out the earlier middling evaluations. People who purchase it by 5pm on September third will get the unique Bard’s Tale trilogy thrown in. Folks who backed the Kickstarter to get the game will get the Deluxe Edition of the Director’s Cut (which incorporates that trilogy), coming routinely on Steam or with an upgrade key on GOG.
