The Bard’s Tale IV: Prototype Video
Courtesy of Ben “Bandit LOAF” Lesnick, here’s a strange little oddity from the Mythic Archives: a prototype video for a fourth installment in The Bard’s Tale series of games.
Granted, the video doesn’t give us much to go on. We can infer that the game was intended to be a third-person, predominantly “over the shoulder” action RPG, possibly starring a female protagonist. It was apparently being developed (or at least proposed) to EA by “Burger” Bill Heineman’s Contraband Entertainment in 1998, aiming for a 1999 release. That doesn’t explain exactly why Origin Systems had a copy of the game in their archives, although it’s possible that Origin were tapped by EA to vet the project.
Here’s Heineman’s description of the proposed game:
Scott: Well I sure hope that someday the saga will continue. If you were allowed to produce BT4, do you have any new ideas in the back of your mind on things you might do differently this time?
Bill: We have a whole game design document and even a prototype of the engine. We pitched the idea to EA about a month ago but they were not interested. 🙁
Scott: Oh, that is a shame!!! With your new engine, has the game been enhanced a lot, or does it still look basically the same?
Bill: Completely new game. It has more of an Everquest look to it but all the art and sounds have a Bard’s Tale feel to it.
Scott: What do you think of all the BT pages on the net right now. Is it neat to see people paying tribute to your work?
Bill: I love it. I just wish it would convince someone at EA or Interplay to let us do BT IV.
The video would seem to comport with the description, above. Obviously, the project was either never approved, or else it was shuttered fairly early on in development. Still, here’s an interesting look at “what might have been”. Those of you who are fans of The Bard’s Tale will have to take it from here, however; I’m basically unfamiliar with the series, so I’ve no idea if this footage is the sort of thing to inspire cries of outrage or…something else.
(Hat tip: Infinitron Dragon, for the link to the Bill Heineman interview.)
What is the deal with games becoming so “meh” once the 3D revolution hit? It’s sorta like when the “full motion video” revolution happened, except with 3D there wasn’t a dead end just around the corner.
The original Bard’s Tale was one of the first CRPGs I played and was pretty good for the time. Think Might & Magic with better production values. The one stand-out thing was that when you moved there were “in between” frames of the world tiles, so movement was much smoother than your usual dungeon crawler. Envision Legend of Grimrock but hand-drawn in 16 colors and you got it.
Also according to Wikipedia (uncited) The Bard’s Tale IV ended up becoming Dragon Wars (Interplay/Activision).
If you look at Dragon Wars, it’s clear that this proposed sequel was a very different beast. Also, the dates don’t line up. So Dragon Wars was likely an earlier attempt (by like a decade) to continue the series.
As to games becoming “meh”…it is more complicated to do some things in a 3D engine; consider how few (if any) 3D RPGs have followed Ultima 9’s lead in attempting to make the vast majority of the objects in the world into things you can interact with, simply because they’re there. But I don’t know if I’d necessarily call the games “meh”; many are quite enjoyable, and noteworthy/excellent in their own right…even if you can’t bake bread.
@WtF They’re not “meh” now, I meant right at the beginning of the 3D craze. Like when Street Fighter, Sonic and Castlevania went 3D. Or when the video in this article was made. It seems like every time a 2D game is remade in 3D it loses its original gameplay. That annoys me like crazy.
New technology is Hard. See: Ultima IX.
I agree with Sanctimonia’s sentiments. I greatly disliked nearly every game that went 3D. Worms, Castlevania, Zelda (yes, I know, I’m a heretic). When 3D first started, I couldn’t get over how simplified the interactions/puzzles (and yes, graphics) became. On the whole, I didn’t get most of the stuff on the N64. I just couldn’t grasp the point of going 3D when it was made of massive, ugly polygons. *Shrug*
I preferred (and still do, mostly) immersive, well-thought-out, and highly detailed games, even if they’re 2D.
Here’s another mention of Bill/Rebecca’s BT4: http://www.cheek.org/bard/btiv.htm
So I throw in some advertising: You might try out “Silversword”, if you own an iOS device. This is my attempt to revive the BT series 😉
Actually, Silversword has come up for discussion before, at the website that preceded the Ultima Codex.