The Bard's Tale Update

SAN FRANCISCO--Released late last year on the Xbox and PS2, InXile's reimagined version of The Bard's Tale is now on course for a June PC release, and we took it for a quick spin today at publisher Vivendi Universal's GDC/pre-E3 display. The core content of the game will remain largely unchanged. This means you'll take the role of the bard, a "hero" more interested in wine, women, and song than in doing good for the peoples of the land. Nevertheless, the bard will be dragged into an adventure that will have him squaring off against all manner of nasties as he attempts to save the land...and profit from it a little as well.

We expected The Bard's Tale to beg for a gamepad on the PC, so we were surprised to find out that InXile has put significant thought into adapting the game's controls for the mouse and keyboard. You can hold down the right mouse button and have the bard walk toward the location of the cursor, or you can double-click the button and have him follow it automatically. Attacking is accomplished by left-clicking, though you don't necessarily have to click the enemy you want to hit. Furthermore, when fighting in a large group of enemies, you'll automatically autotarget the next nearest enemy after you take down the one you're currently fighting. In our experience, this helped to greatly streamline combat. The designers have also tweaked a few game functions to make them easily accessed, such as the level-one heal ability, which can now be used with one key press. You'll be able to remap all the keys as you see fit, and the game will support gamepads if you want to get the console-style experience.

Of course, the other big change for The Bard's Tale is significantly increased visual quality on the PC. All the textures are noticeably higher resolution than in the console versions, and the artists have given the character models an extra pass to enhance their details a little. Some other little graphical features have snuck into the game as well. For instance, very tall objects, like trees (which nearly touch the perspective of the camera), will now turn transparent when you walk under them, making it easier to see what the bard is doing at all times. We saw the PC game running at 1600x1200 resolution at a perfectly smooth frame rate, and it certainly looked superior to its console counterparts.

At this point, InXile is still considering its options with regard to extra content for the PC release of The Bard's Tale, though no final decisions have been made. Even without any significant content additions, this looks like the best version yet of the irreverent hack-and-slash adventure, and you can keep an eye out for more information on the game in the months leading up to its June release.