Fargo reveals plans for Bard's Tale sequel

Brian Fargo has confirmed the next project that his team over at Inxile Entertainment will be working on, and following on from their work in reimagining the post-apocalyptic classics in the form of Wasteland 2, the studio's now going to do the same with another franchise from yesteryear, The Bard's Tale.

In 2004 the studio released the reimagining of the first The Bard's Tale, but the plan is now to create a new game in the series, the first original title since 1988's The Bard's Tale III: Thief of Fate. The plan, at this stage, is to once again put the project on Kickstarter and raise funds from the community.

"This project has always been really personal to me," Fargo said during an interview with IGN. "It was a game that put both me and Interplay on the map, back in the day. And it's also the franchise that launched inXile."

Fargo also says that while the studio will be taking ideas from the original, they'll be trying some new things as far as gameplay goes (one example cited is the switch from traditional turn-based combat, in the new game the plan is to have all teams attack at once and thus up the pace of combat).

"There will be plenty of combat diversity and depth," Fargo explained. "You look at something like Hearthstone, for example. It's sort of that going back-and-forth process, and you see the complexity and detail and strategy and nuance that can happen. It's really an amazing system. I love those modern influences. I took a lot away from that, and see things we need to do with our combat system."

There's no confirmation of when we can expect to see the project launch on Kickstarter, and so details are still thin on the ground. That doesn't mean that Fargo isn't excited about returning to his roots: "It's the first property we worked with. The fact that it's the 30th anniversary of the original makes it all just seem perfect."