InXile Entertainment, developer of last year’s Wasteland 2 and the yet-to-be-released Torment: Tides of Numenera, has announced that Chris Avellone (Planescape: Torment, Fallout: New Vegas) and Colin McComb (Planescape: Torment, Torment Tides of Numenera) will be joining the development team on The Bard’s Tale 4, should the Kickstarter project reach $1.9M and $1.7M, respectively.
InXile’s third game to be funded via Kickstarter, The Bard’s Tale 4 currently sits at $1,366,201 in funding on the crowd-funding website, having already surpassed its initial goal of $1.25M. The project has 11 days remaining on Kickstarter and should it reach the $1.7M and $1.9M mark, respectively, McComb and Avellone will join the development team.
McComb will design the “Realm of Elves,” creating a new dungeon for the zone in The Bard’s Tale 4, while Avellone will design a new area called the “Cairn of Horrors.”
Avellone is no stranger to inXile, having worked on their two previously-funded Kickstarter titles, Wasteland 2 and Torment: Tides of Numenera. He has worked in the industry for years and credits his career to seeing Bard’s Tale 2 running on a Commodore 64.
“When I saw the streets of Skara Brae up and running (gasp – in simulated 3D! And in color!),” Avellone said. “I suddenly realized I didn't have to be the game master all the time in order to get my RPG fix, there was finally someone out there who had done the formidable job of creating a digital dungeon master for RPG aficionados with the same amount of lazy players as I had.”
The Bard’s Tale 4’s Kickstarter page was launched on June 3, 2015 and has already hit two of its stretch goals. At $1.3M, it was promised that an “enhanced companion NPC system and two more CNPCs” would be added to the game. At $1.35M, it was promised that an “enhanced crafting system” would be added.
