Malf on 2/6/2015 at 22:54
Quote Posted by Thirith
@Malf: As far as I know, the inXile game had pretty much nothing to do with the original games other than its title. It's even further away from the original than, say, the recentish
Syndicate.
Yeah, I know that. My first Bard's Tale experience was Bard's Tale 2 on the Atari ST.
Thirith on 3/6/2015 at 14:46
You got me beat. I only started with Bard's Tale 3, albeit on the C-64. (I always thought that when the original Bard's Tale games came out Brits with home computers were required by law to have a Speccy! Over here Atari STs were an absolute rarity - we all were on the Amiga side of the divide.)
Jason Moyer on 4/6/2015 at 05:48
My first Bard's Tale experience was Wizardy I on the ][e. Oh, wait.
I was pledged, but then I remembered my promise to not buy any games until they're out, unless they're "probable favorite games of all time" contenders.
Thirith on 4/6/2015 at 06:55
This is my first pledge that is entirely out of nostalgia. The Bard's Tale III was my first ever RPG, and while it's nowhere near my list of favourite RPGs I have a lot of fondness for it. I'm not invested in any major way, but I'm curious what they'll make of this.
Nedan on 5/6/2015 at 14:34
I actually looked up to see actually what (if anything) inXile had to do with the original games. The only thing I could find was that only Brian Fargo made a few maps for the first two games & directed the third. What's not clear is when these maps were made. Were they in the first version or just one of the ports? And which version of the game was released first? A lot of the history with the Bard's Tale series is muddied at best from what little I could find.
The two things that popped up the most were that Michael Cranford was the man behind the first two games & that (strangely enough) EA holds (or held?) some copyrights on the original series (the story, the fictional town I guess, & the characters). So I guess the loophole is that this new game is based on the real town of Skara Brae? I would really like an old school gamer to clear up some of this mess as it's confusing enough as it is.
Well, I did enjoy the original games (I played the DOS Versions by the way) & would love to see more from the series... so I already backed the game on kickstarter (which is at $1,033,501 as of this post).
Starker on 5/6/2015 at 15:05
Doesn't EA hold all of the copyrights and that's why Bard's Tale (2004) had to be a parody with no connection to the originals? As far as I understand they are just licensing the series from EA, much like Otherside is doing with Ultima Underworld.
EvaUnit02 on 5/6/2015 at 15:12
This tech demo is pretty sweet!
[video=youtube;fVB6dSckvJI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVB6dSckvJI[/video]
Quote Posted by Starker
Doesn't EA hold all of the copyrights and that's why Bard's Tale (2004) had to be a parody with no connection to the originals? As far as I understand they are just licensing the series from EA, much like Otherside is doing with Ultima Underworld.
EA probably doesn't care any more. Wasteland was also licensed from EA AFAIK.
Nedan on 5/6/2015 at 17:15
From what I understand with The Bard's Tale & Wasteland is that InXile owns the trademark to name of those games. They also own the trademark to Meantime... which is quite interesting & I'm curious to see what they do with that one.
That means they can make as many games as they want with the name without any approval (shooting from the hip here as I'm not well versed in copyright or trademark law). The problem arises when they want to use any of the story/setting/characters from the earlier titles. With Bard's Tale (2004), it had nothing to do with the series (but was damn funny & worth picking up) because they only owned the title & not the story/setting/characters. With Wasteland, EA lost the trademark as they either forgot to renew it or didn't care to. Konami picked up the trademark right away after that... but were kind enough to give it back to Brian Fargo & InXile.
As far as the what rights EA still holds onto... I don't believe they have any for Wasteland as the general consensus on the net (read: take with grain of salt) is that they only had the rights to the name & nothing more. As for The Bard's Tale, it seems that EA does & still holds onto the story/setting/characters from the original titles (hence the reason for 2004's Bard's Tale lack of continuity). But the original titles were based in a fictional city coincidentally called Skara Brae. I believe the loophole for The Bard's Tale IV is that they are setting the game in the historical version of Skara Brae (or Skerrabra) based in Scotland.
Now, obviously, I'm just shooting from the hip here as all this was just information I collected from the internet. Personally, I would prefer someone who is more experienced in all this to clarify as I'm still not 100% sure on all of it.
EvaUnit02 on 6/6/2015 at 14:16
Wasteland 2 definitely is a direct continuation of WL1. Here's my question, does it really matter that's not in continuity with some 30 year old game from the gaming equivalent of the Stone Age? With exceptions like Ultima V, the writing in game's of that era were often even more basic (eg a usually a hodge podge of tired tropes from Hollywood and/or dead tree media) than it is now.
