The Mages Tale - VR in the World of Bards Tale IV

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InXile is working on a dungeon crawler RPG set in the world of The Bard's Tale IV, named The Mages Tale. The game is designed to be used with the Oculus Touch. Brian Fargo goes to some length explaining that none of the developers working on The Bards Tale IV, nor any of the received funding for that game will be spent on the development of The Mages Tale. In essence he is mentioning the opposite in that assets of The Mages Tale will flow back into The Bards Tale IV, given that The Mages Tale is to be released this year.

As you might have already seen, we just announced a new game we're developing: The Mage's Tale! This is a brand-new VR title coming to Oculus Touch, which we hinted at last holiday during our year-in-review video.

The Mage's Tale is a first-person VR adventure set in the world of The Bard's Tale, where you play as a young mage (who else?), using tactile functions to craft and throw spells to defeat your foes. It is a separate stand-alone title, which means you don't need familiarity with The Bard's Tale to play it. It is not directly tied to The Bard's Tale IV either, so it's not required for you to play The Mage's Tale to enjoy The Bard's Tale IV, or vice-versa. And it's great news for The Bard's Tale IV, for reasons I'll explain below! But first, the guys from Tested came by our studio to try the game out, check it out below!​

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Here is Brian's explanation of usage of resources.

Oculus Studios' publishing allowed us to hire a team for Mage's without affecting the team we were already growing for Bard's, a team that has been hard at work on things we have already been showing you. And I want to reiterate not a penny from our crowdfunding went into The Mage's Tale, in fact quite the opposite as we'll explain below. The crowdfunding monies has been fully earmarked for The Bard's Tale IV's team.

So in a direct sense, The Mage's Tale does not affect The Bard's Tale IV. But there are some benefits... One benefit is that in creating The Mage's Tale, we need to become familiar with and develop technology and tools, just like on any other game. With each game, there is a time investment in getting up to speed on all of that. Since both The Bard's Tale IV and The Mage's Tale are being built on Unreal Engine 4, there is naturally a synergistic benefit between both of them.

But here's the best news for backers: after having seen our videos and screenshots, we saw many of you asking how we're able to build a game this graphically polished on a $1.5 million budget. We're pleased to say that while both games are being worked on by separate teams, many of the environments, models, textures, animations, and other graphical assets that we've been able to use for The Mage's Tale are going back into The Bard's Tale IV. That means we can make The Bard's Tale IV look better, and frees us up to spend more resources to build on that art set, and this helps us get to the vision of what we wanted The Bard's Tale IV to be.

Bottom line - the assets coming in from Mage's allow us to make The Bard's Tale IV a larger game than otherwise possible, with larger levels and more varied enemies. Of course, continued back catalog sales from our other games, and sales of Torment: Tides of Numenera, which is releasing this Feb. 28th, will continue to flow directly into our projects, allowing us to make them that much bigger and better!​

And from the press release:

INXILE ENTERTAINMENT ANNOUNCES THE MAGE'S TALE FOR OCULUS TOUCH

The Mage's Tale - Dungeon Crawler RPG Set Within the Bard's Tale Universe

(Newport Beach, CA - February 24, 2017) - inXile Entertainment announces The Mage's Tale, a VR action RPG developed for Oculus Touch, and set for a 2017 launch. inXile Entertainment is the developer behind some of today's most revered RPGs, such as game of the year Wasteland 2, and the soon to launch Torment: Tides of Numenera (Feb. 28th on PC and console). In addition, inXile is currently developing both The Bard's Tale IV and Wasteland 3.

"When I was a kid our dungeons consisted of playing Dungeons and Dragons on graph paper. From there I graduated to playing classic computer games in black and white like Wizardry, which inspired me to create a full color dungeon crawl with Bard's Tale. The window for the players kept getting bigger, the graphics more advanced, and now with The Mage's Tale, we are inside the dungeon," said Brian Fargo, dungeon crawler expert and CEO of inXile Entertainment.

About The Mage's Tale - VR Action, Adventure, Puzzle Solving RPG

Welcome, apprentice. Don your Wizard's robe and become a mighty conjuror. The corrupted wizard, Gaufroi, has kidnapped your master, Mage Alguin, and it's up to you to save him. To win the day, you must conquer eleven devious dungeons, from the stinking sewers of Skara Brae to the living tombs of evil Charm. Mind bending puzzles, terrifying traps, and deadly monsters stand in your way, all perfectly capable of sending you to an early grave.

But worry not. You wield raw elemental power in the palm of your hand, allowing you to sling gouts of flame, javelins of ice, arcs of lightning, and swirling tempests which can finish off any fiend that stands in your way - from the snarkiest goblin to the burliest giant. And as you delve deeper into the depths, you find and master forgotten secrets, ancient lore, and powerful spell reagents with which you can craft increasingly exotic spells to defeat even greater foes. You may be an apprentice now, but to save your master, this must become your Mage's Tale.​