inXile Bard's Tale PC Review

Looking back on the evolution of the gaming industry, I’ve come to the conclusion that somewhere along the line; a majority of the designers forgot what games are all about. A game is meant for relaxation, to make you forget about the day-to-day worries you have, and if possible, to even make you laugh. However, once the computing power exploded overnight, the technical side became more important than the creative one. Pixel shader and bump mapping effects, thousands of polygons per scene or character, high resolution textures, all became far more important than what I prefer to call “the soul” of a game, with the designers using these technical tricks to beautifully package a mediocre game at best. Judging by this trend, The Bard’s Tale (TBT) is just as exotic as a quest. A remake of a much loved RPG from the 80’s, TBT is a fantasy, top-down action RPG, made by inXile Studios, which was founded by Brian Fargo.

Unfortunately, the first contact with TBT is going to be a disappointing one, since the quality of the intro as well as the in-game cutscenes is very low par. I don’t know if the designers wanted them to be this way, or it’s just a side effect of console porting (TBT was first launched for PlayStation 2 and XBOX) but the pre-rendered cutscenes look horrendous. Fortunately, this is the only real technical gripe of the game.

After a couple of minutes of playtime and a few cutscenes, you will no doubt realize that humor is the backbone of an otherwise over-simplified game. I tend to think TBT as a satire to all the RPG’s that have seen the light of day until now, making fun of everything that can be criticized, from the storyline’s to the insipid “kill the rat” quests. However, you will need to have some RPG experience in order to catch the more subtle jokes, since nothing is forced or put there just for the sake of it. Even the Bard is an atypical hero, or truth be told, the perfect anti-hero, with no interest for the good of mankind or anyone around him, which only cares about money, food and dames with large boobs, and not necessarily in the order. At the start of the game you won’t know much about your alter-ego, but as you progress, certain misdeeds from the Bard’s past will come back to haunt him, complicating matters even more.

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