On the 30th anniversary of the original Bard's Tale, what better time than now to go on an adventure worthy of song?

The Bard's Tale IV will feature labyrinths and dungeons chock-full of dangerous traps, puzzles, and challenges, as well as the winding streets of the city of Skara Brae and its outlying environments. Exploration will take place in the first-person dungeon crawler style of the original trilogy. With full rights to everything from the original games, the story of The Bard's Tale IV will center on a new Skara Brae built upon the ruins of the old, returning familiar gameplay concepts such as No-Magic Zones and Magic Mouths.

Utilizing the Unreal 4 engine, The Bard's Tale IV will also represent a graphical leap forward in the genre, immersing you in a highly detailed and lush world you'll want to map to its farthest reaches. The Bard's Tale IV enriches the setting from the original trilogy with Scottish culture, including a soundtrack inspired by Gaelic music.

Industry veteran Chris Avellone (Planescape: Torment, Fallout: New Vegas) is set to join The Bard’s Tale IV team as a writer and designer if the ongoing Kickstarter reaches $1.9 million, designing an entirely new area called the Cairn of Horrors. This all new dungeon will contain the worst things that live in the imagination of Chris Avellone.

But inXile is putting more of the Planescape: Torment design team back together, as Colin McComb (Planescape: Torment, Torment: Tides of Numenera) will also be joining the team at $1.7 million, designing a new Realm of the Elves area.

Chris Avellone has worked with inXile before on both of their Kickstarted titles, Wasteland 2 and Torment: Tides of Numenera. Wasteland 2 was released to critical and popular acclaim last year.

Kicked off on June 3, the Kickstarter for The Bard’s Tale IV has funded its basic goal and already hit the first stretch goals, having passed the $1.35 million mark last Friday.

"I owe my career to seeing Bard's Tale II on a Commodore 64 at a friend's house," says Chris Avellone. "When I saw the streets of Skara Brae up and running (gasp - in simulated 3D! And in color!), 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. So I have Brian Fargo to thank three times - first for the game itself (and all the Interplay RPGs I played to follow, including Bard's Tale I, Bard's Tale III, and Wasteland), second, for hiring me at Interplay, and third, for asking me to be a part of Bard's Tale IV - with your support, I hope we can make it happen!"

"I'm pleased that both Chris and Colin may come aboard Bard's Tale IV for extra design," says Brian Fargo, CEO of inXile. "We are in the final weeks of the campaign and have assembled an all-star cast of writing, design, art and music. Now it's a matter of how many more people join our campaign to build these glorious RPGs."

inXile plans to use photogrammetry to create in-game 3D objects from photos of architecture, taken right in Scotland. With such detailed assets, The Bard's Tale IV will have intricate interactions, allowing for detailed physical puzzles in the game world, or while inspecting your own items in your inventory to find hidden compartments, latches, and more.

Of course, Skara Brae is not always a friendly place. The Bard's Tale IV will update the classic gameplay of the originals, featuring a dynamic phase based combat system. Combat will utilize the complex decision-making opportunities of traditional phase based combat, but with a constantly evolving enemy strategy and a pacing that keeps you on your toes.