The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep version 2.0 will be called Director's Cut, to release in June
InXile has posted an update on their Kickstarter page for The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep, detailing an upcoming 2.0 update to the PC dungeon crawler. While InXile has recently been acquired by Microsoft, the team still has plans to support Barrows Deep with bug fixes, quality-of-life improvements, and DLC.
Some of the biggest updates include gameplay balancing and improving game performance with a game engine upgrade. There will also be a new mechanic to bypass puzzles, of which the game has many as noted in our review.
Because the scope of the updates has expanded dramatically, the development team has decided to dub the new version of the game "Director’s Cut", and will release this next June. InXile also states that Mac and Linux version of Barrows Deep will release alongside the Director's Cut. The game is also slated to come to Xbox One and PlayStation 4 (despite InXile's acquisition by Microsoft), but these ports have yet to be dated.
An overview of updates is listed below.
2.0 expands to become the Director’s Cut
We are still in development on the free DLC patch, which also includes a number of other player-requested features and items off of our own post-release support list. As the scope of the patch has expanded (and continues to), we decided that it warranted a more formal title than 2.0. When released, it will turn the game into “The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep - Director’s Cut”. We are introducing several new features, most notably the previously mentioned DLC and an engine update, a larger undertaking allowing us to further improve performance and optimization. Many of those features were discussed in our last update, and include:
- A new dungeon and story line featuring new enemy types
- New items (master-crafted gear and Dwarven Weapons)
- Inventory filtering
- Expanded balancing efforts across the entire game (combat, economy, abilities, etc.) based on player feedback and our own testing
- A new Song of Exploration allowing you to bypass puzzles if those aren't your jam
- Additional character portraits
- A new intro animatic
- Expanded work on improving localization
- Updated game engine
- Improved performance and stability
- Improved level art
- Reworked main menu
- Numerous bug fixes
And much more! We are also currently working with Microsoft to improve and optimize our gamepad support. The Director's Cut is scheduled to go live in June.