Classic Game Postmortem: The Bard's Tale I and II
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- čas přidán 25. 11. 2018
- In this 2018 GDC postmortem, Michael Cranford shares the vision that led him to the conception of The Bard's Tale series, walking through the design and development decisions inspired by his years as a dungeon master.
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Those retro game post mortems are always the most interesting. Modern game post mortems are usually like: „Yeah, we had this market survey and saw there is a slight demand for this kind of game, then we did some marketing and it got published“.
Whereas retro game post mortems are usually like „2 colors on the screen at once? What‘s this sorcery! I must learn how to code, this is amazing, I have amazing ideas for amazing games, everything is amazing! Oh, and I do it in my mother‘s basement!“.
Imagination is an ever more rarer element in our human perception, which leads to this milleniums regurgitation of everything from the past that can sell a product.
So its up to kids in basements to come up with new stuff, problem is, social media, and the cloning of human thoughts, less connect with silence and contemplation, and that make imagination even more rare. But I believe it still manifests itself. But another problem is getting lost in the overwhelming crowd of offers that are beyond big money marketting. So its not only harder for the creator to come up with an original view point, but its harder for us to find that content.
Mostly agree, except for some valuable TECHNICAL insights sometimes offered in "modern" talks.
I would love to see a Might & Magic postmortem with Jon Van Caneghem. I wish he could get the M&M IP back and make another game (ala 6) before it's too late.
Can't upvote this enough
Bard's Tale 1 was one of the first RPGs I ever played
Loved Bards Tale 2 when I was a kid playing it in the late eighties. I went into a dungeon and ran out of torches so could never find my way out, it was heartbreaking.
My Dad used square graph paper to map each level... Those damn elementals!
Fantastic talk! Love Bard's Tale, it was a huge part of my childhood. Thanks for Bard's Tale and thanks for sharing your story.
Glad to see this on GDC. Great stuff.
Great talk. I never played Bard's Tale back in the 1980s (something to do with the "Bard" name, I think - I was an Ultima nut, too) but have played it as part of my massive dream-come-true of playing all those games on DosBox that I couldn't afford back then, or didn't have the right computer for. I truly enjoyed all three Bard's Tales from that era and look forward to playing the new one when it gets more affordable.
What is fascinating to me is just how unaware people like Garriot, Cranford, etc were that they were part of a golden age of game-making, where the gameplay, story and ideas were so important (mostly due to technical limitations, but also due to being the first generation making such games). Now we have reached the stage of amazing graphics/performance/etc (which I remember predicting back in the 1990s on seeing such games as Wing Commander - on 5 CDs!) - that there is now a deliberate move to retro-style gaming, and indie companies trying to make games like the good old days. One can never truly bring back the past, but I am very pleased to see pixelated graphics coming back, and a bigger emphasis on the gameplay itself rather than bells-and-whistles.
Finally, I think the biggest damage has been done by profit-margin seeking corporations like EA - gobbling up high quality game companies and turning them into commercial shite, then simply closing them down. One looks at the games coming out and it seems like they are doing exactly what Cranford suggests - making movies instead of games. Plus the obscenity that is microtransactions - a truly exploitative model, which uses the impulse towards gambling addiction to generate money, as well as exploiting the desire to win and overcome challenges to dangle "play-to-win" advantages. Then there is the model of using online multiplayer to avoid actually writing decent NPC characters and scripts (Fallout 76 comes to mind...).
All of those things are why my DosBox library still gets regular playtime, and why the games I am making are in the spirit of the Golden Era 1980-2000. Naturally, others will have their own preferred era of games, also those millennials who cannot handle seeing pixel graphics or using the keyboard for controls. But what matters is that gamers get to play the games they like - and that people still make games that are fun, regardless of the quality of graphics/sounds/etc. Thanks GDC for another excellent video!
Pixel graphics are rarely well done nowadays, but I appreciate their continued use - especially when artistically pleasing. Pixel sprites age so well. The 80s games were perfect as a kid; I had a huge collection of “burnt” games in the 90s and their graphical minimalism let your imagination fully take over. It was a very special period. This age of polygons and ultra hq textures and shaders leaves me feeling very cold most of the time. There are many interesting indie RPG’s now but they are buried in a sea of releases, thank God forums for niche interests are still around today!
It's about time there's one of these done on a game I actually play. Good times and very interesting.
Amazing and life changing work. Thank you!
That whole drama addressing just felt uncomfortable in general, and it kinda ruined the tone of the talk for me, like he couldn't admit to any mistake in this post mortem without assigning the blame to someone else and made a good chunk of it feel dishonest.
The philosophy theology talk part of it took me by surprise, but it was nonetheless inspiring to hear about worldbuilding and character writing through that perspective.
Great piece, thanks!!
I loved the first Bard's Tale game. I was excited when the second one came out, and I made very good progress on it... but then I was stopped cold by the "endurable" snare puzzle. I couldn't figure it out to save my life (and sure enough, died in that snare many times). The idea than you would have to repeatedly go back and forth in one corridor a certain number of times in order for the answer to be revealed, just didn't match my intuition about the game. Once I mapped out the room, I didn't necessarily go back and forth, so the answer was lost to me until I bought a hint guide. That pretty much spoiled the game series for me, and I never completed the second game, nor bought the third. The first game still holds a special place in my heart, though.
It was pretty stupid, only a thing seemingly for people not to figure it out or beat it. I have no idea how anyone could beat that game without the internet or a walkthrough.
Very interesting, thanks!
I like this guy.
Man, I loved Centauri Alliance, one of my all time favorite games.
The remastered editions are great btw 👍👌
18:25 Hmm, where in Irvine is this? It looks exactly like a place I worked on Bristol, but I only see old listings for Interplay on Fitch and Von Karman.
I remember playing this on my Amiga, as a kid. It was great (for its time) but relentlessly hard. Or maybe I just sucked. Either way, Bard's Tale captivated me and drew me into computer gaming.
No it was hard...lol the remastered bards tale trilogy is awsome....check it out olus it now has s save festure
I used to play the shit out of the Apple II and DOS versions. (Apple II at my aunts place, and DOS at my parents place.) Loved the hell out of all of the bards tale games.
Very interesting video one of the best classic Dungeon crawlers that did help change this gendre for years it was an experience indeed i know i have played these games really hardcore drawing maps not being able to save in game etc the remake is very well done the only thing i would like to see in it is added quests for the City and the dungeons to make the world and characters seem more alive and get a bigger sense that you accomplish something.
Imagine being the Burger Easter Egg Guy...
Very enjoyable talk. I'd read some articles about Cranford in the past and it was nice to be able to hear him talk about stuff. It's kind of too bad no playtesters ever told him how hard the games were, especially BT2. (BT1 was doable largely because you could easily teleport to kill those 396 Berserkers over and over for massive experience. I did that for I don't know how many hours one day...) I also remember being frustrated that there was no winning screen at the end of BT1...was I actually done or not?
Anyway, all the pros and cons aside, I was one of those who still enjoyed the series very much. My 1985 and 1986 Christmas vacations just wouldn't have been the same if I hadn't been glued to my Commodore 64 obsessively tackling these games!
I had a good chuckle during the segment beginning at 40:45 :)
"IRKM DESMET DAEM"
Great talk! #DoomedSpies
LIE. WITH. PASSION. AND. BE. FOREVER. DAMNED. It took me until my late teens to hit eneter after each word.
Even then EA were still trying to fuck things up
The stuff about Tolkien, Christianity and destiny was awesome. Cheers. (Not even a confirmed "Christian". But fascinating insight, just the same.)
burger battles
This is very interesting on the game development front.
The philosophical front misses a lot on the reasons why Christians drive to be more Godly. it's also kind of a slap in the face to the people who are generous and helpful and self-sacrificial.
Oh, and we're finding it hard to go more than a few GDC talks without having gender politics or some other kind of political thing cause problems for somebody.
Also, could you stop with the bashing of "Western consumer culture"? There's more to society than just that, add people can live in a free market without just being greedy you jerk.
This is why I stopped watching a lot of the GDC conference talks. How to often to comes back to some moralizing the condescending criticism are people from bias and hatred.
the most importantly I'd like to point out that Hollywood in the games industry is one of the biggest pushers of "Western consumer culture" as you call it. the people who are most pushing us away from traditional values of respect and caring and generosity and other old values that are now considered passe and not postmodern.
Yeah, would have been an even better talk without the pointless virtue signalling.
Well pointless only to the extent that if he doesnt do it, legend or not, his career could be ended at any moment.
Are you kidding? How can you live in 2019 and not realize we live in a deep consumer culture? It's perpetrated by everything, including but not limited to Hollywood.
@renideo The point made is even more relevant nowdays than when I made it. It have only become even more true than it was.
Just try a test: name an openly conservative game dev. Now name an openly woke game dev.
Its easy to be openly woke, put pronouns in your bio and slag off white males as 'toxic.' Now try saying such heresies as "its ok to be white" or "there are only two genders" and see how long it takes to get backlash.
If you think different, then you havent been paying attention in the last 10 years.
please do not aggressively misgender and deadname trans people.
Right.... aggressively re-writing history is better. You dont even know what the person in question's feeling is so you have control problems.
He didnt misgender anything. He referred to the person as "him" back then, when he identified as male and to her latter identity as her. IMHO thats precisely how it should be done.
Not to mention the irrelevant insulting anecdotes and the overwhelming defensiveness. It's pretty clear how contemptuous this dude is towards her
that is made-up nonsense