InXile Entertainment has announced that their latest in the line of a long-running dungeon crawling RPG series, The Bard’s Tale IV: The Barrows Deep is getting the Director’s Cut treatment this coming June.
Barrows Deep was released last year to lukewarm reviews and was supposed to get a free DLC patch, bringing the game to version 2.0. Since then, Microsoft has gone on to acquire InXile in a bold move to nourish their first party RPG studios. As a result, the planned 2.0 update has been expanded to be a massive update adding new features and enhancing the base game.
When released, it will turn the game into “The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep – Director’s Cut”. The studio is planning to introduce several new features, most notably the previously mentioned DLC and an engine update, a larger undertaking allowing them to further improve performance and optimization. Many of those features were discussed in the last update, and include:
- A new dungeon and storyline 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
The studio is also currently working with Microsoft to improve and optimize their gamepad support. The Director’s Cut is scheduled to go live in June.
InXile is releasing the Mac and Linux versions at the same time as The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep – Director’s Cut.