The Bard’s Tale Trilogy – Thief of Fate Released

Thief of Fate, the third and final part of inXile Entertainment and Krome Studios’ remastered The Bard’s Tale Trilogy is now available on both Steam and GOG. This new addition to the trilogy is accompanied by the so-called Legacy Mode that allows you to play through the remastered games with a more old-school set of rules and features.

Here’s the official launch trailer:

You can find the full list of changes and improvements in this Steam announcement, and here are just the major points:

inXile Entertainment and Krome Studios are pleased to announce that The Bard’s Tale III: Thief of Fate has been released for The Bard’s Tale Trilogy!

As mentioned previously, Thief of Fate is huge in scope, and we hope that you all enjoy the blood, sweat and tears that have gone in to making it as fully realized as possible. We have greatly enjoyed remastering these classic games, and appreciate all the assistance that the community has given us for the remaster.

In addition to the release of Thief of Fate (now available on the default branch!), there are a variety of new quality of life and polish additions to all three games, as well as Legacy mode. A full list of changes is below, but the major points are:

Legacy Mode

• Each of these options are available for selection ONLY when starting a new game. They can be individually selected, depending on your playing preferences!
• Individual character inventory.
• Miscellaneous changes (Special slot in BT1, no archery in BT1, no item charges in BT1 (has a chance to expire instead), more limited inventory space, wineskins restricted to BT3, rogues can only identify in BT3, spells and items restricted to those found in the respective games.
• Game specific songs, as per the original releases.
• Ability to use un-equipped items (as this was in versions of the original release).
• Automapping can be disabled, including that “misc differences” will add in a mapping similar to the original BT3 release.
• Full XP requirements – to make leveling up more like the original releases, allows party attack anywhere, shops can buy and sell charged items at will. Oh, and battles are repeatable :).
• Option to only allow saving at the Guild or camp. With “Misc Differences” enabled, BT3 will still allow saving anywhere, as that was in the original release.
• Remove items and hints from empty houses.

There is also a “Legacy” button in the settings, that will display the legacy dialog so you can see what options are enabled, in your currently loaded game.

Quality of Life and Other Adjustments

• The remaster now ramps off the 1/2 XP requirement at higher levels, so the very high levels now require more “like Legacy” amounts to reach.
• Added a confirmation dialog to “Exit To Main Menu” if game cannot autosave because you are in legacy mode “Save At Guild” and / or you are in a shop, combat, or an active deathsnare.
• Tweaks to Spell Song so that the big AOE spells don’t break the game balance.
• Save games now show more information, for what legacy modes are enabled, the total play time, and the map you are saved in.
• You can now select a portrait for your character during creation, as well as after creation in the “More Options” section of the Guild, from a selection of “non-monster” portraits.
• Reduced the size of the minimap when on really small maps, so the minimap should never wrap.
• Added separate ranged and melee damage to item comparison hints.
• You can now identify the magical properties of items. Roscoe can do it (if you pay him!), the chronomancer Identify spell will also reveal the information, or asking Sage in BT2 will mark items as identified. This feature is removed in Legacy Game Differences mode.
• Inventories now have a party inventory divider. This can be disabled in the game settings. Shops have dividers for item class.
• Added a “Moderate Transfer” mode (and renamed Overpowered to Full Transfer). Moderate transfer from BT1->BT2 resets characters to level 24; moderate transfer from BT2->BT3 resets characters to level 33, with wizards and archmages reset to level 13. These modes allow players to continue with all equipment in the next game, avoiding the starting grind, without worrying about their levels completely spoiling the gameplay if they’ve over-levelled their team.

Once again, from everybody on the development team, thank you for all the assistance. For those of you who have not been in the Thief of Fate Beta, we hope you have a blast!