The folks at inXile are showing off an early look at what combat. Will be like in The Bard’s Tale IV, a Kickstarter-funded game I admittedly forgot was in the studio’s pipeline. But am glad to see again. As for the grid-lock combat itself, while this footage is slow and guid enough to get the point across generally. One thing that is harder to see in the video is our input queuing system. When you take an action in combat, you can begin ordering another party member before the action has played out. And this keeps the flow of combat moving along faster than a traditional turn-based system.

“There’s a lot more to talk about here, from the way elements like health, mana, and armor interact. With each other, how channeling abilities and focus work, the way that temporary status boons can affect a character’s functionality. Or how positional tactics can let you set up more devastating damage,” inXile added. These open up a lot of subtle possibilities, but we’ll save more of those details for future updates. Nice to hear, because after you reach a certain familiarity with a game, that stuff really adds up.

The Bards Tale 4