The Bard's Tale Previews
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Of course, one of the most distinctive features in this upcoming game is its irreverent humor--specifically, how the game takes so many role-playing game conventions and ridicules them thoroughly. The example we saw was of a "metal mouth" (known as a "magic mouth" in the original Bard's Tale)--a gigantic pair of moving lips mounted on a steel door that require you to answer a riddle before you can pass. Unfortunately for the metal mouth we encountered, it wasn't able to consistently make the lines of its mystic riddle rhyme consistently, which caused the bard to rib it mercilessly. The flustered metal mouth forgot the eldritch magics that powered it and exchanged a few huffy remarks with the bard before allowing him entrance. You can expect to see plenty of other gags like this one in the final game, which, if what we've seen is any indication, will offer plenty of hack-and-slash action and plenty of goofy gags. The Bard's Tale is scheduled for release on the PS2 and the Xbox later this year and for the PC next year.
And the second is at Warcry:
NPCs all have their own personalities and there is a wide variety. Store owners aren't the typical store owners; each has his own eccentric way of doing things. There are the traditional features like characters leveling and choosing talents, but one of the new features is the dialog system: Instead of reading through what the character might say, the player has a choice of saying something nice or saying something snide. Either way, you will win, but one might affect the game play and you have no idea exactly what the bard is going to say. All you know is it's either snide or nice.
