in, yet with so many unique elements that it will challenge and enthrall them even more than the original." Designers Michael Cranford, a devout Christian, named five of the cities in the game after cities mentioned in the New Testament: Corinth, Colosse, Philippi, Ephesus, and Thessalonica. (He said in an interview that these were essentially placeholder names; he had fully expected them to be changed in the final game.) This was his last Bard's Tale game because he decided to go back to university to study philosophy and theology. Cranford had had a falling-out with Brian Fargo over his contract for The Bard's Tale; the final contract gave Cranford the full rights to the sequel game (The Bard's Tale II: The Destiny Knight), but he worked largely from home. Interplay would later create The Bard's Tale III: Thief of Fate without him. Dave Warhol, who composed the music for The Bard's Tale II, founded his own game company in 1986, named Realtime Associates. Rebecca Heineman (programmer of The Bard's Tale III) has said that the original name of this game was to be Tales of the Unknown - Volume II: The Archmage's Tale. Remaster During the 2015 Kickstarter campaign for the fourth main installment to the series, inXile partnered with Rebecca Heineman and her company Olde Sküül to remaster the original trilogy for modern personal computers running Mac OS and Microsoft Windows (instead of the emulated versions offered by inXile). After reaching an impasse in development, Olde Sküül and inXile agreed to transfer the project to Krome Studios. The game was released as part of the remastered The Bard's Tale Trilogy on October 23, 2018. It was essentially rewritten from scratch for the remastered edition, keeping little if any of the original code. Graphics, sound and user interface were updated to modern standards, an authoritative gameplay ruleset was devised (where previously, certain game elements were different for the three games in the trilogy or even different ports of the same game), and some extra content was added to (slightly) expand on the story. The remastered edition of the original trilogy was released for Xbox One on August 13, 2019. This followed the acquisition of inXile Entertainment by Microsoft. The collection supports Xbox Play Anywhere. See also Silversword References Bibliography External links The Bard's Tale Compendium Bard's Tale Online The Bard's Tale II at GameBase64 - with links to the files