What you need to know
- The Bard's Tale IV: Director's Cut is a role-playing game with numerous choices.
- It was supposed to launch in 2018, but was delayed to 2019.
- The game is available to Xbox Game Pass users right now.
- You can access The Bard's Tale IV through the Microsoft Store.
The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep is a dungeon crawler from inXile Entertainment and legendary designer Brian Fargo. Fargo has worked on experiences like Fallout, Wasteland, and Torment: Tides of Numenera in the past. Many older PC gamers will immediately recognize the series, and the latest entry doesn't disappoint. On Xbox One, it's called The Bard's Tale IV: Director Cut and features a number of enhancements.
The game focuses on challenging combat that rewards creativity, various puzzles that lead to treasure, and a lot of environmental variety. The Bard's Tale IV is set over a hundred years after the events of the last game. The terrible happenings of Skara Brae's violent destruction are nearly forgotten. In the dark ruins below, an evil has waited patiently for its time. Fanatics are gathering control, the famous Adventurers Guild has been outlawed, and you must rise up in defiance to become the hero the realm needs.
If you're an Xbox Game Pass member, you can download the title right now through the Microsoft Store. Just follow the link here and sign into your Xbox Live account. You should see an "Install/play" option at the top right alongside "..." which gives you access to more choices. At the moment, simply clicking "Install/play" doesn't do anything, but if you click the "..." button, then you can choose which device you want the game to download to. Luckily, this works and the game will immediately begin downloading to your console once you select it. The images above should help you find the menu.
The Bard's Tale IV is an Xbox Play Anywhere title, but oddly enough, isn't Xbox One X Enhanced. Due to this, it looks incredibly blurry on 4K displays. It's unclear if it even runs at 1080p at this point. We've reached out to Microsoft for comment and shall update you as soon as we receive a response. Hopefully, there's a patch in the works.
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