Havent seen anything yet.

glad here the game view looks a little akin to the original, and not the top-down isometric of the last installment.

Although they use a similar name, "Bard's Tale" and "The Bard Tale" are two different franchises both set in their own unrelated universe. Bard's Tale is the party-based first-person trilogy of the 80's, The Bard Tale is the 2004 comedy Action-RPG. InXile wanted to make the 04 BT in the universe of the original trilogy, but couldn't get the rights, so they added a "The".

Not really. Backers of T:ToN had to beg/demand to get the proper edition matching their pledge tiers. And the backer outfit pack was made available on Steam but not GOG - we had to wait and get it from the backer portal two weeks later.

I pledged for Bard's Tale before the Torment fiasco, but inXile will not get another pledge from me.

I *might* reconsider if they do it right this time - if we get Deluxe keys from the start and absolutely no bullshit. Obsidian can do it - inXile has no excuse.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is only £39.99. If the price hiding under that TBC is to be believed, there's another £30 on top. Sorry but that will put it right at the bottom of my wishlist until it becomes better value for money. Even Witcher 3 didn't cost that much at launch!

One problem with low spec hardware even on turn based games coud be the number of units, stuff going on, size of maps, number of AI players. one of the Civilization games used to freeze or crash for me on a low spec hardware especially on huge maps with lots of AI players and units.

Wow, and that worked?

I think we've just solved the Star Control dispute!

By the "number of units", do you mean something like that Berserker room in the first game (though, due to the way the game works, you don't see all of them, so it doesn't use up extra resources; it just takes time to get through all the battle messages).

(Incidentally, the high system requirements will likely mean I won't be able to play a game I've already paid for.)

Exactly, the number of units is irrelevant in this type of game.
Nothing I have seen so far screams "this game needs a GTX 970!" As I mentioned before, this feels like either lazy work or lazy work. (programming/marketing)

And in the case the game does manage to run on lower specced systems. Is anyone with anything less going to gamble if it does or not? How many people in their right mind will buy a game knowing their systems is below the min req?

Mark my words, this is a sign of very poor work and I have now no doubt the game will be riddled (heh) with issues.

I never look at the system requirements. If this game is reasonably priced, I will get it, regardless. I play games on a relatively cheap laptop using its integrated graphics. The only slowdowns I can remember are due to poor wine performance on games that don't support Linux "natively". In particular, dx11 is almost always a deal breaker, although I am playing Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel right now, and it works mostly fine as long as I'm not compiling something in the background (which I do way too often thanks to gentoo).

edit:
I mean, I'll get it assuming I hear at least one positive report of it working on Linux. As I said, dx11 is slow and flaky at best in current wine. I have too many games already that don't work at all for me.

So we have the 1st one and IVth one. Where are the ones in between?

If you buy "The Bard's Tale", which, I am assuming you're calling "the first one" (it isn't), you get the 1st through 3rd for free. The only one missing is the Construction Set.

The Bard’s Tale 1, 2, and 3 are included with The Bard's Tale (2004).

Ah. I see.
So that entry is really more The Bard's Tale Collection rather than just the re-make/reboot of the first Bard's Tale. I read on Wikipedia and it has been mentioned here that the developer of The Bard's Tale was unable to get the rights to Bard's Tale so, that was new information for me.