BT4 is being made by InXile New Orleans, a new studio, not the main InXile in California (the guys who made Wasteland 2). I believe they got government funds or something for setting up a studio in New Orleans.

That isn't outsourcing, it still is a part of the same studio, but only at a different location.

Depends on your definition of outsourcing, the BT4 kickstarter made pretty clear that the game was going to be made by the same people as WL2, which is just not true. But yeah you're "right" that it's still operating under the name InXile. Also the fact that BT4 is being made by a new team far away from the main office (and presumably with some degree of autonomy) could definetely explain why BT4 has taken such a dramatic departure in design.

Apparently there IS going to be a remaster of Wasteland 1 from the same studio working on this Bard's Tale trilogy remaster!

Planned release is early 2019.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/240760/announcements/detail/1653265320450249852

"The signature item of this bundle is Wasteland - 30th Anniversary Edition, a remastering of the first game that will feature updated graphics (which maintain the spirit of the original pixel art), run natively in current operating systems and at all current resolutions, and offer other quality of life features. This work is being done by Krome Studios, the team currently behind a similar remastering of The Bard’s Tale Trilogy."

I'm assuming it will come to GOG too. As someone who loves the Fallout series (if you hadn't guess from my name) and Wasteland 2 but missed Wasteland 1 and found it a bit too archaic here in 2018 (I did manage to beat the entire Pool of Radiance series decades after release) I'm pretty hyped!

EDIT: Sorry if this was already known Khaleesi... apparently this was announced 2 months ago. What can I say... I've been out of the loop.

Glad o hear that the original Wasteland is getting the remaster treatment. I hope they consider moving on to Dragon Wars as well. That was a great game, and deserves a remaster and a modern sequel. It was originally developed as Bard’s Tale IV, but licensing issues forced them to rebrand it.

Fun fact: The disk drive was, itself, a little computer with its own CPU. (That's why, for many games, including Bard's Tale 3, one can't simply zap the load times in the emulator.)

Dragon Wars is also very different from the classic Bard's Tale games. Bard's Tale 1-3 are all about dungeon crawling, while Dragon Wars has a much stronger focus on non-dungeon exploration and adventure-game style puzzle solving (though with skills you can learn and use and multiple solutions to many puzzles, including multiple ways to escape Purgatory).

With that said, there's another, lesser known, sequel that could be considered a spiritual successor to the Bard's Tale series: Centauri Alliance. That game, which could be described as Bard's Tale in space, could really use a remaster, considering that the game is rather clunky and buggy. (There's even at least one case where the game is so buggy that I can't tell how the game is *supposed* to work in that situation.)

Edit: One thing I forgot to mention: Centauri Alliance was only released for the Apple 2 and Commodore 64; there is no DOS version of this game. Yet another reason that game could use a remaster.

I am really looking forward to this this. I played DOS version and thought it a wonderful game.

I recently bought a Commodore 64 and a disk drive, and was surprised to find that the DD was both heavier and larger than the computer itself. (The C64 turned out to not work, so I returned it to the store where I got it and am now left with just a working Disk Drive :p)