I was instructed to make a post here by inXile's support team, so here goes:

Not too long ago (about a week or so, to be exact), I purchased the Bard's Tale Trilogy in the hopes of experiencing these games for the first time. Unfortunately, I was completely unable to play the game. My issue was as follows: I would start up the game, and it would immediately freeze and crash before reaching the title screen. I contacted GOG's support team, but to no avail - every attempt made to get the game working was unsuccessful. I inevitably had to request a refund. I also contacted inXile's support team, and they instructed me to make this post you're reading now.

I'm not here to vent - I'm genuinely interested to see what other advice people could offer, and of course would like to see whatever the root cause of my problem is resolved, so that no one else experiences it.

To Krome, once you read this: the support team already has the crash log and dump files, as well as my system's DxDiag report. For quick reference, here are my system specs:

Intel Core i7-4700HQ
16GB DDR3-1600 RAM
Nvidia GeForce GT 750M (I think it has 2GB dedicated memory)
Latest Nvidia and DirectX drivers installed

I don't think the system specs would be the problem, but at this point I can't be certain of that.

Which Version of Windows you are using?
Are you using the latest version 1.08 of this game?
Do you receive any error-messages when the game crashes?

I'm using Windows 10. I don't think I was using the latest version of the game - it must have been updated shortly after I requested the refund, unfortunately.

There was an error message that popped up when the crash occurred, but it was fairly generic. It just said something along the lines of, "the game has experienced a technical issue and cannot continue." The crash dump says that a process "tried to read from or write to a virtual address" for which it didn't have permission to do so (exception code 0xC0000005). The log file specifically says that d3d11.dll caused the access violation.

I should also say this, although I didn't mention it to either GOG's or InXile's support team: I noticed some of the letters were flickering in and out of existence on the initial splash screen (copyright information about the game). Could that be a clue as to what went wrong?

Sounds very much like a hardware issue on your side of the fence, sad to say. But--then again, better to know these things than not...;) Some hardware bugs are obscure little devils to pin down. But anyway, try to begin with a ram tester of some kind, let it run overnight--I'm using Win10x64, currently build 17746, ver 1809--I'm a beta tester for Windows--and I've had no similar problems with the game--in all the versions released thus far.

Good luck...! It's a great little game--hope you get to enjoy it soon...;)

Wanted to add--it could any number of things--but as this is not really a demanding game--I'm running at 3840x2160 without a problem--a problem with your ram is the most obvious place to start--try to test both DIMMs separate at first and see if the game will run with just one 8GB DIMM installed--if it does, and then you switch DIMMs and the game fails--you've identified the source. Happy hunting...!

Sorry for not updating, life got in the way.

I ran PassMark's MemTest86, and the system passed all tests without any errors arising. I also went ahead and did a SMART test on my system's hard drive. The only concerning thing is a slightly high Pending Sector Count, which has gone up slightly since I first tested it (it's up to 40 now).

I was suggested uninstalling and reinstalling drivers by InXile's support team, which I will try eventually. Personally, I also want to see what doing a clean reinstall of Windows 10 does - it's probably about time to do that anyway, this laptop has been using the same install for at least a few years.

All that said, I still would not be surprised if something drastically wrong is happening with the hardware itself. This laptop is at least four or five years old now, so it's entirely possible that the system is starting to fail.