The Bard's Tale 4 is coming, in the 30th anniversary year of the original game

The creator of The Bard's Tale announced at PAX South that The Bard's Tale 4 will launch this year, the 30th anniversary of the series' debut.

Brian Fargo and InXile Entertainment, which most recently launched Wasteland 2, will deliver the dungeon crawler for PC. A crowdfunding campaign also will be a part of its development. The Bard's Tale 4 will blend modern visuals, animations and sound while folding in locales and other motifs from the longstanding Bard's Tale canon.

It's official.. And I'm very personally excited to be working on this. More details to follow. pic.twitter.com/OegeiAU28B

— Brian Fargo (@BrianFargo) January 24, 2015

Fargo, according to Game Informer, told the PAX South panel that the series is "special" for him, not least because it was the first game to put original developer Interplay on the map. Electronic Arts was the publisher for the first Bard's Tale in 1985.

The Bard's Tale (originally called Tales of the Unknown: Volume I) was followed by two sequels, the latter of which released in 1988. A 2004 reimagining of the game, by Fargo and inXile, launched on PlayStation 3, Windows PC and Xbox, but it was not considered a sequel or successor to the original series.