‘The Mage’s Tale’ Available for Pre-order for Oculus Touch, Launching June 20th

By
Dominic Brennan
-
22

On June 20th, action RPG The Mage’s Tale will launch on the Oculus Store. The dungeon crawler from developer inXile Entertainment is optimised for Rift and Touch, set between the events of The Bard’s Tale III: Thief of Fate (1988) and the upcoming The Bard’s Tale IV.

“Mind-bending puzzles, terrifying traps, and hordes of vicious monsters” await in 10 hand-crafted dungeons, amounting to over 10 hours of high-quality gameplay, according to the developer. Announced at GDC 2017 as one of several pieces of ‘high profile content’ for the Oculus platform, The Mage’s Tale is inXile Entertainment’s first major project built from the ground-up for VR, set in the world of classic fantasy RPG The Bard’s Tale.

Heading this article you can see the game’s pre-order trailer and some screenshots below:

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image captured by Road to VR

The game is anticipated to eventually come to other platforms, but it arrives first on Oculus Touch, and is available for pre-order on the Oculus Store from today, with 10% off the $40 launch price.

SEE ALSO
Watch: Six Minutes of 'Mage's Tale' Gameplay Shows Real Promise

Speaking to Road to VR at GDC, lead designer David Rogers explained how players “easily take an hour per dungeon” due to the amount of interesting stuff to look at and secrets to find. While its use of motion controls for spell casting means the game is action-oriented, the studio has drawn on its rich history of RPG development (such as Wasteland 2 and Torment: Tides of Numenera), promising character progression and a rich crafting system that allows for hundreds of different spells to be created.

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Dominic Brennan
The trial version of Microsoft’s Monster Truck Madness probably had something to do with it. And certainly the original Super Mario Kart and Gran Turismo. A car nut from an early age, Dominic was always drawn to racing games above all other genres. Now a seasoned driving simulation enthusiast, and former editor of Sim Racer magazine, Dominic has followed virtual reality developments with keen interest, as cockpit-based simulation is a perfect match for the technology. Conditions could hardly be more ideal, a scientist once said. Writing about simulators lead him to Road to VR, whose broad coverage of the industry revealed the bigger picture and limitless potential of the medium. Passionate about technology and a lifelong PC gamer, Dominic suffers from the ‘tweak for days’ PC gaming condition, where he plays the same section over and over at every possible combination of visual settings to find the right balance between fidelity and performance. Based within The Fens of Lincolnshire (it’s very flat), Dominic can sometimes be found marvelling at the real world’s ‘draw distance’, wishing virtual technologies would catch up.
  • burzum

    “The game is anticipated to eventually come to other platforms, but it arrives first on Oculus Touch” – Good to know, waiting for it to be released on another platform then… Beside that it looks really good but I’m missing “walking” locomotion? :( Can’t somebody just make Skyrim work native with VR? :)

    • kool

      I’m hoping Sony releases a new nav stick soon. Nobody who i let play farpoint has had any problem with the free movement.

  • Ted Joseph

    I am one of those who purchase any new good game in the oculus store so I will most likely purchase this one as well. I am going to get Star Trek when I get back from a business trip on June 9th, and my buddy texts me about it daily saying how much fun he is having! I cant wait for a MMORPG. Having a world of players in a super hero’s or skyrim like game is going to be amazing! And release a new headset with 180deg FOV as well! LOL

    • victor

      really?? which headset will have 180 deg FOV please?

  • sfmike

    Will wait for this to show up on the Rift as tracking and room scale is superior.

    • You are right: The tracking and room scale on the Rift is now likely superior if you have a three sensor setup, which still works out $100 cheaper than a Vive so you have enough spare cash to buy a handful of additional games too (including The Mage’s Tale), and you can then play those games with either the superior Touch controllers on the Rift or the free Xbox One controller that also comes included with the system, or you could just use the free included remote for some of the simpler experiences if you prefer. And, the inbuilt speakers, still at no additional cost, also helps with the immersion of whatever games you are playing on the Rift too, be they seated or room-scale, which is great because Oculus has one of the strongest proper/full game lineups of any VR system, largely because most of the best rated VR games in the last year or two, the ones that really feel like proper finished and polished titles, were part-funded by Oculus itself. So, the Rift is a pretty great VR value proposition all-round if you can afford to go into that higher price bracket that the likes of Vive and Rift are in, and imo it’s the best high-end VR system on the market right now (and the best of the three major systems right now: Rift, Vive, and PSVR).

      • Stig

        • Nice: Use old news, when we all know Oculus recently updated all it’s sensor stuff and finally took room-scale out of the “experimental” phase and moved into “fully supported*. Two sensors should be fine for room-scale for the most part (although the two-sensor room-scale is still in the “experimental phase”), but three sensors will likely take it beyond Vive’s tracking reliability. And even with that third sensor, it’s still $100 less expensive than the Vive (and you still get an additional free Xbox One controller and remote included too).

          *https://www.neowin.net/news/oculus-rift-now-officially-supports-room-scale-vr-with-three-sensors

          http://www.tomshardware.com/news/oculus-rift-official-room-scale-tracking,34529.html

          • Stig

            For future development of VR it would be great if the Rift was on par with the Vive, however I’m afraid that’s not the case. Vive outsells Rift by a factor of 2:
            http://www.roadtovr.com/htc-vive-sales-units-oculus-rift-comparison-compared-tim-sweeney/

            and Steam survey 2016 indicated that there are 50% more Vives amongst gamers (after all gamers dictate the VR market, not facebook):
            http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

            Contemplate on it for a second, why do you think that Facebook/Oculus has to pay developers to develop content for their hardware?…yup, you guessed right, the hardware is inferior. The same strategy was recently adopted by Microsoft with the Xbox One (a closed system with exclusive titles). We all know how that ended…

            Personally I’m looking forward to the second generation Oculus, I believe that they have learned their lesson by then (rumor has it that they will use similar tech as for the lighthouse tracking).

          • The Vive is selling more but that does not equate to it being better.

            All the facts say that the Rift is the better value proposition and superior overall experience pretty much all round: Hundreds of dollars cheaper (even with a third sensor), in-built speakers at no additional cost, an Xbox One controller remote included at no additional cost, better motion controllers with superior ergonomics and actual finger/gesture recognition (as well as proper traditional game inputs like analog sticks and face buttons), a more comfortable headset (you can buy a new strap for Vive that put’s it on par with Rift but that makes it even more expensive than Rift), a much better and more intuitive Home/UI experience (Steam is a convoluted mess), a superior library of exclusives (many of which are considered some of the best VR games on the market), a better selection of included free games when you purchase the system, tracking that’s at least as good as Vive now when you use three sensors (and it’s still cheaper than Vive with three) . . .

            There’s almost no good argument for picking up a Vive over a Rift at this point and time; that’s clear for any reasonable person to see.

          • Stig

            That is your opinion. What I provided above are links to facts (except, maybe, the Sweeney statement). There is huge difference between the two, i.e., opinion vs. facts.

            The Vive is more expensive for a very good reason, it’s simply the best. I’m sorry that you had to go for the cheaper option, but you must not let that cloud your judgement.

          • Pretty much everything I mentioned is a measurable and demonstrable fact.

            For example: The Rift is in fact far cheaper than the Vive; the Touch controllers do in fact have better ergonomic design and include proper finger/gesture control and actual traditional controls and buttons, whereas the Vive controllers do not; you do in fact get more free games/experiences with the Rift, and they are largely higher rated than the games you get for Vive (and generally more of them appear on “Best VR Games” lists too); you do in fact get inbuilt headphones on Rift but not on Vive; you do in fact get an additional Xbox One controller and remote with the Rift, even with it being literally hundreds of dollars cheaper than the Vive; and so on. . . .

            I’ve shown you loads of tangible stuff that actually matters and makes a very real difference to the overall exprience; all you’ve exhibited is basically blind fanboyism and some links that show the Vive is selling better, which, as of yet, means absolutely nothing to me as a consumer and gamer.

            You are, quite clearly, living in denial about the sheer truth that faces you: Right now, there is very little good reason at all to choose a Vive over the Rift.

          • J.C.

            I see “not supporting Oculus” as a good reason to buy a Vive instead.

          • Except pretty much every VR developer right now is supporting the Rift, even if you have to use Steam VR to play many of those games (which Oculus fully always with a simple toggle of a single option), and the Rift still has its Oculus funded exclusives on top of that.

          • J.C.

            The funded exclusives, along with a hardware-locked store, are specifically WHY I refuse to support Oculus. When LG launches their headset this fall, and the Microsoft headsets inevitably are usable on steam…suddenly Oculus’s one-headset store will be worthless.

            Software like ReVive makes it possible to play Oculus Store games, sure. But I’m not stupid enough to PAY for a game on a store that relies on third party support to function. Direct support or GTFO.

          • Yes . . . and the Rift with the click of a single option lets you play basically all the Steam VR games too–with less hassle than it takes to get Rift games running on Vive. Your point, until someone does something that makes things work otheriwise, is basically moot. Both the system pretty much have the entire libraries of the others if you’re willing to click an option or use a separate program to get such things working–but Oculus runs all those exclusives, many of the best rated VR games out there, with zero hassle, and it runs Steam VR games with less hassle than Vive runs Rift games. So, again, I still fail to see how Oculus isn’t the better choice in this regard. Christ, you even get a bunch of the best VR games for free when you purchase the Rift: Robo Recall, Quill, Medium, Lucky’s Tale, Dead and Burried, etc. You don’t get as many great games free with the Vive overall. And, right now you get a $100 game rebate if you purchase a Rift via whatever place it was, which means you could probably afford to buy Chronos, Star Trek: Bridge Crew, and Superhot, at no extra cost. That’s like , what, eight of the best VR games out there, for basically free. So, once again the Rift seems like the clear winner in regard to games to me.

          • Stig

            Based on your comment above I understand where the disagreement originates from. Value to you is an Xbox controller, a remote, and exclusive titles. Value to me is a superior VR system-design with respect to room scale (3 USB attached Wii nunchuck LED cameras, really?), an open VR solution for developers and gamers:
            http://www.roadtovr.com/htc-vive-sales-units-oculus-rift-comparison-compared-tim-sweeney/

            ; and most important, a VR system that developers believe in:
            https://uploadvr.com/content-creators-see-lack-content-2nd-largest-barrier-vr-adoption/

            It’s simply two different definitions of “value” (please read this sentence carefully and try to understand it). I can assure you that you are not alone, without people like you McDonalds wouldn’t exist.

            Have a nice day / Dr Stig out

          • No: My defintion of value is all of the above. The Rift is not only a far superior value proposition in terms of what you get in the box and with its exclusives, but you also get just as good room-scale with 3 sensors (and, AGAIN, still at a much lower price than Vive), superior motion controllers, a more comfortable headset (with the headphones already built in), and more free games when you actually buy the thing. Also, virtually all of the VR games that release for Vive also support the Rift, but Rift does in fact get those extra exclusives too.

            You keep trying to morph things so you can believe the Vive is somehow the better product of the two; it’s not. There’s two things it factually does better: It has an inbuilt camera, and its room-scale can be set to a slightly larger area. And that is pretty much it. In every single other way the Oculus either matches or surpasses the Vive, and there’s loads of those ways.

  • Looks good.

  • What exactly is the incentive to pre-order this? Because, unless consumers are getting something for pre-ordering, some cool bonus items and features or whatever, they might as well wait for the game to release, read a few reviews, and only then decide if it’s actually a game they’d want to pay the price asked to own. Otherwise, they might end up paying in advance for a game that turns out to be meh, and they got absolutely nothing special for doing so. Not that I think it looks bad at all–but why pay for it upfront when it’s of no benefit to you as a consumer, and in fact is more likely to be to your disadvantage if the games does turn out to be meh.