Brian Fargo has expressed his wish to buy Interplay back and has sent fans into a frenzy consisting of wet dreams and theory crafting. It comes with a hitch though, as he will only attempt to purchase it if Bard's Tale IV sells well enough.
As there is a generation of gamers who might not have been around during Brian Fargo's early days, here is a quick history rundown. He is known as one of the minds behind Wasteland series which eventually inspired Fallout series. Fallout wouldn't exist, in fact, if it weren't for Interplay, which was originally four people, including Fargo.
The company went on to produce some of the most well known RPGs of its era, such as Fallout, Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment and Icewind Dale series. Ever since Fargo formed inXile Entertainment and successfully launched Wasteland 2, fans have been asking whether he had intentions of purchasing Interplay back as the company has been attempting to sell various assets over the years.
Now the time may have come as Fargo on his Twitter that he would attempt to buy Interplay back if Bard's Tale IV manages to sell two million copies in the first 18 months of its lifespan. This sounds like quite a stretch goal, but since Fargo managed to crowdfund both Wasteland 2 and Wasteland 3, it is not hard to imagine this situation happening.
Unfortunately, this doesn't mean we could see another turn based tactics RPG version of Fallout as the IP is fully owned by Bethesda and seems to have a future in being microtransaction fuelled games-as-a-service money making drone.
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Fargo mentioned that he would get his hands on other interesting IPs though, including Dragon Wars, Earthworm Jim, Sacrifice and Kingpin. The idea sounds enticing, but most fans are still probably looking forward to Wasteland 3 more than anything.
Speaking of which, the game's crowdfunding on Fig fell short of the last stretch goal for about $130.000 as the game had attracted enough backers to score $3.12 million so far. That said, it was Fig who invested the most money in the game so it's safe to say Fargo is a competent businessman, which begs the question whether this announcement was a PR stunt to draw more attention to Bard's Tale IV.
