Incline Roe R. Adams III

[Bruma Hobo]

This all makes so much sense.

U3 is the work of an autistic basket case who still lives with his mother. Then suddenly U4 is this amazingly literate masterpiece. I used to read interviews with Garriott and have trouble believing this chronic masturbator running around in a fake chainmail suit waving a wooden sword calling himself "Lord British" could possibly have authored a game of such quality. U4 was the work of a mature wise head with a very broad perspective.

Answers to many questions I have had for years.

I had to laugh when I read about how Ultima 4 was made as a consequence of Garriott trying to disprove the claims of the Satanic Panic crowd and their ilk that video games are evil and only negatively effect their audiences. Even though he supposedly didn't give them much credence he nevertheless was "deeply" troubled by this perspective on video games so he decided to subvert expectations and make the game about the virtues and so on. In my mind I thought "there is no fucking way that clown came up with such a genius idea" never mind its execution, and reading this thread puts the whole history of those games (and several others!) into a clarified perspective that makes much, much more sense. Can't believe I wasn't more familiar with Roe; I'd encountered the name but had no idea about most of this.

Garriott once claimed that he can't even remember how Ultima IV ends, or even what was at the bottom of the Stygian Abyss. Now, that's not particularly rare among game developers who quickly design isolated scenarios and move on, but in this particular case it feels ridiculous since that's possibly one of the best puzzles ever conceived in gaming history.

In case you need a quest compass:

Spoiler

The final puzzle to beat the game right after defeating a party of doppelgangers can only be solved after meditating in all the shrines to get pieces of the word of the pure axiom, that is Infinity, meaning God. It implies that the game's actually about figuring out religion through an arduous spiritual journey, rather than just being reactive to external threats or a convenient evil entity like in any other RPG, and that your own biggest enemy is yourself.

I always thought that Garriott became an actual SJW and fedora-tipper after finishing the game, that he was actually ashamed of the meaning of this final puzzle so he was trying to memory-hole it, and that in latter games in the series he was kind of apologizing for making it (Ultima VI for instance is about the so called civil rights movement, in this game the underworld's problems are consequence of retrieving the Codex in Ultima IV, that is, believing in self-responsibility and righteousness; baizuo culture and white guilt was indeed already a thing even back in 1990). "People can change" I thought. But really, it makes way more sense to believe that Ultima IV was written by someone with completely different political ideas and life experiences, and that Garriott was trying to dismiss this achievement because it wasn't his.

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

This all makes so much sense.

U3 is the work of an autistic basket case who still lives with his mother. Then suddenly U4 is this amazingly literate masterpiece. I used to read interviews with Garriott and have trouble believing this chronic masturbator running around in a fake chainmail suit waving a wooden sword calling himself "Lord British" could possibly have authored a game of such quality. U4 was the work of a mature wise head with a very broad perspective.

Answers to many questions I have had for years.

I had to laugh when I read about how Ultima 4 was made as a consequence of Garriott trying to disprove the claims of the Satanic Panic crowd and their ilk that video games are evil and only negatively effect their audiences. Even though he supposedly didn't give them much credence he nevertheless was "deeply" troubled by this perspective on video games so he decided to subvert expectations and make the game about the virtues and so on. In my mind I thought "there is no fucking way that clown came up with such a genius idea" never mind its execution, and reading this thread puts the whole history of those games (and several others!) into a clarified perspective that makes much, much more sense. Can't believe I wasn't more familiar with Roe; I'd encountered the name but had no idea about most of this.

Garriott once claimed that he can't even remember how Ultima IV ends, or even what was at the bottom of the Stygian Abyss. Now, that's not particularly rare among game developers who quickly design isolated scenarios and move on, but in this particular case it feels ridiculous since that's possibly one of the best puzzles ever conceived in gaming history.

In case you need a quest compass:

Spoiler

The final puzzle to beat the game right after defeating a party of doppelgangers can only be solved after meditating in all the shrines to get pieces of the word of the pure axiom, that is Infinity, meaning God. It implies that the game's actually about figuring out religion through an arduous spiritual journey, rather than just being reactive to external threats or a convenient evil entity like in any other RPG, and that your own biggest enemy is yourself.

I always thought that Garriott became an actual SJW and fedora-tipper after finishing the game, that he was actually ashamed of the meaning of this final puzzle so he was trying to memory-hole it, and that in latter games in the series he was kind of apologizing for making it (Ultima VI for instance is about the so called civil rights movement, in this game the underworld's problems are consequence of retrieving the Codex in Ultima IV, that is, believing in self-responsibility and righteousness; baizuo culture and white guilt was indeed already a thing even back in 1990). "People can change" I thought. But really, it makes way more sense to believe that Ultima IV was written by someone with completely different political ideas and life experiences, and that Garriott was trying to dismiss this achievement because it wasn't his.

Garriott's lifelong specialty and his singular talent was being incredibly retarded. He mastered his craft and today towers amongst the greatest retards who have ever existed.

Trying to imagine a guy who has made a series of multimillion dollar games and doesn't have enough self-awareness to know what he looks like showing up to interviews in medieval garb and speaking with a British accent paints him as suffering from autism so severe it can be expected his parents regularly drove him to remote locations in the woods and then left him there hoping he could not find his way back.

Now that I know about this business with Roe Adams I am wondering how much of his career was real and how much manufactured. After all, he "went to outer space" in his "space suit" and wore a gorilla costume "in space" so he could prove he indeed "flew up to teh space station" and some days I think it is possible that was all staged. Didn't sound like it could be taken seriously at the time but as of now I don't believe any of that ever happened. I think when he "came back from outer space" didn't he marry some glowie tranny from the deep South? Cool story bro.

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

Here she is ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laetitia_Garriott_de_Cayeux

... this woman practically glows in the dark. Surprised she doesn't have a pyramid tattooed into her forehead.

Quite common to place one of their women with a male who is otherwise outside the control system so they can keep tabs on him and make sure he doesn't drift outside the agenda. Totally normal when some autist falls ass-backwards into money and they worry he might spend some of it in a way that they would not approve of. They arrange for that guy to bump into one of their women with her blouse accidentally falling open and then she pulls up her skirt before she knows his name and asks him if she has a run in her stocking. Boom two months later she's got the retard in the net and a ring on his finger.

I know because it happened to me. I was that retard of interest.

Come to think of it ... Garriott's whole life is starting to look like a gigantic psy-op. Not even sure if that is his name any more.

"Laetitia" is a Roman pagan goddess of fertility. Classic witch name that is used in families of same. Draw your own conclusions. She's in the "outer space" too, with her "space ships" and whatnot and what have you. I'm still waiting after 60 years for a decent shot of the "Earth" from "outer space" that isn't a dreadfully bad fake. Then came Photoshop.

These peeples are so intellamajent that some village idiot/feebleminded public embarrassment like myself could never dream of what edjamafacashun powers they have. My pitiful 180+ IQ doesn't even qualify me as a starter in this crowd. Who needs actual intellamjense when you are tapping into the power of scienmagistics?

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

https://youtu.be/R4YiOhjd9O4

Notice how nobody ever puts disclaimers on Wicca or witchcraft videos with the leading line "Witchcraft is a discredited idea that posits that rituals can change the physical world as a response." But you can't even hear certain ideas on YouTube without a caution and a statement that all the ideas here are discredited. (That you might have by simply listening)

50 YEARS LATER BETWEEN "PHOTOS" OF THE EARTH AND THEIR OWN ARTIST CONFESSES ON TAPE THIS NEW ONE IS FAKE.

W O T

 

[Bruma Hobo]

God bless you, Cleve.

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

Now it's "Roe Adams? Yes, I believe we have met at some point." Turns out Richard is full of crap, Roe Adams wrote U4 and Garriott went full retard and took credit for it.

I don't believe anything about Garriott is real, this is the last straw for me. Would not be shocked if the same people who plotted Bill Gates career out for him ten years in advance did the same with Richard.

Everybody be sure to get your next booster! ITZ ALL FOR REELZ AHM SUPER CEREAL PEEPLES

 

[Bruma Hobo]

There's also the Bell, Book and Candle ritual in Ultima IV that opens the Stygian Abyss, based on an old Catholic ceremony. This very same puzzle reappears in Wizardry IV, also by Adams, this time opening the Gates of Hell.

Now, by knowing about these three items in Ultima IV you can infer who's responsible for big chunks of the game design, since they represent the Three Principles (Truth, Love and Courage) just like in the Catholic rite they represented the three aspects of the Holy Trinity. In this game each Principle is also represented by big castles in the world map (there's a huge library in the Castle of Truth holding the Book, for instance) and their surrounding landmasses, three altar rooms connecting the dungeons, the PC attributes (Strength, Dexterity and Intelligence), and so on. The author did pretty much same with the eight virtues (there are eight cities, eight dungeons, eight classes, eight levels, eight reagents, eight moon phases after there were only six in Ultima 3, and so on).

As I said, I don't think Garriott was clever enough to think of this right after the previous three games being just silly nerd-pastiches. Then, it's hard not to credit Roe R. Adams III for designing large parts of this game.

 

[HiroIwasaki]

Roe was a prodigious game player.

He solved Infocom's DEADLINE in 5 minutes and sent the staff home early.

He solved Time Zone in a week and called the author to tell him he had solved it, but then he said he heard the phone drop.

In an example I saw firsthand when Brian brought LOOM to CGDC, Roe beat it in only 3 hours with the words "fun! interesting!".
Brian blurted out the entire time at CGDC, "Roe solved a game I spent 5 years working on in 3 hours."

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

There's also the Bell, Book and Candle ritual in Ultima IV that opens the Stygian Abyss, based on an old Catholic ceremony. This very same puzzle reappears in Wizardry IV, also by Adams, this time opening the Gates of Hell.

This same puzzle already existed in Zork I: The Great Underground Empire (1980), which requires the ceremony to enter the gates of Hades.

 

[FireKing]

Now it's "Roe Adams? Yes, I believe we have met at some point." Turns out Richard is full of crap, Roe Adams wrote U4 and Garriott went full retard and took credit for it.

I don't believe anything about Garriott is real, this is the last straw for me. Would not be shocked if the same people who plotted Bill Gates career out for him ten years in advance did the same with Richard.

Everybody be sure to get your next booster! ITZ ALL FOR REELZ AHM SUPER CEREAL PEEPLES

 

[unseeingeye]

There's also the Bell, Book and Candle ritual in Ultima IV that opens the Stygian Abyss, based on an old Catholic ceremony. This very same puzzle reappears in Wizardry IV, also by Adams, this time opening the Gates of Hell.

The earlier CRPGs seem to have included more esoteric and occult material based in history than you see these days, where magic is basically a Disneyesque amalgam of commercial Halloween outlets. Those three instruments are also used in Solomonic magic as detailed in the Clavicula Salomonis and the Lemegeton. It is surprising to find overt references to Goetia in the games from the 80s and early 90s but I've encountered it several times, from the names of demonic entities drawn directly from the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum to practices of natural philosophy taken from Book 1 of Agrippa's 'Three Books'. Some of this can certainly be explained by the influence of old Dungeons & Dragons manuals which were clearly written by highly literate people, things like the reagents used in spell preparation, or the importance of language in ritual invocation. But there is enough there to show that those involved in making certain games were themselves familiar with the grimoires and obscure Catholic rites. When you look at the 8 virtues, half of them correspond to the rites of the Golden Dawn, which were revealed by Aleister Crowley and reapplied under his Thelema, and Israel Regardie back in the earlier parts of the 20th century - the sword, the chalice, the scales, the staff or 'wand', while the association with 'mantras' and the Tarot seem to me to be a personal take on the Golden Dawns initiatory rites and basic praxis like the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentegram. The bell and book are also fundamental to most magic rituals and obviously the candles are a major component; it is believed that the different incenses attract different spirits and are used as offerings along with materials associated with the entity being conjured based on astrological influence (stellar rays) and the metals, plants, animals &c under each planet.

 

[Infinitron]

I always thought that Garriott became an actual SJW and fedora-tipper after finishing the game, that he was actually ashamed of the meaning of this final puzzle so he was trying to memory-hole it, and that in latter games in the series he was kind of apologizing for making it (Ultima VI for instance is about the so called civil rights movement, in this game the underworld's problems are consequence of retrieving the Codex in Ultima IV, that is, believing in self-responsibility and righteousness; baizuo culture and white guilt was indeed already a thing even back in 1990). "People can change" I thought. But really, it makes way more sense to believe that Ultima IV was written by someone with completely different political ideas and life experiences, and that Garriott was trying to dismiss this achievement because it wasn't his.

Ultima VI was not about "civil rights". That itself is a Garriott retcon. Coming out in 1990, it was almost certainly inspired by the political atmosphere during the end of the Cold War. The Gargoyles were the Soviets, not the blacks!

 

[Bruma Hobo]

Ultima VI was not about "civil rights". That itself is a Garriott retcon. Coming out in 1990, it was almost certainly inspired by the political atmosphere during the end of the Cold War. The Gargoyles were the Soviets, not the blacks!

People keep saying this, and granted, I wasn't alive during the Cold War so perhaps I couldn't get many obvious references, but before reading any interview I immediately recognized the old "ignored lower-class rising against the falling capitalist system and an oblivious middle class" trope when I first played the game. I could be wrong, but honestly I would need better arguments than merely mentioning late Cold War fiction like Rocky IV or Star Trek VI to be able to change my mind.

Maybe this should be moved to the Ultima thread.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

I'm glad I found this thread. It always bothered me that the further you go through Ultima IV to VII the less magical they feel. Ultima IV was this mystical story you meet Budda and Michalangeo and then I got to Ultima VI and found out that Empath Abbey is now a winery. It was quite jarring. Back then I thought it's since the later games had more lines of dialogue and better graphics less was left to the imagination and that's why they felt more and more mundande. But it makes perfect sense that Part IV wasn't written by Garriott. It also explains why he could never create anything as memorable as Brittania later in his career.

 

[octavius]

I think Jon Van Caneghem recognized Garriot for the peasant he was.