KickStarter Shroud of the Avatar - Lord British's Not-Ultima Online 2

[Gozma]

What exactly is Garriot supposed to be a genius for? I was never an Ultima guy, despite having played U1 on C64 a million years ago, so I honestly don't know that much. From my low-nostalgia position he mostly just seems like the really rare kind of person that is both a huge nerd and a vain self-promoting huckster at the same time, and he happened to start selling videogames on floppies out of ziploc bags at just the right moment for a huckster-nerd to prosper and to be filed into threadbare American salesman visionary fantasies. Kind of like Gates or the Apple guy that died on a lesser and nerdier scale. Same kinda situation with Ultima Online: a MUD with tile graphics, came out 5+ years after the NWN MMO, but it had publisher money and they actually advertised it.

 

[Stabwound]

Of course he was lucky to get his start, but the Ultima series is one of the most revolutionary and best there is. That's virtually the best and only thing he's done, so if you haven't played the games then no wonder he doesn't seem like he's done much. He really hasn't done anything noteworthy since UO.

I have no rose-colored glasses for the series either, having only played them for the first time in recent years. But if you play them going in remembering the early games came out in the mid 80s it's plain to see how influential and revolutionary they were.

 

[Jaesun]

Agreed, however after VII it pretty much when all downhill from there. And has not made anything worthy of any mention. Which is sad.

 

[Gozma]

I played U1 and U3 through but several years after they were cutting edge (yet still while they were just old, not ancient) and have given U4 and U7 honest shots, and I am just not an Ultima guy. It's not a matter of UI or graphics; they give me the same feeling pure adventure games do: I just don't care about doing anything in them and I don't feel any drive to move forward in the game. Ultima Ennui

 

[Jaesun]

Playing Ultima IV through VII you won't really notice much, or see any bit of innovation as to which when they first came out.

But like Ultima IV. It didn't have the OMG! I MUST KILL THE EVILL VILLAN AND RESCUE THE PRINCESS etc crap. The entire game is you, becoming the Avatar based off of and upholding the 8 virtues. Then when mastering the 8 virtues and become the Avatar, you then are called Back to Britannia in Ultima V, and are almost assassinated and come to find all the 8 virtues you fought for and upheld are now twisted and used upon the people of Britiania.

You don't see concepts like that coming out of AAA shit published games these days.

 

[Infinitron]

The problem with a game like Ultima IV is that to make one nowadays you'd need some master-level philosophical/ethical writing.

It worked back then because you could imagine that your Avatar was undergoing some spiritual journey to enlightenment while you slogged through hundreds of simplistic battles and had dozens of keyword-based conversations with five sentence NPCs.

 

[Jaesun]

Yes, exactly that.

 

[evdk]

tl;dr: games are U4 are not made anymore because they take work from both the creators and the audience. And that's for fags.

 

[LeStryfe79]

I honestly don't know why I like the Ultima games but they had a magic that defied explanation. For the record, I played 3,4, and 5 on Nintendo and 6 and 7 on PC, but at least I finished them all, except 5, which I truly believe might have been broken. They were all a combination of grind and figuring out what the fuck was going on, but I thought they were awesome. Also, the Nintendo versions had awesome music for whatever reason(except for 5). At this point, my trust in Lord British is more than Molyneux but less than Cleve.

Will donate.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4zIvKv70SM

Blasphemy!

 

[Jaesun]

That's also something you just don't see anymore. Not being told at ALL what the fuck you needed to do. Like Ultima IV you had to actually go around and figure out how to become the Avatar, and you hopefully took good notes.

Not that I expect this new game to have that. r00fles!

 

[IDtenT]

That's also something you just don't see anymore. Not being told at ALL what the fuck you needed to do. Like Ultima IV you had to actually go around and figure out how to become the Avatar, and you hopefully took good notes.

Not that I expect this new game to have that. r00fles!

Why would you keep a physical journal on you when you can now have an in-game one? Those elements all exist because of the limitations that needed to be in place. I actually quite liked the Morrowind Journal, but boy was that a fucking mess.

 

[Jaesun]

Modern journal systems do not require ANY thinking or reasoning of the player. None. In fact IIRC that was the specific reason Lazarus did not want one in the game at all (unlike Ultima 6 Project).

 

[Excidium]

That's also something you just don't see anymore. Not being told at ALL what the fuck you needed to do. Like Ultima IV you had to actually go around and figure out how to become the Avatar, and you hopefully took good notes.

Not that I expect this new game to have that. r00fles!

Why would you keep a physical journal on you when you can now have an in-game one? Those elements all exist because of the limitations that needed to be in place. I actually quite liked the Morrowind Journal, but boy was that a fucking mess.

it's not a matter of limitashuns but design decisions. Taking notes and figuring things out by yourself is part of the gameplay. Like for example, Ultima Underworld was technologically ahead of its time in a variety of ways, but it still had you take notes of keywords, information, mantras, map locations, etc.

 

[Gozma]

I liked the journal in Space Rangers that let you click on bits of info to save and organize them. It was basically a journal assistant; the player was still making decisions about the relative importance of shit.

 

[Lancehead]

Some people can't even read stuff that's spelled out in in-game journals, like finding Cassius in Morrowind. No wonder modern games ended up with quest compasses.

Personally I'd prefer an in-game journal that automatically creates entries when you discover miscellaneous stuff, and a notes page where you can write down what needs to be done, and look up the automatic entries if you need to refer to something.

 

[BigWeather]

Ultima had a number of innovations, some of which are still not common even today. Ultima IV was a journey of self-improvement, not a Kill Foozle. How many other RPGs have done that? Ultima V dealt with the corruption of the virtues championed in Ultima IV. Ultima VI has a great story as well, with the Gargoyles initially seen as the villains before it comes out that they aren't the enemy. It is an interesting exploration of xenophobia and the final solution, to mend the gap between the two races, is really neat. I know that there is a lot of love for Ultima VII (and it is quite neat, an amazing open world) but the Age of Enlightenment is just amazing from a story arc perspective. Though, as noted, it was limited by technology at the time (NAME JOB BYE) -- still, the grand ideas were, and still are, amazing. Throw in a night / day cycle (a first?), NPC schedules (another first?), a great deal of world and character continuity from Ultima IV to Ultima VII Serpent Isle, and wonderful music and it was amazing. I personally also liked that it didn't totally fall into the "let's have a ton of races" pattern so prevalent in RPGs -- it was really all about Humans (and later, Gargoyles). No fancy Elves, Dwarves, etc. (past Ultima III).

 

[IDtenT]

Modern journal systems do not require ANY thinking or reasoning of the player. None. In fact IIRC that was the specific reason Lazarus did not want one in the game at all (unlike Ultima 6 Project).

I never said they were being done right, which again I feel Morrowind did do - although they made the quest system unwieldy. The expansions made it, by introducing a quest log, for the large part irrelevant.

It's all good and well to not want a journal in the game, for whatever reason, but to suggest that anything other than the physical limitations in place were the deciding factor in the original games is wishful thinking.

 

[Jaesun]

Modern journal systems do not require ANY thinking or reasoning of the player. None. In fact IIRC that was the specific reason Lazarus did not want one in the game at all (unlike Ultima 6 Project).

I never said they were being done right,

OK yeah that I can agree with. I just wish they would just remove them all together or finally fucking do them right for a change. It should only contain info you gathered, NOT where specifically to go next to. You the player need to figure out what to do next.

but to suggest that anything other than the physical limitations in place were the deciding factor in the original games is wishful thinking.

That was basically how older games were made. They required you to think and take notes and then use reason.

 

[Sceptic]

Why would you keep a physical journal on you when you can now have an in-game one? Those elements all exist because of the limitations that needed to be in place. I actually quite liked the Morrowind Journal, but boy was that a fucking mess.

The problem with in-game journals isn't that they keep track for you of the information, it's that they decide for you what information is important and what isn't. When you take your own notes, you don't write every single thing the game tells you - YOU have to decided what's worth writing and what isn't. That was the whole challenge of note-taking. You find the information, you note it down, and you associate with other bits of information to overcome an obstacle. Journals take away the middle step - you no longer take notes because you're trying to gather information or figure out how to put things together, you take notes (well, the game does) so you can remember this information that you already know is important. It serves a completely different purpose. UW1 was one of the best examples of this - there were some conversations that were absolutely critical to completing the game (such as the ones that led you to Garamon's corpse) and others that were pure atmospheric fluff, yet YOU had to decide which was which. There's a reason WOX puzzles were such a joke while some of MM1's were so much more challenging - WOX had a journal leading you by the nose, MM1 did not.

There was one late-80s game that attempted a journal that would really just replace note-taking and not deciding-what-to-note, so you could set what level of information you wanted it to take down. I think it was MC2, but I could be wrong.

 

[taxalot]

Well, as long as we have automapping. That is one derp feature I enjoy, although I do sometimes draw my own maps in EXCEL.

 

[Infinitron]

http://ultimacodex.com/2013/03/lord-british-confirms-the-ultimate-rpg-will-be-on-pc/comment-page-1/

Richard Garriott March 5, 2013 at 9:08 am
Greeting fellow citizens of fair lands of Britannia!

I come to you to join in some of the discussions and speculations about where and how new adventures might be created for us to master together. As noted in this thread, any new works I may have brewing, are indeed first and foremost Story Driven and for the PC! It is being built specifically for YOU, here on this site, the long time believers in the vision that made 20 years in Britannia live on, long since.

More details will follow soon. I am reading with great pleasure, all your wishes and concerns. Nothing will please me more, than to create new adventures worthy of your interest and participation. As the creator of the original series, and in strong partnership with you, I have no doubt we can create lands and adventures, worthy of the mantle of those which precede this day!

– Lord British

 

[Zeriel]

Forsooth, Codexians, doth we now converse in this manner?

 

[Infinitron]

http://ultimacodex.com/2013/03/revealed-the-ultimate-rpgs-map/

 

[IDtenT]

Just got this email:

 

[Infinitron]

"Rooster Teeth"?