EA/Mythic Entertainment mount Ultima's corpse so they can kill it again

[DragoFireheart]

Oh man, wait till you guys see the gameplay.

What gameplay?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Oh man, wait till you guys see the gameplay.

What gameplay?

True enough.

 

[Infinitron]

A charitable intepretation of a Kotaku puff piece gives an interesting look at internal EA politics: http://ultimacodex.com/2013/08/kotaku-its-nearly-a-miracle-that-the-new-ultima-exists/

Kotaku: “It’s Nearly A Miracle That The New Ultima Exists”
WtF Dragon August 15, 2013 Ultima Forever

Mythic’s Paul Barnett and Jeff Skalski both tweeted a link to this editorial at Kotaku, which looks at the development history of Ultima Forever, the ways in which it draws upon classical Ultimafor inspiration, and what the future may hold for it, its team, and the Ultima namesake.

Forever was always meant to be a love letter to Ultima IV, the heralded fantasy RPG involving not just combat but virtues and moral quandaries (Your house is on fire… do you save your mother, your sister or the dog?) sculpted in the 1980s by Garriott, aka “Lord British.” Somewhere along the way it came to seem like an impossible creation.

Last spring, [Mythic studio GM Paul] Barnett was telling me and other reporters that the existence of Forever was “insane,” that “we’ll probably never make a game like this on the iPad again”—unless it’s a smash success, in which case, it’ll take them three years.

[Producer Carrie] Gouskos had been telling me that they’d hoped to follow it up with Ultima Fivever, Sixever and then get to the other one they really, really wanted to remake and create Ultima Sevenever.
​

Those of us who had the chance to visit Mythic back in 2011 and see the game were told something similar; the ideal here would be the creation of a new series of games, rather than a one-off title. Ultima Forever was intended to be a fork in the lore of the series, set after Ultima 4(but, as noted above, paying homage to it with thematic similarities, among other things). Its sequels, should they come along, could have followed the source material rather more closely, albeit still offering their own spin on the events in each.

Of course, the game had already been in development for about a year by that time, and had already undergone some significant changes from what it had started as:

Barnett told me that, back when Mythic was BioWare Mythic, their little Ultima-remake-that-could was “BioWared.” That meant, he said, that they decided to “make it big, put a lot of story in it, be brave, make it bold.” One of the heads of BioWare loved Ultima IV. The other loves MMOs. Do the math. This was an expensive project, three years in the making.
​

Those of you who have been following the saga of BioWare as a label within EA will recall that about a year ago, studios which had been rebranded as “BioWare [name here]” were suddenly shedding the “BioWare” prefix. Victory Games is one example, and Mythic is another. And around the same time they reclaimed their name, their business model also transitioned rather drastically:

Some time later, Mythic was just Mythic again and another fiefdom at EA, EA Mobile, became in charge of this BioWare-size Ultima project. Too bad it broke EA Mobile’s rules of thumb.

“We break many rules on mobile,” Gouskos told me. “Too big (size-wise), too connected (they want games to have offline content), dungeons too long (we had some dungeons that were 45 minutes—but we added 100 five-minute dungeons to compromise), way too many words (too much localization cost), and not enough free-to-play mechanics. Definitely grateful to EA Mobile for being bold and letting us release this type of game given that it breaks so many rules.”

Barnett was happy that EA Mobile took the risk, too. They assume that there can be flukes on mobile, he said. Sometimes a game that shouldn’t succeed does, and, hey, most of Ultima Forever wasn’t financed by the EA Mobile division of EA, so why not? “Mobile were smart enough to go, ‘As we didn’t pay for it—because it’s come to us [nearly] finished—yeah, we’ll release it. Sure. Because it might be an outlier,’” Barnett said. “They basically get an enormous RPG for free.”
​

And yes, the free-to-play mechanics come up for discussion…albeit not in the same way thatsome reviews have dwelt on. Rather like the reviewers at Cult of Mac, Kotaku here takes a fairly amiable stance:

Gouskos said that the game is even getting some “flak” from free-to-play experts about being “too free.” There’s no energy mechanic. There’s gear to repair, but you don’t have to repair it and can just get new stuff. “We’ve even done a bunch of stuff recently to show players why they don’t have to spend real money (like try to make it very obvious that you can repair with silver keys, changed fast travel from silver to bronze, etc.) It was never our goal to make a huge cash grab off this game. We really just like making games and want to make enough money to keep doing it.”

To that end, in the first week of release, Ultima Forever’s had an in-app-purchase sale of 400 keys for $20, down from $50, with the intent, Mythic says, to let people who want to just throw down a lump of money to pay for the whole game to get pretty much anything they’d need in terms of inventory expansion, adding some abilities and being able to have a great time.
​

I’ve excerpted a lot here, but I want to call out one more paragraph too…the one that concludes the editorial:

Both Barnett and Gouskos gave off the feeling that they’d survived some accidents to get Ultima Forever made, that they’d navigated a maze of EA needs and wants and somehow wound up with a game that broke some rules while making the most of EA’s mighty resources. They made their game sound like magic. Or a miracle. Something that shouldn’t be—but is. It’s hard not to be rooting for them.
​

This is a game which was nearly cancelled at least twice; which existed as a spare-time, shoestring-budget project for much of its development; which jumped between platforms at least almost as many times as Ultima 9 jumped through major plot revisions; and which has seen its development characterized and shaped by a team that demonstrates genuine passion for Ultima and its fandom. It has survived shakeups at Mythic, EA’s recent downturn in the market, and the withering commentary of some of Ultima’s most devoted fans.

And on top of that, it is actually a pretty fun game that, in particular, shows a lot of love for the Eight Virtues, and tries to explore their applicability to the lives of workaday Britannians. The combat and story are quite decent, as well.

I quite agree: it’s hard not to root for that.

​

 

[taxalot]

Trying hard never was never enough to make a good game.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Stabwound]

That picture is fucking creepy for some reason. Garriott looks like a pedophile.

 

[Junmarko]

I think I'm going to vomit.

'The sanctity of this place has been fouled.' Or a similar quoted variety, would suit this picture.

 

[taxalot]

I have lost an eighth just seeing this picture. Thanks.

 

[mindx2]

I think I'm going to vomit.

'The sanctity of this place has been fouled.' Or a similar quoted variety, would suit this picture.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-09-05-ultima-forever-review

2/10

Granted, this is the iOS version, but there's no reason to believe that the PC version is gonna be better.

Fuck you EA!

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Review's pretty fucking spot on. EA, damn you. Damn you all to hell.

 

[Minttunator]

An EA game got less than 8/10? What is this, Bizarro World?

 

[Night Goat]

An EA game got less than 8/10? What is this, Bizarro World?

At first I thought maybe Eurogamer was more honest than other reviewers, but then I saw that they gave Diablo 3 for consoles a 9, so that obviously isn't the case. UF must be so bad that EA can't even pay people to say something nice about it.

 

[Stabwound]

I know it was bad, but I didn't know it was this bad.

In the dungeons, and also in every town, are chests. Here's where things really go south. Ultima Forever's currency is keys. Bronze keys you get constantly, and 18 of these can be smooshed into six silver keys. Gold keys are the rarity. These get you the best loot from chests, open inventory slots, allow you to use a second ability at once, and pretty much everything else of any consequence. Did you get that? Basic things like a second spell slot are locked behind paywalls. And not only that - you have to pay to unlock these things separately for each character. Your key balance is shared across your account, but not what you buy. Another sneaky touch is that Ultima Forever sells silver key bundles starting at 69p, but the minimum purchase price for gold keys is £6.99.

It's not going too far to say that Ultima Forever's design goes to some evil places. Over time (and regularly) your equipment will degrade. This has to be fixed with silver keys in considerable quantities, so is a constant bleed on your mid-tier currency for nothing other than playing the game. If you make the mistake I did, of clicking 'repair all' at the start of a dungeon to save time, you'll find that it uses Gold Keys for the privilege of saving five taps. Such sleight-of-hand is the rule.

Fuck this style of game, and fuck EA & Mythic. Plus fuck Richard Garriott for having such little shame as to be shown smiling with these clowns. What a way to ruin a series.

 

[IDtenT]

At first I thought maybe Eurogamer was more honest than other reviewers

They generally are.

 

[Infinitron]

Mythic had Ultima 4 ported to iOS: http://ultimacodex.com/2013/09/ultima-4-available-for-ios-free/

It's the C64 version.

 

[Destroid]

Worse graphics than UO. Somehow many mobile devs manage to make graphics that just don't sit well together, even if each individual component looks nice.

 

[funkadelik]

Looks like shit.

 

[taxalot]

I still wish they would port it to Android ; I want to see how deep is the rabbit hole.

 

[Zeriel]

An EA game got less than 8/10? What is this, Bizarro World?

At first I thought maybe Eurogamer was more honest than other reviewers, but then I saw that they gave Diablo 3 for consoles a 9, so that obviously isn't the case. UF must be so bad that EA can't even pay people to say something nice about it.

To be fair, Diablo 3 for consoles has neither Always Online or the Auction House. It's hard to really criticize it very much when compared to most console games.

 

[Infinitron]

So, this game is pretty much dead. The Dragons talk about it:

 

[Deuce Traveler]

This Sergorn Drakael guy seems really passionate about the Ultima series. Hey Jaesun , can we invite him to the 'dex?!

 

[Jaesun]

And he has great taste in avatar pictures. heh (And no, that guy is not me, in case anyone was wondering. I don't have a shitbook account).

 

[Deuce Traveler]

And he has great taste in avatar pictures. heh (And no, that guy is not me, in case anyone was wondering. I don't have a shitbook account).

So much for discovering your real identity through your snake-based image. I guess I'll go back to my original thoughts, Jaesun... or should I say Thulsa Doom!

 

[taxalot]

Oh so now it's legal and okay to say the game sucks?