For the love of God don't tempt EA
Fuck, I didn't know
they had it.
As others have said, Wizardry already has sequels, and nobody gives a toss.
But making a new Ultima is kind of like making a sequel to Wizard of Oz today. (more like Gold Diggers, but people know Wizard of Oz now) Sure someone can do that, but the deck is stacked against you because so many things went right for the first one. If you make a new one, well, the world has moved on. You've got the obvious bit, the underlying systems that were complex even back in the day. Well, those are still going to be complex, with the added bonus that you have to make them work in 3D. High-quality 3D, too. Then you've got the morality, nobody wants a video game about morality. Yeah, sure, journalists praised Spec Ops: The Line for its story, but that's journalists, it didn't sell well. Plus, work is bad isn't a hard sell among that crowd. Its basically Apocalypse Now for video games, except less interesting. Actually having to work at morality? The average player just wants to kill stuff and a journalist just wants to sound smart. You've got one hell of an uphill battle there. If such a thing happens, people will probably hate it at launch, and have mixed feelings afterward.
That said, I'm surprised Bioware never tried to get their hands on Ultima. I guess either everyone there when they got bought either never heard of it, or didn't want to risk such blasphemy.
BioWare eventually created their own IP so they didn't have to pay anyone Star Wars or D&D royalties, so they wouldn't have wanted it back then. Now that they have EA's hand up a hole in their back, I dunno. There have been rumors of Star Wars being given to them again. Aside from making something called Ultima X in name only, just to keep the franchise ticking over in public imagination, the way each modern Final Fantasy does not really have much in common with older entries, I can't see BioWare being a good fit, they make (made) their own genre. I dunno which current developer would really be suited to this. It might have to be a new studio.
I think you could make a good selling point out of those old features you mention. It could be a novelty. Maybe a revival series would be better as a small budget game with tons of depth.
I'm not sure morality and virtue would be an impossible sell, if you went straight to the gaming customer. People say that Star Trek is too old fashioned. That the old fashion humanism of the older series does not have a place in the modern world. (Aside from how a Star Trek parody is doing pretty well under just those moral strictures). But, like Tolkien, Star Trek was never morally simple to begin with, and precisely when we are overloaded with grim entertainment is kinda when the novelty of having principles is potentially most powerful. A game than leans into the old themes, and is about ethics? That could find a surprising audience. Superman or Captain America are admirable to many kids because their integrity and honor are virtues in any age, not just WW2.
I'm glad the series died rather than continue to live on in some frankenzombie form like Final Fantasy.
What's the point of resurrecting a series instead of making a new one other than for nostalgia scamming purposes?
They could, but I hope not, since it would be a Wizardry or Ultima game in name only. The game mechanics and the things that made them Ultimas and Wizardries in the first place would be changed beyond recognition.
So then what's the point? Sell some more copies because of name recognition in the great Hollywood tradition?
For me, I guess the main point would be to ensure that the old ones are not forgotten.
An ongoing franchise drums up interest in the early entries, and memorializes them, finding new players. If all of the Ultima/Wizardry generation die off, then there is no more Codex top 70 with Wizardry 7 and 8 highly placed. Hell, it's even potentially a franchise that would build bridges with Japanese fans; a western export. So the preservation of a franchise may not always be done for scamming purposes, but sometimes to try to build cross-generation preservation. Like sometimes a re-release is a scam by Sony to make money of a PS1 game they have already sold a customer 4 separate times. But sometimes having Final Fantasy IV released on 5 platforms, and modern entries coming out, means it is ultra-available in perpetuity. I'm very big on gaming preservation.
Wizardry is alive and well if you know where to look.
As for Ultima, who would be good at making a game with:
-Open world
-Party-based
-Non-linear story
-Simple but rewarding combat
-Detailed NPCs with schedules and backstories
-Extensive dungeons
-Deep dialogue and conversations
-Quirky, memorable party members
-Themes of morality and personal choice
Hmm, nope, just can't think of anyone at all.
That guy who made Kenshi? :D
Resurrecting Ultima could be done, but noone was stupid enough to do it yet.
Ultimas were innovative and progressive, while the fanbase is extremely conservative. Sequel that does not change anything will not be a true Ultima, but at the same time slightest changes will be seen as betrayal. Ultimas were also high budget titles, technically impressive at the time - so cheap indie remake just won't trigger the same response that Ultimas had at the time.
Mainstream name recognition and marketing potential is long gone - so there is no reason to trigger PTSD in the rabid fans by using Ultima name "in vain".
There's no need. Wizardry and Ultima were the people who made them, not the title of the series. And if I was a new developer then I'd rather create my own legacy with my own series rather than add to someone elses fame. Only big corpos care about cashing out with a well known brand, smaller teams should be creating their own stuff because they have the freedom to do so.
This is where we geeks can sometimes act against the interests of our games. Yes, we should object to shit adaptations of good things, like a revival of Star Trek that completely misses the tone. But we should not set the bar so high the standards are impossible to reach, and maybe forgive a few growing pains in the knowledge that life isn't perfect. After all, the original games were not perfect themselves, they were a 20-year work in progress. A good simulacrum, like The Mandalorian, that hews close to the intent of the original source material should be welcomed.
When you have the vision of an auteur guiding a franchise, like Richard Garriott or George Lucas or Gene Roddenberry or J Michael Straczynski, it can be difficult for new people to capture all the themes of the original. But with sufficient love of the material, you can hew pretty close to the original intent, making simulacra that are barely less faithful than the original, or even 'add' something. The entertainment industry, specifically Hollywood, had been working under the assumption born out of their origins in shoveling scripts like they are an artless commodity, that artistic vision didn't matter. But people are waking up to how important tone, themes, intent, etc are. How does that translate to gaming? I guess recent revivals and remakes of classic games have started to take their origins more seriously, like Sonic Mania or Streets of Rage 4.
