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Ultima VIII (or, How to Destroy a Gaming Franchise in One Easy Step)

Dayyālu

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That's not his idea, it's what he says other people think.

Yes, he does not share it: but it's the first time I've seen the specific theory that Crusader was good=Ultima VIII could have been good. There are of course the contrarians that will argue that it was good because contrarians, but it's the first time I see such a comparison. Crusader was the brainchild of Zurovek, a Dread Pirate Roberts creature (and nowadays employed on Scam Citizen as far as I can remember).



Personally I think U8 could have been a good game even as some sort of action-RPG retooling of the series, but it would have required long-term commitment and a vision that Garriott clearly didn't have.

So, Divine Divinity or a more open Diablo?

I like VII, but I seriously doubt British had good ideas on how developing a good action RPG, the combat in VII is mediocre as it gets.
 

bandersnatch

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I think people forget that the 90's (especially the first half) was a bloody mess for most game companies! The transition from 8-bit to 16-bit graphics and then to 3D was very challenging for most studios and designers, and it all happened in a span of like 5 years. Does anyone remember all those FMV CR-ROM games too that came out (even RPG ones) around that time? Ultima VIII happened right smack dab in the middle of that mess. Can you imagine being a designer watching the tech advance so fast that you can't keep up. I wouldn't be surprised if EA really wanted U8 to be a 3D game but the tech was still a few years out. They would have to wait to Ultima IX for that. Ultima VIII marked the beginning of the end for turn-based focused CRPGs for many companies as they desired to shift to more popular 3D games that would exploded on the market around 1996 with hits like Tomb Raider and Quake, etc...
 

samuraigaiden

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RPG Wokedex
Interesting article.

I do wonder where he got the theory that VIII could have been a "good game" outside of the theoretical realm of Ultima on the basis that Crusader was after all a good game and a success: despite them sharing the engine they are completely different beasts in philosophy and design - no one with half a brain could think that Crusader's somewhat carefully designed combat encounters can compare with VIII's dreadful dungeons., or that Crusader's Wing Commander-inspired presentation can compare.

Feels like a desperate attempt to salvage rotten apples by comparing them to oranges.

That's not his idea, it's what he says other people think. He thinks it was an ill-conceived project that was always doomed.

Personally I think U8 could have been a good game even as some sort of action-RPG retooling of the series, but it would have required long-term commitment and a vision that Garriott clearly didn't have. They would have basically had to go to EA and say "CRPGs may be unfashionable now but we think we can bring the genre back. Give us a few years to figure this out, Ultima is a major franchise and it deserves a chance". Bring in Warren Spector and hire back all the U7 writers, wait until CD-ROM drives were the standard so they could create a more detailed world with better visuals, iterate and re-iterate on the gameplay mechanics until they were actually fun. In the end I'd like to think they would arrived at a game with less of the jumping and a more developed combat system, with a more open world instead of dungeon after dungeon.

Ultima’s fate was sealed when they failed to recognize that Underworld was the future. It shouldn’t have been a spin off, but rather the next mainline game. Having a product as technologically advanced as Underworld on the market and then coming out with Pagan is completely backwards
 

Kruno

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https://www.filfre.net/2021/02/ultima-viii-or-how-to-destroy-a-gaming-franchise-in-one-easy-step/

After acquiring Origin in late 1992, so the story goes, EA forced them to abandon all of the long-established principles of Ultima in order to reach the mass market of lowest-common-denominator players to which EA aspired. Richard Garriot — a.k.a. “Lord British,” the father of Ultima and co-founder of Origin — has embraced this explanation with gusto, part and parcel of a perhaps too prevalent tendency with His Lordship to lay his failures at the feet of others.

The reality is that EA earns most of its revenue with terrific games like Madden Football. Every year they publish a new edition, which reflects the changes in the NFL. They don’t have to create much that’s new — they just tweak their football-game engine and update the rosters. The rules of football change slowly. At the deadline they wrap it up and release it. The audience is pre-sold.



Looks like nothing has changed.

And a lot of people had made serious sacrifices to meet EA’s schedule. Many of our programmers had worked twelve hours a day, seven days a week for ten months. We would bring dinner in for them because we were afraid if they left, they might not come back. The last month or so we gave them every other Sunday off so, as one of them pointed out, they could see their family or do some laundry.

So it was like Anthem's development?

I find it hilarious how EA's business practices have not changed since the early 90s.

Still, the crunch that produced Ultima VIII was extreme even by Origin’s usual standards, and the stress was undoubtedly compounded by the bad vibe of compromise and trend-chasing that had clung to the project from the start. It didn’t help that Mike McShaffry had never attempted to manage a software-development project of any sort before; he was completely unequipped to bring any semblance of order to all of the frantic effort, as he freely admits today:

This would be an excuse but Ultima 9 showed us that there were more issues than leadership ones. It is more obvious given the fact that Ultima 7 is by far one of the best RPGs in existence and was released months before EA bought out Origin.

I think the article tries to give more breadth to what happened, but the EA buyout brought many issues which compounded any existing ones and introduced new ones as well.

Anyway, it's a good summary if you want to revisit this.
 

octavius

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I think people forget that the 90's (especially the first half) was a bloody mess for most game companies! The transition from 8-bit to 16-bit graphics and then to 3D was very challenging for most studios and designers, and it all happened in a span of like 5 years. Does anyone remember all those FMV CR-ROM games too that came out (even RPG ones) around that time? Ultima VIII happened right smack dab in the middle of that mess. Can you imagine being a designer watching the tech advance so fast that you can't keep up. I wouldn't be surprised if EA really wanted U8 to be a 3D game but the tech was still a few years out. They would have to wait to Ultima IX for that. Ultima VIII marked the beginning of the end for turn-based focused CRPGs for many companies as they desired to shift to more popular 3D games that would exploded on the market around 1996 with hits like Tomb Raider and Quake, etc...

Good point.
As a consumer and Amiga owner it was also a question of finding the right time to buy my first PC, and hope it was not obsolete by the time I had it up and running. The crazy advances in processors and to a lesser degree graphics card did make things harder and more chaotic.
 
Last edited:

DaveO

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May 30, 2007
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Wing Commander went down the FMV road with the third game and TOO MUCH FMV for the fourth one. I do like that Prophecy tried a different direction. It was a risky decision to try to "hand the torch" like the 1st Kelvin Star Trek movie did with the plot. Unfortunately, the actor in question that the torch was handed to is pretty much a nobody and has not made much of note since Prophecy. The same cannot be said for other actors in the series(Vagabond, Maniac, Maverick to name the most well known).


P.S. - Look at the intro to Prophecy and tell me you don't see pretty much the same thing happening when Nero arrives in the previously mentioned Star Trek movie.
 

Saduj

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Aug 26, 2012
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Garriott is still prone to chasing trends instead of making a good game. Ultima fans told him what they wanted for Shroud of the Avatar and he thought he knew better and could shove a pay to win MMO up their asses instead. How did that work out?

What he should have done with the Ultima franchise once he became bored with it is let people who wanted to make RPGs take it over so he could do something else. The Ultimas were always light on RPG mechanics. Every time they added a bit of complexity, it was well received. Adding reagents for spell casting. Adding a morality system. They had a ton of room to let the franchise evolve by adding more RPG systems to it. Yes, it would have arguably been more niche but there would have always been a core fanbase.
 

Roguey

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Seems puzzling to bemoan that Ultima VII wasn't as well received as the latest easier-to-pick-up-play action games when it was successful in its own niche.

http://web.archive.org/web/20110512211145/http://www.uo.com/archive/ftp/text/intrview/richgar.txt

G: "It's far differnet. Ultima VII cost $1,000,000 to develop. When
you're spending that kinda money, it's a very serious business. Also,
my musical and artistic skills used to be adequate back then for the
marketplace. The audio-visual impact is a lot more important now.
It's why the Wing Commander games were instant runaway hits when they
were released."

T: "What do you think your chances are of recovering that $1,000,000?"

G: "We recovered that on day one. We needed 50,000 back orders to
break even. We had 60,000 the day it was released. It's the biggest
rollout we've ever had."

Funny how he felt it necessary to go chase even more dollars, failing in the process. :P
 

Desiderius

Found your egg, Robinett, you sneaky bastard
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Insert Title Here Pathfinder: Wrath
Ultima’s fate was sealed when they failed to recognize that Underworld was the future. It shouldn’t have been a spin off, but rather the next mainline game. Having a product as technologically advanced as Underworld on the market and then coming out with Pagan is completely backwards

Gameplay-wise at the time Pagan actually felt better* (but I grew up on coin-ops). Everything else was night and day tho. Underworld drew you in - very similar feel to the also groundbreaking Eye of the Beholder that came out near the same time, while Pagan made you want to puke.

Maybe because all the best devs wanted to do 3D/first person at that time but it seemed the best world creation dungeon design and whatnot was in that world (with the exception of Dark Sun). Ultima VIII blobber would have been perfect.

* - swinging weapon with mouse/strafe dodging not good
 

Desiderius

Found your egg, Robinett, you sneaky bastard
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So which game was worse 8 or 9?

I liked the gameplay in VIII at the time. Pretty sure that was back when I finished games too. Guess you had to be there.
 

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