Ultima The Ultima Series Discussion Thread

[Infinitron]

The fan story rewrite was kind of...creepy, in that you're playing this obviously dumb game and all of a sudden all sorts of references to the old games come up and try to be relevant. It's like "Noooo, run away, RUN AWAY!"

 

[Comte]

Ultima IX was one of the biggest disappointments in my RPG gaming life.

Here's Hacki's Ultima nitpick page. The Ultima IX section is great.

http://hacki.bootstrike.com/english/nitpicks_u9.htm

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Utter denial about Ultima 9 being a betrayal of all things Ultima, and being a betrayal to the Ultima fanbase?

...no. That stance is indefensible. There are aspects of Ultima 9 that are appealing and interesting even today (the soundtrack, a couple of the dungeons) but the betrayal stands.

This is on a "the world is flat"-level of ignorance and narrow-mindedness. Garriott's involvement is irrelevant, OF COURSE he champions his own creation.

 

[taxalot]

I have the feeling it is not the first time that I write about this, but Ultima IX was both terrible and passable.
It had a terrible story.
It had a terrible gameplay.
It had terrible bugs.
It was a terrible step back to the standards set in motion by Ultima 7 and to the promise of the fans.txt : it was not a traditionnal Britannia Ultima, it was just a Britannia game.

Yet, it was still an impressive game. It was the first game featuring a decent open world, even if it made the game feels smaller than ever, there was still plenty to explore. The game looked also absolutely stunning and the physics were impressive when they worked. The story, had it been correctly written, could have been just simple and charming like the second trilogy stories were.

But the thing is, it's construction was not Ultima. It was Zelda Ocarina of Time. It follows exactly the same structure : town, dungeon, town, dungeon, town. Each time you finish a dungeon, you get new abilities (spells). Once in a while, you got a plot development, but all the 8 stories, like in Zelda, are independent from each others. It was really a Zelda clone. And if you leave it at that, it's not terrible.

But it's not what people wanted, and it's not what was advertised. Because of that, the game deserves to be frowned upon. If you're trying to make a cake and it comes out as a very tasty pie, you don't call it a success you're proud of.

 

[SausageInYourFace]

So do people despise Ultima 9 more than Ultima 8?

 

[Bumvelcrow]

So do people despise Ultima 9 more than Ultima 8?

Yes, although for slightly different reasons. Eight could have been interesting, but it was rushed and unfinished, and the jumping mechanics were bafflingly misguided. Nine was rushed (pattern emerging), but rushed to the point where the developers just gave up and shoved something out. Nothing interesting or Ultima-like about it at all, and if they had wanted to deliberately piss of fans who had been promised a true britannian ultima and the culmination of a trilogy of trilogies, they couldn't have done a better job. Yes, I'm still bitter.

 

[V_K]

I wonder if UW are to blame for the U8 jumping mechanics (and general action-ness)...

 

[Infinitron]

Ultima 8 is a bad game, and at the basic gameplay level not even as functional as U9, but it has the major advantage of not feeling like it was designed and written for ten year olds.

I wonder if UW are to blame for the U8 jumping mechanics (and general action-ness)...

Nah, it's Prince of Persia.

 

[Keldryn]

Yeah, now have fun reading this: http://ultimacodex.com/sword-and-shield/topic/in-defense-of-ultima-9/

(This was a real blast for the past for me, I had a lot of discussions like this with him in the year before I joined RPG Codex.)

I like the guy, but he has his head firmly up his ass when it comes to this idea that the "hatred" for U9 came much later and was the result of a bandwagon effect. Anyone who was around on any forums discussing the game in late 1999 and early 2000 could tell you what it was like. Fuck, Origin shut down the game's official forum when the level of hostility towards the game reached a critical mass.

The opinions on review sites generally tended towards the game being a potential masterpiece but dragged down by the bugs, poor performance, and other technical issues.

Longtime Ultima fans were ripping into the game's dialogue, plot structure, ignorance of past games, and linear world design within days of its release. I was one of them; I had been optimistic throughout all of the developments that had other fans worried: loss of the party, the "Tomb Raider" perspective, full voice acting, no female avatar, etc. When I stepped out if Stonegate, looked up at the tower and heard the Guardian laugh at me, I thought "oh yeah, Ultima truly has returned!" and even posted that on one of the boards. As I played the game a bit more, I started to have some reservations but I kept thinking that the game was probably just a bit simplified for the introductory section and it would improve later on.

By the time I got to Yew, I realized that this was nothing like the Ultima IX that had been talked about by Origin from 1995-1997, and it wasn't even the game that they had talked about in early 1998.

That's when the last of my optimism crumbled and I stopped trying to defend the game -- because yes, there was already a lot of negativity towards the game from fans, and we're talking 1-2 weeks after release at this point.

Claiming that the hatred came much later as a sort of social media bandwagon thing is some serious historical revisionism. The hatred started well before the game was even released -- from the moment we got those first screenshots of the over the shoulder perspective in late 1997 or early 1998, the bashing was on. Those screenshots alone had some fans comparing it to Tomb Raider and saying that Origin hadn't learned its lesson from Ultima VIII. Also that RG had broken his promise from fans.txt that U9 was going back to a traditional Brittanian Ultima. It only amplified after Origin revealed that the party was cut and that there would be no female Avatar. Origin hired Carly Staelin-Taylor for the sole purpose of interacting the the fans on message boards. During Ed del Castillo's short tenure as producer, he made a statement to the effect that they're trying to build something really cool but the "fans" are down in the boiler room blowing holes in the ship's hull with a shotgun.

The pre-release bashing never stopped and there was a good-sized number of Ultima fans already primed to hate the game (obviously their opinions aren't particularly objective).

He's full of shit on this one.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

It was clear at the time that U9 was going to be an EA game, not an Origin game. UO was the last Origin game.

 

[Infinitron]

It was clear at the time that U9 was going to be an EA game, not an Origin game. UO was the last Origin game.

EA didn't force Origin to make a dumb game. What's true is that Origin suffered a catastrophic loss of talent throughout the 90s. Somehow, by the time Ultima IX entered full production nearly all of the people who brought the series to the heights it reached in the early 90s were gone.

It's really weird, viewed from today's perspective. If you look at companies like Bioware and Bethesda, as much as they've declined, they still employ many of the same key people they did a decade and a half ago. When you buy a Bioware game, you know more-or-less what you're going to get. Somehow, the people in charge at Origin didn't understand this.

 

[a Goat]

The management didn't understand many things from what I've read about its development.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

I remember pretty vividly that U9 was released, Origin was blown up as the mass exodus concluded and pretty much everyone respected at Origin was distancing themselves from the whole debacle.

The fact that Garriott's next independant move was called Tabula Rassa was directly becauae of the total fuckup what was selling to EA and the gutting of a once great studio. I read interviews with Garriott where he detailed just how much control they lost of the process and product.

 

[Jaesun]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/issues/issue_14/87-The-Conquest-of-Origin

 

[Keldryn]

It also didn't help that pretty much the entire U9 design team all quit at once, apparently due to conflicts with Ed del Castillo. Garriott eventually took an active role in designing the game, but the design team was pretty green.

It's extremely difficult to produce a quality game when you have multiple major shifts in direction AND significant employee turnover. Very few of the people who worked on that isometric U9 (that we all got excited about in 1996) were still there by 1998.

 

[Ladonna]

I loved Ultima right up until 8, but even before this, I could see the decline starting in 7 in regards to the combat...wtf were they thinking? The rest of 7 was almost perfect for what the PCs of the day could handle.

Ultima 1,2,3 were, more or less, cookie cutter RPGs of their day. Nothing spectacular, just guys learning their trade (programming, story, execution) and churning out their thought bubbles. I finished 1 and 3, but number 2 drove me to despair and I haven't went back. Ultima IV was the big one. This game was something entirely different to anything yet made. No Big Bad, a system that keeps tabs on your behaviour, a massive world to explore and a consistant world (and brilliant music on the C64). Lore wise, Ultima IV should really be considered Ultima 1, as everything afterwards can be traced back to this game. Prior Ultima games had entirely different looking 'Brittanias' or Sosaria if you prefer the retcon. Characters were all over the place, space combat, ray guns, giant evil machines...you name it, 1,2 and 3 had it. Just no setting that made sense. Ultima IV was straight down the line Brittannia, the true start of the Ultima series imo.

Overall, Ultima reached its heights for me at number 5 so it gets my vote. I still love everything about the game, and can really find no faults on its execution. Just brilliant. If you take Ultima IV, and literally improve EVERYTHING by a factor of 10, you have Ultima V.

I enjoyed 6 and 7, loved the Ultima worlds games (especially Martian Dreams), and liked the Underworld games.

8 was horrid. I cannot explain how much I hate Ultima 8. It destroyed the whole experience for me, and to this day I cannot think of a redeeming feature. At least 9 had nice music....

Honestly, by Ultima 9, I had so little hope left that my bargain bin purchase of it was for no more than a teary bout of hilarity in witnessing the death of the franchise.

 

[Infinitron]

I agree that Ultima VIII was the true doom of the series. It basically destroyed Origin as an RPG developer. It took all the accumulated skills and know-how that had culminated in the creation of Ultima VII and flushed them down the toilet, never to return. The company that made Ultima IX was basically not an RPG developer anymore. The masses of Ultima fans who obsess over U9 nowadays tend not to realize this.

 

[Infinitron]

Richard Garriott’s Ultima 2 Notes

Richard Garriott spent some time in late 2015 going through some of old boxes of archived game development material. He graciously shared these hand-written notes about Ultima 2 — some of his discoveries during that process — with the Ultima Codex.



The notes themselves are pretty self-explanatory; one records the need for Ultima 2 to be well-packaged for presentation, and the other lists a bunch of features — or events — that are present in Ultima 2. Interestingly, the game of Nim merits a mention in the feature list, though you’ll note that it has been crossed out. It would ultimately not be until Ultima 6 that a playable form of Nim would be included in an Ultima game.

The Ultima Codex is, as always, grateful to Richard Garriott for sharing these glimpses into the history of Ultima 2’s development, and is hopeful that he will continue to unearth more such treasures.

 

[Bumvelcrow]

I agree that Ultima VIII was the true doom of the series. It basically destroyed Origin as an RPG developer. It took all the accumulated skills and know-how that had culminated in the creation of Ultima VII and flushed them down the toilet, never to return. The company that made Ultima IX was basically not an RPG developer anymore. The masses of Ultima fans who obsess over U9 nowadays tend not to realize this.

Garriott was still there. A lot of people idolise him, but I don't think he was ever a true RPG fan - he was a man who liked to tell a big story in the whizziest and most exciting way possible. That meant whatever the latest technology could deliver. If Origin had stayed independent I could quite see them being the alternate timeline Bethesda - big, flashy, brainless, empty experiences.

Having said that, perhaps I'm doing him a disservice. The mid-period classic Ultimas had stories that Bethesda couldn't ever dream of creating*.

* I loved Morrowind.

 

[Ladonna]

I think you are correct in a sense. Garriott seems like a kid that can be very creative...depending on the canvass he has to work with. ie he was originally forced to work on 8 bit computers, where Ultima V clearly shows that he sucks the last byte from those little machines, and puts them to good use. Everyone else is doing the whole turn based combat thing too, so he stays with it. He has a little more leeway with Ultima 6, and again tends to pull off a good show. Then things start to go wrong...

Ultima 7 shows his whole 'World simulator' continuing on in the right direction...but the combat is the giveaway. Other slasher games have been coming out and picking up big sales, turn based combat is being fobbed off by the mainstream press, and he leaps onto the bandwagon. 'Oh, wouldn't it be cool if..' not to mention Origin has already signed up with EA, and the masters like their big sales...

Ultima 8 is the natural progression. You may not think that looking at Ultima 7, but seriously, it is the next step. Quasi 3D, super mario acrobatics, worse combat than Ultima 7...but it is REAL TIME!!! Now with swinging weapons when you click the mouse! How Awesome! I don't know how many of you remember the big deal about how wonderful the mainstream gaming press used to carry on about how turn based combat was yesterdays hero, and real time is the way forward, but that pressure would have been brought to bear, and Garriott wanted to be the hippest guy on the block. He had too much machine to play with, and too many 'Cool Ideas' he obviously wanted to develop. Kind of like a Molyneux except in reverse; Molyneux spins shit that sounds perfect, but virtually never pulls it off; Garriott had stupid ideas and began pulling them off in his newer games, of which he has admitted before he was unable to do previously due to machine limitations.

He should be locked up with a C64/Apply IIgs and forced to make his future CRPGs on those. Ports can then be made by other studios, on a strict basis of sticking to his original formula.

 

[Infinitron]

Natural evolution: Going from a series of games where you wander around an open world and talk to people to a game where 80% of it is spent derping around in caves and catacombs

 

[octavius]

Natural evolution: Going from a series of games where you wander around an open world and talk to people to a game where 80% of it is spent derping around in caves and catacombs

"Streamlined gameplay".

 

[Melan]

In addition to fully embracing and even pushing technological innovation with high-budget projects, Origin's big thing was immersion. It was what they understood under immersion that changed significantly over time. In the early Ultimas, it was the whole scope of things you can do: travel on the overland, descend into dungeons, fly a spaceship against TIE-fighters, trravel in time and across planets, and all those things on that piece of paper. By the mid Ultimas, this turned into building complex worlds and adding more and more layers of simulation and background. From this point, streamlining was a logical way to achieve a more immersive experience, by stripping away the things they considered unwieldy or complicated to create a more "pure" game, which would also have lower barriers to entry and better mass market appeal. Origin had already experimented with titles like Times of Lore during the U6 generation, and the market was also going in that direction, so it doesn't come as a surprise they took this road with U8, then U9. It was logical, and could have yielded good games.

Except Looking Glass (with the former Underworld team) and Ion Storm Austin (with the then still non-crazy Warren Spector) turned the ideas of immersion and streamlined interaction into excellent games, and Origin didn't. Both U8 and U9 have something that looks like the germ of a good game, but they are both the products of long, confused dev cycles, increasingly dysfunctional corporate environments, and creatives who only have a superficial understanding of the original games' success. U9 especially.

 

[Bumvelcrow]

Both U8 and U9 have something that looks like the germ of a good game,

Ultima 8, I'll give you, but I have a hard time seeing anything creditable in U9. Maybe if the original plot had been implemented in the early isometric engine, with turn based combat, but nothing in the final release says anything but we've given up, here's some shit for you to eat.

Good to have some more U9 bashing after all this time. My rage shall ever endure.

 

[Infinitron]

Richard Garriott’s Handwritten DND #1 Design Notes

Now this is an exciting find. You may all recall that Richard Garriott’s Akalebeth — the progenitor of the Ultima series — began as a project calledDND #28 which, as the name suggests, was his 28th simple game built around a basic implementation of Dungeons & Dragons. The history of these games is chronicled, in brief, on the Shroud of the Avatar website:

Richard’s father told Richard, that if he could create a whole working role playing game, that he would split the cost of an Apple ][ computer with him. The result was DND #1!

DND #1 was created on a teletype at Clear Creek High School in Houston Texas, connected via an acoustic modem to a PDP 11 type mini-computer. Richard typed the game on a separate terminal onto paper tape spools, then read the tape strips into the terminal connected to the offsite computer, and ran the resulting program. The resulting program would play a simple Dungeons and Dragons like role-playing game. The player had a character that would explore a dungeon in search of treasure while fighting monsters along the way.

…

Richard wrote 28 of these “DND” games in High school. He numbered them DND #1 through DND 28. When he finally had that Apple ][, he rewrote DND #28 to become DND 28b… also known as AKALABETH the precursor of all things Ultima!

You can download a copy of the BASIC source code for the game from the Shroud of the Avatar website. In late 2015, however, as he was going through boxes of archival material that he had kept since the earliest days of his career as a game development, he came across the original, handwritten notes he had made for the game:



Several of the pages appear to be the layouts of dungeons that featured in DND #1. There are also written notes (including code) for the game, especially the dungeon generator. The dungeon maps are basically grids of numbers, with each number denoting a different thing (e.g. 0 for navigable spaces, 1 for “roll” which I assume means random events and encounters, 2 for traps, 3 for secret doors, and 4 for regular doors).

The cover page is also interesting, as it includes a “please return” notice (along with a phone number) that gives an idea of how long it took for Richard Garriott to write out his notes and plans for DND #1: 98 hours.

The Ultima Codex is, as always, very grateful to Richard Garriott for sharing this piece of game development history. We’ve heard a lot about DND #1 over the last year or so, especially since it is now playable in Shroud of the Avatar (as of that game’s eighteenth pre-alpha test release), but these documents help complete our understanding of it: we’ve seen the source code, and people have even found ways to get the game to run on emulators for very early computer systems. Now we also get to see the by-hand work that went in to its design and creation…where it all began, as it were.