Markee Dragon Interviews Richard Garriott
Marcus “Markee Dragon” Eikenberry posted a forty-two minute interview with Richard Garriott to YouTube a few days ago:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4xfrVUj_c0?rel=0&w=560&h=349]
A lengthy talk!
It’s a pretty wide-ranging interview, although the main topic is obviously Richard Garriott’s Portalarium and his plans for bringing new and exciting styles of gameplay and stories to the social/casual gaming space. A Mystical Land also gets a mention.
Markee even goes “there” and asks Garriott for his feelings on selling Origin Systems to Electronic Arts lo those many years ago.
WTF are you saying beg the question in it’s classical sense or beg the question as to raise the question?
The first definition is genuine, the second is invalid if you are disputing something you know to be true.
BTW validity is not a synonym of honesty.
Micro: I mean it in the correct sense. With a background in sales, I recognize it as a valid selling technique, and it’s also a legitimate rhetorical device in general conversation.
When someone incorrectly says “which begs the question”…well, that is a pet peeve I will valiantly bear and, out of compassion, not indulge and give voice to.
Quest for Glory used to be the only game series that gave Ultima a run for its money for “greatest game series of all time”. I’ve since added Elder Scrolls to that list, but I would usually try one of the others.
If you haven’t given it a go yet, you should try AGDs QFG 2 remake. It is awesome (plus I’m in the credits as a tester).
Maybe I should give the Witcher another go. Maybe I was missing something in the combat. The fist fights in the first town I was in just seemed to be random chance. The sex cards also seemed a bit lame. Plus the game just seemed… Unpolished. The graphics just didn’t quite work. The controls were just a little off. The dialogue often didn’t make sense. It just seemed like they needed someone to go over it and tell them little things to fix up that detract from the game.
Plus the game just seemed… Unpolished. The graphics just didn’t quite work. The controls were just a little off. The dialogue often didn’t make sense.
^^This is a description of most games developed in Europe. It’s part of their charm.
The Enhanced Edition improves matters, though (free for owners of the original).
I have the Enhanced Edition Director’s Cut. It’s the only one I’ve played so my playthrough was with whatever improvements it had.
It’s true Witcher had issues upon its release (notably very slow loading times as I recall), but not so much with the E.E.
I think the game looks pretty damn good actually, just yesterday I was saying I was impressed by how good. I’m still baffled this used to be NWN1’s engine (and Witcher 2 from what I have seen looks gorgeous).
I wouldn’t say the dialogue didn’t make sense, but from what I recall of my first playthrough the first chapter admitedly felt a bit disjointed – probably more than you’d usually expect in a RPG – but the writing itself wasn’t too shabbby.
Regarding Quest for Glory I must say I never had the same appeal to it that other SIerra games. I played the first one I couple years ago, it was fun but I ended using a walkthrough to go through it 😛 I began the ADG remake of QFG2 but I gave up because of how annoying it was navigating in the city – they really should have changed it the remake IMO.
I guess I don’t understand what the bad things I would say in public would be.
I have never had an issue talking about my problems with a Wing Commander game–but it’s hardcore fan stuff coming from someone who loved the game. If talking about ‘bad things’ means a foam-at-the-mouth pop review where I rant and rage for attention then sure, that is never going to happen… but that has nothing to do with wanting to suck up to Electronic Arts and everything to do with my not being that guy.
If you want to know what I thought was broken in Arena (the rematching system, the confusing fighter unlocks, an incorrectly mirrored texture on the Terran battlecruiser, the whole demo, the story mode being cut, the four player requirement in some modes) then I was talking about that in ‘public’ the day the game was released (or earlier, when it was an issue I knew about). But I was also entirely excited about the game and it’s a game that I love and think is worth ten dollars… and I was always going to say that, too.
Honestly, game developers have a thick skin… they have to. I have never known one who held some grudge against his fans for not liking the finished product. Fans complaining about every little thing in a game is the norm. I *know* I’ve been in situations where the things I have published and believed were anathema to the company line and I never felt any less welcome for it. Heck, think of all the times I’ve defended Wing Commander releases where doing so went ‘against’ the team at Origin who I would theoretically have wanted to ‘suck up’ to. They *hated* Privateer 2 and felt it was forced on them, they didn’t like the Wing movie… but my defending both of those at the time didn’t ruin any friendships or get WCHS blacklisted (and internal drama over P2 *still* pops up today). (Which is all a little funny, because I’ve always been accused of being an Origin apologist… and Origin *hated* a lot of the stuff I love.)
Heck, I’ll go right out and say that I have misgivings about an Ultima social game. I haven’t played it, I only know the rumors.. but just the concept doesn’t sit right with me (yet?). I mean, the current stanard is Lord of Ultima. Micropayments and Facebook are scary to an old games-in-boxes man and just the idea of an outsider doing Ultima are all big unknowns in my mind. Is saying that going to ruin any sort of relationship with Paul Barnett? I really don’t think so (and I’m absolutely depending on him for help with this GOG stuff… and I’ll be begging him to do something with Privateer until hell freezes over). If anything, that’s exactly the feedback he probably wants to find–to know how regular fans are thinking about this thing so he can address those issues.
LOAF:
This, exactly.
Actually, the guys at Mythic are constantly checking Aiera, the Codex, and even the CIC in order to keep their fingers on the pulse of the fan community and see what we’re all thinking. (Plus, they rely heavily on the Codex for information and lore clarifications.)
(And yeah, they do have thicker skins that most.)
I don’t know why people have problems with qfg2’s map. I still know the entire city layout by memory, almost 20 years after last looking at it. Then again, maybe playing old adventure games gave me my amazing sense of direction in real life.
Maybe my problem with the Witcher is that I never really played much NWN or Dungeon Seige, etc. They never matched up to Ultima so I didn’t see the point. So, when I look at the Witcher I see extremely bad graphics and animations compared to what I’m used to (such as Elder Scrolls). It could be the same for the controls too. Maybe I’m spoiled by games that are designed to play smoothly and have top-of-the-line graphics, rather than typical RPG graphics and controls.
But the dialogue is still horrible in my opinion… Maybe it gets better later in the game. I haven’t talked to that many people yet, so the majority of the dialogue could still be good. Te conversations so far just haven’t made much sense. I’ll say one thing and they’ll talk about something random. And then the next part of the conversation will be about another random topic that I don’t even know why we are talking about it (like the game assumes I or they or both of us know things that we don’t or haven’t spoen about yet)
@LOAF. Heh, I still remember all the drama about Privateer 2 (I was at the CIC back when it was still the WCHS). I will that personally refuse to aknowledge it as part of the Wing Commander series, it just doesn’t really feel or play like a Wing Commander games and a couple of obvioulsy tacked on textual reference to a Confederation near the end of the game just doesn’t do it for me.
Warthog (or EA UK as they were when doing Privateer 2) really had their own style and feel that while similar on the surface to Wing Commander felt different enough (this was very obvious while playing Starlancer which felt like an improved Privateer 2 gameplay-wise). Indeed for all its controversial (and rather pointless after the cut AI controlled aspect) mouse-based interface, I thought Freelancer felt a LOT more like a Wing Commander/Privateer game than anything in Privateer 2.
That being said, I still feel it was a pretty damn good game by itself and I continue to defend it to this day. I never watched any other spoony reviews because of how full of crap his Privateer 2 “review” was. 😛
I do believe however that Privateer 2 was just a shameless use of the Privateer IP though and I’ve always felt if they had just stuck with its original title “The Darkening” instead of putting a Privateer in it at the last minute, people would have been receptive to it.
(On a somewhat unrelated note, I’ve rather ironic that they tacked on a Privateer 2 to The Darkneing to cash on the first’s game popularity, while they wanted to remove the “IX” from Ultima IX not to scare away new consumers).
Regarding the Ultima 4Ever thing, I’ll admit to a similar skepticism to social based gaming… altough seeing A Mythical Land, makes me more hopeful about having actual browser based gaming rather than Zynga clones.
@Thepal. While I understand what you say, I just don’t see how it applies to the Witcher personally. I fail to see what’s bad about the graphics – as I said I find them quite impressive for its time, probable better even than NWN2. And the animation ? Seriously the animation is lightyears ahead Bethesda’s Gamebryo games and their stiff animation. I’d argue their NPCs look much better as well and the cinematic presentation of their dialogues are very good.
Now granted The Witcher is not exactly an AAA game (through from the look of it, the sequel is) but it doesn’t look like a cheap RPG like say Two Worlds.
I’d someone agree about the random feel of conversation, it feels to me that the game is made in a way to make you feel that Geralt and other NPCs and places have some history, but at the beginning it does feel a bit too much lire you’re thrown in the middle of nowhere with little explanation. But I don’t feel it’s poorly written at all, again it’s not worse than what Oblivion offers for instance – and reportedly it’s supposed to have a great aray of choice and consequence with actual effect later in game (from what I’ve heard The Witcher 2 is even crazier like this, with basically a whole third of the game that is completly different in term of location and storyline depending on your choices).
Also while it’s still far from Ultima, the Witcher seems like one of the rare modern RPG who still cling to a night/day cycle, with actual differences depending on wheter you’re in day or night, so that’s pretty cool!
Regading QFG2 I just feel the labyrinth aspect was poorly handled and just annoying because it always follow the same perspective. It wouls have worked better with first person 3D kind of view or an overhead perspective – I think it was just poor design, even by taking the time it was made into account. I really wish AGD had changed it.
Because it comes up again and again and I feel like throwing ome flame bait… 🙂
I actually ENJOY Lord of Ultima, on World 1 (formerly the beta world) I’m curently on rank 3 and have achieved the title Lord of Ultima. I don’t enjoy it because of the few Ultima references but it’s a nice time filler when you don’t have time to seriously play a real game (dragon age 2 is still unplayed on my desk because I couldn’t find the time). It shamelessly uses the Ultima IP, yes, but if it hadn’t done so, I’d never have started to play it. And after getting over the sacrilege of them using the Ultima IP, it’s really enjoyable.
Of course it’s mostly a grinding game 😉
Judging from the frequency they add new worlds I guess the game is actually quite successfull, btw.
Aye, while of Ultima is a shameless use of the Ultima IP, it is a good game. I haven’t played much of it because it isn’t my cup of tea but I can definitly recommend it for someone who like this kind of game.
This is because of stuff like this that I keep saying you need first and foremost to judge anything on its own merits.
And yup it is definitly very successful, I wouldn’t be surprised if LoU’s success is what allowed Barnett’s project to be greenlit in the first place.
Like I said, at this point I don’t think we’re adding anything new to the discussion. You said to Micro that you were in a unique position to be objective about the game. While you certainly know more about it than most fans, to some that level of priviledge also precludes true objectivity. As long as you keep your relationship with EA/Mythic transparent, your readers are free to make up their own minds.
When the gaming community at large heard about Arena, they were generally puzzled by the use of the license. It antagonized many old fans of Wing Commander as a dogfighting, mission-based, arcade flight sim — and for new gamers the name brought with it little if any cachet.
But Arena was universally praised on CIC, the site that also happened to have a hand in the game’s creation. You all apparently loved the game, that’s great — but hopefully you can understand why some readers would come away a bit puzzled. It felt like I was entering a bubble where a conscious decision had been made to mute criticism of the game, especially on the forums.
Matt: I try to be as transparent as possible, though I am obviously under NDA where some details are concerned.
Also, it’s rather a serious charge to claim that the CIC was actively attempting to mute (which I read as: “censor”) criticism of Arena. It’s the sort of claim that, really, requires some evidence to be presented along with it.
I remember quite a lot of people complaining about Arena at the CIC both in comments and forum. While the staff seemed mostly supportive of the game, I seem to recall it was not the case for all the readers.
It’s kind of strange knowing the “real” story today. The references weren’t tacked on: they were written in the very first days of the project when it really was supposed to be “Privateer 2”. Chris Roberts declared his interest in doing more Privateer and the Manchester team built a new universe instead, but tiny bits were left that we all picked up on at the time (the Talon model was initially created to be a Talon in their direct sequel to Privateer–they did a few other ships too).
The UK team had actually signed off on the game and absolutely refused to change anything (which was part of the major fight with Origin) before the name change.
I know what you mean about the style–there’s no question that Privateer 2, StarLancer and Battlestar Galactica were done by the same group… but the funny thing is that it stops right there. The same group of guys is still working together today–they do a big chunk of those ‘LEGO’ games! Who would have thought?
(Freelancer was a neat game, and since it was done in Austin it certainly had a lot more pure Wing Commander DNA… but in all honesty I have never, ever been excited by those ‘outside’ space sims. I love the Wing Commander world. I’m glad eastern Europe is putting out new space games today they just aren’t my thing.)
Heh–when it comes to Spoony, I just don’t get the joke.
I don’t know, I think marketing was probably right however cynical: I’m not sure anyone would have played the game if it weren’t Privateer. I mean, something like Archimedean Dynasty was an amazing Privateer followup and no one talks about it today because who remembers it? (I honestly don’t mind the ‘Privateer’ in the title… I think that’s even deserved, since it borrows so much of the concept and is also an Erin Roberts game… I have a problem with the *2* implying a sequel instead of another game where you’re a privateer. I think you could have gotten away with doing a new Privateer game with a different character and even setting each release… but two games doesn’t make a pattern.)
What keeps it from being a true classic is the mechanical stuff. There are all sorts of flaws in the game that *should* have been fixed but weren’t (faction system, how pirates spawn, etc.)
This is where the falling out with Origin came in. After the name change, Origin had a team go to England to do their own beta test and basically found all the flaws people complained about. They came up with a list of mostly balancing changes (and little things to make it more in the ‘Wing Commander’ world)… and were told that the team had moved on and the game was in its final state and *nothing* would be done (and the Texas employees wouldn’t be credited in the game because that was closed too). That’s where all that anger came from!
Oh man, this. There was some sort of researched Hollywood study in 1996 that claimed numering movies cost you a specific dollar amount in ticket sales and everybody bough into it *overnight*. Origin decided it applied to games, too… I think Wing Commander Prophecy was the first numerical casualty.
I don’t *get* why they didn’t like the game, though… I felt–I still feel–like it’s an artificial construct promoted by game bloggers looking for a target instead of really reviewing anything (in fact, if you look at the print reviews that went to press in a vaccuum they’re all positive). I don’t see reviews that talk about mechanics or playability, I see unpleasant people screaming catch phrases (can you believe this $10 Xbox Live Arcade game doesn’t have Mark Hamill in it?!*). I do not understand the idea of being ‘betrayed’ because EA put out a fun litte Xbox Live Arcade Wing Commander game, one that was certainly respectful to our continuity. If you want to be offened by something EA did to Wing Commander, that’s way, way, way down the list after a dozen game cancellations. I just don’t get it.
* – Which was actually always funny when I saw it, because they even reached out to Hamill to see if he’d do a promo event where he played the game against fans. He replied that he wasn’t willing to play a video game, but would do voice work if needed–but it was too late in the process to include that.
(I should also note that most of the staff *wasn’t* involved in Arena in any way. I was the guy who did ‘work’, Chris knew what was going on… but no one else was under NDA and saw the same as-released aspects of the game as anyone else.)
(To the guy who said he really likes Lord of Ultima–thank you, that’s very interesting to hear. I played it once and it seemed sort of dull… but their Twitter certainly does suggest that it’s more popular than I would have thought possible. Hopefully a good sign for Mythic’s project.)
I liked Lord of Ultima. It’s a fun little game–simple in concept, but brutal when the chips are down (attack/defense). The only problem I had with it was that it took up too much of my time. Since it was real time, I’d get emails in the middle of my workday saying, “You are being attacked! Log in now to save your kingdom!” I obviously wasn’t able to do anything about it till I got home, and by then my lands were decimated! A fine how-do-you-do for the loyalty and work I put in…my poor citizens…helpless and leader-less…*snif*…
Still fun tho.
@LOAF. Most interesting insights about Privateer 2’s development. The way you described how Warthog eventually washed their hands off the game because they’ve moved on… geez they sound a bit like asses there. I guess it wasn’t all bad since Chris & Erin Roberts worked with them again with Starlancer.
Speaking of which, whatever happens to Erin Roberts since Digital Anvil’s closure ?
They had also done that Star Trek starfighter game for the PS1 in the genre. Not too shabby albeit the idea of starfighter in Star Trek is just… wrong 😛
I had actually looked up Warthog on wikipedia a while and was indeed surprised seeing they had mutated into a part of TT Games basically doing a lot of the handled versions of the Lego games. Crazy. And kind of a shame too, I would have liked more Warthog space sim games.
I know where you’re coming from, I didn’t get inside many space sims games outside Wing Commander games and the X-Wing series (that being because I’m a Star Wars nut). The thing that also made WC so unique to me is the storyline aspect of it, moving around the ship, talking to people, having a true storyline developped like a in movie… things that are sorely lacking in other games of this kind which are basically briefing => missions with a couple of cutscenes there and there. That’s just not as captivating as WC was.
I really got into the Lancer universe because they were touted as spiritual successors to WC, not the same universe… but in the same spirit you know (kind of like Jowood continued the Gothic universe while PB made a spiritual successor to Risen).
Admitedly Starlancer felt more like a faster paced Privateer 2 than a proper Wing Commander and it was sorely lacking in term of plot inside the ship (I remember Erin Roberts saying he wanted to have the “move around the ship and talk to people bit” in Starlancer 2… Oh well) altough they did a good shope of having story told within missions with nice NPCs.
But Freelancer just felt very Wing Commander-ish to me, it was not the same universe but it just had a similar feel and tone – this was even truer in term of plot and story execution, there was moving around ,talking to people and I mean it was basically a cinematographic experience like the later Wing Commander games live action cinematics were repalced by realtime 3D cutscenes (which I believe is most likely the way Wing Commander would have continued if it hadn’t been “cancelled” after Prophecy).
I also never got into all those eastern europe space sims, especially since they tend to get with the overcomplicated X kind of gamemplay. Not my thing.
And my Sidewinder Force Feedback 2 is gathering dust basically 😛
That’s a valid point about the Privateer 2 selling the game, altough one might argue that -perhaps- it could have sold well under The Darkening name solely by being touted as a different Origin game but similar in spirit. Now I’m not sure if it would have sold well this way… I do believe it would have had a better critical reception from fan on account that it wouldn’t felt like someone a just shoehorned a completly unrelated game into the WC universe (though I guess to be fair, that did call it Privateer 2 and NOT “Wing Commander Privateer 2”).
And I remember Achimedean Dynasty! I loved this game and man it was beautiful too – as I recall it was one of the first videogames to use millions of color and go beyond good ol’ VGA. Never played any of the Aquanox followup though…
To be fair, it kind of made sense for Prophecy to drop the numerical number, since this was very much supposed to be the beginning of a new Wing Commander saga: new hero, new characters, new ennemies and such… it never bothered me that they dropped the number with Prophecy.
Ultima though… that felt incredibly silly considering this was basically a direct sequel to Ultima VII&VIII (though I guess the way they handled works fine for newcomers too) and basically the conclusion of the series.
I do recall Garriott mentionning back when it looked like there would plenty more of Ultima games he planned to drop the numbers after Ultima X (which he wanted to be in VR headset and such heh…) and use real titles instead.
Ya know these kind of discussions tend to make the old time gamer in me nostalgic… back when Prophecy was released and we were still awaiting Ultima IX, I don’t think any of us would have ever imagined that nearly 15 years we wouldn’t have add any other WC or Ultima game. Meh.
Yep, of course.
I’m not suggesting a sinister EA plot was involved, I’m just describing how I felt as a reader. Those who expressed displeasure with the game’s direction were routinely ridiculed. You’d think, of all places, a Wing Commander fan community would understand why people had some reservations about the game…
Or not. 🙂 I never played Arena so I can’t judge it on its own merits. But I can judge it as a Wing Commander game — from that perspective it lacked the elements that drew me into the original titles, so why should I bother? Much like the new XCOM: love the original strategy game, still play it — but enough with the first person shooters already.
Anyway, enough about Arena. Hope Portalarium and Mythic both manage to recapture a bit of that old Ultima magic… cautiously optimistic.
The Witcher is definitely on my list of games to play.
Oh come on! I can’t see rg saying ultima x would use a vr headset, now you’re getting silly.
Vr had a short lived hyped period of time in the mid nineties. I remember as a child Phil Donahue hosting a show about toys and games. One of which was a vr headset, which at the time, I thought was super sweet! I even remember headsets at the Big E. But ultima 9 came out at the end of 99, I can’t imagine Garriott thinking vr headsets are the wave of the future at that point.
Could you find a quote for that? I’m sure I’m not the only one that would love to see RG say he wants an ultima game with a VR headset.
Micro: You’re a more recent Ultima fan, aren’t you?
That Garriott wanted to mess around with VR was pretty common knowledge even back when Ultima 8 was new; the Codex even has a bit of information about this. He was evidently a huge fan of the idea of VR technology, although also quite aware of its technical limitations.
And obviously, nothing ever came of his interest. Just as well, I suppose!
Oh and wtf dragon
“Has randomly generated dungeons ever been a staple of the Ultima franchise?
Editor’s Note: Early on, yes. The larger question is: does the nature of the dungeons as static or generated absolutely define whether a game is authentic to the Ultima tradition?”
This question is pretty facetious. Dungeons aren’t the largest part of my favourite ultima’s. But they are a LARGE part of the game itself. It’s typically and even LARGER part of mmo’s(if this turns out to be an mmo). So all I can say is, if they miss the fact that dungeons in Ultima are static, that is a bad sign for the whole game.
They are breaking a large part of the game, and a long running tradition. I’ve always hated lifeless randomly generated dungeons.
Is changing dungeons in Ultima to be randomly generated, does this break a long running Ultima tradition?
Micro:
Generally, yes. The dungeons in Ultima 7 cannot properly even be called dungeons (for the most part), and don’t consume an overly significant amount of the total time it takes to play that game. But that would be the anomaly in the series, rather than the norm.
Again, generally, yes.
That doesn’t really follow for any number of reasons. Firstly, the dungeons in the earlier Ultimas were (due to technical limitations) laughably small in terms of total area. The dungeons in the later Ultimas were larger, but never really maintained a constant shape across multiple titles, and sometimes didn’t even maintain a common purpose across multiple titles. This, in turn, means that there is no one set canonical layout for any of Britannia’s dungeons, nor can it really be argued that there is a fixed canonical purpose for each of the dungeons, which in turn means that developers wanting to craft Britannia anew have a bit of flexibility in terms of how they opt to lay out and purpose dungeons in the land.
I can see you’ve never played Torchlight, then.
It’s true that random dungeon generation can misfire and produce some lacklustre results; it’s also true that this is not true in every case, as has been amply demonstrated by the game whose title I just mentioned. Whether it will work in whatever Mythic is working on will, ultimately, be something we will have to determine when the product releases; dismissing it a priori and without solid evidence that its dungeon design and experience is bad makes no sense.
I like the idea of randomly generated dungeons, since of course that means that the experience of taking on a dungeon is never the same twice, which adds to replayability. Do I know for a fact that the dungeons in Mythic’s project work well and deliver an enjoyable playing experience? No. If they’ve managed to capture some of the magic of Torchlight, then I probably will enjoy playing through them…and I suspect so will most. If not…then maybe that won’t be the case. But at this point, we just don’t know, and can’t; it’s too early to make a judgement call one way or the other.
Dungeon running in Ultima games is usually of the “find person/trinket and exit” variety, so it certainly wouldn’t break any of the traditional quest types to have randomly-generated dungeons. Does it break a tradition of how Britannia has been built as a world in past titles? In the sense that any individual Ultima game had static dungeon maps, you could maybe argue “yes”; in the sense that Ultima as a series never featured consistent design in its dungeons, you can easily argue “no”.
So really, it all hinges on what you mean by “in Ultima”, and I think the best reply I can give which covers all possibilities is that random dungeon generation is a different approach, one which may work or may not (we shall see!), but one which also does not by itself really tell us anything about how faithful to Ultima tradition the game will be overall.
Just to make myself get attacked with rotten vegetables, when I think of Richard Garriott these days I tend to kinda connect him with George Lucas. I think he does need people like Spektor around to help him to focus his creativity in a positive direction.
Is there really much difference between Han Solo being a noseless green alien and putting away your sword to go flying in a spaceship in order to kill an evil wizard? Garriott said in that recent Dragon interview that the problem with the later games was that he listened to other people instead of doing what he thought. I think the problem with the original games was that he did what he thought without input from other people. I think there was a happy middle-period where the folk at Origin collaborated to create the greater Ultima games. Hopefully that sort of thing is what will happen with his new project.
The reason I brought that up is to say “Is RG wanting to use VR really that surprising?”
Thepal: What’s hilarious is that the Garriott vs. Lucas comparison will likely annoy at least two different people in this thread for two vastly different reasons. I look forward to seeing the fallout!
Earlier than that, in fact! Check out the last page of this 1992 Point of Origin: http://download.wcnews.com/files/documents/Point_of_Origin_Vol_2_No_24.pdf (It says VR hemets are being tested “looking ahead toward Bounty Hunter, Ultima X and perhaps even a future Strike Commander”)
I think it was a case of the people in charge butting heads. I spoke to programmers years later who had no idea the American team had wanted changes–they just knew the Origin team had basically disavowed the game after its release and were hurt about that.
Erin Roberts is still in charge of that team–he’s Studio Director at Traveler’s Tales Fusion. (They’ve gone from Electronic Arts North West to Warthog to Embryonic to TT Fusion with basically the same group of guys–Erin’s been there the whole time. That’s why they did StarLancer, when Digital Anvil’s resources were focused on the Wing movie.)
And kind of a shame too, I would have liked more Warthog space sim games.
Don’t count them out yet! Actually, they made a run at the Privteer license a while back, but EA wasn’t interested. There’s still a lot of love for it over there…
EA actually made the somewhat odd decision to drop ‘Wing Commander’ from Privateer and treat them as separate franchises in 1994–if you look at the Righteous Fire box you’ll see they dropped the logo. If you think back to Origin’s last website with the “planets” for each series, there was one for Wing Commander, one for Privateer, one for Ultima and one for Other. (This has some interesting lasting impact… which we can’t talk about yet.)
I think if Darkening had been sold as another Origin game then we’d have exactly the same argument except instead of not really being Privateer we’d be going onn about whether or not it was really an Origin game since it was from the UK team. 🙂 But even then, Origin may have been a mark of quality but it wasn’t enough to sell a bunch of their games–Cybermage, Bioforge, Shadowcaster and so on.
I could see that if it’d even began to pretend to be a different kind of game… but they were entirely clear about what Arena was from the day it was announced. (I wouldn’t criticize Academy, for instance, for not being a game with a story… but I would criticize it for not letting you build missions to the extent promised by the press release.)
By new fan of Ultima, I’ve been into Ultima only 12-13 years. Which I know is a baby in Ultima years.
Great link WTF, but he says nothing about VR headsets. It’s a good link to prove my point that Ultima x was never in concept to use a VR headset. It actually proves my point that he wasn’t ever thinking about using a VR headset for an Ultima title, and the idea of that is silly. It raises the question of what he even meant by virtual reality.
Let me quote.
“I’m a big virtual reality fan, as well as I’m a big virtual reality skeptic. In the sense of, wouldn’t I love to be able to just plug in and go play in a virtual world? Yes. But do I think the hardware to make that practical in a lot of the high end movies, do I think that’s going to happen anytime soon? Absolutely not.”
‘Plugin’ to me seems more like an idea of a holodeck or something more like the matrix, not really a VR headset.
Any other links?
Ultima 1-2 had pretty large dungeons. Each floor wasn’t huge but if I’m not mistaken there was a 100 floor dungeon in ultima 2.
As far as dungeons in Ultima go. You’re right about dungeons being different canonically. And from game to game, dungeons don’t have the same layout. It wouldn’t be fun to run through the exact same dungeon from game to game, so it never bothered me that they looked different.
This made me guffaw!
“Does it break a tradition of how Britannia has been built as a world in past titles? In the sense that any individual Ultima game had static dungeon maps, you could maybe argue “yes”; in the sense that Ultima as a series never featured consistent design in its dungeons, you can easily argue “no”.
I’m glad we’re using the word tradition and for the heck of it, let me quote the definition from dictionary.com of how we’re using the word. If you’re using a different definition, feel free to let me know.
-a continuing pattern of culture beliefs or practices.-
As a design philosophy, when they design dungeons in Ultima games, each and every dungeon is static. Perhaps the layout is different from title to title, the place you enter the dungeon is different from title to title, and the names of the dungeons get switched around. But that’s not the definition of randomly generated.
Randomly generated dungeons are dungeons that’s layout changes completely each and every time you enter it, “within the same game”.
The continuing pattern of practice when designing a dungeon within an Ultima title has been static dungeons. So when you change the continuing pattern of practice, you stop a tradition.
What’s your definition of randomly generated dungeons?
Micro: Well, that explains why you hadn’t heard about the VR headsets; 12-13 years ago was about the same time the last Ultima game was released. Or, at least, the last single-player title. But you knew that.
As to my links…you quoted from my second link, which I noted said exactly what Garriott said; that he was a fan of the technology but aware of its limitations. It doesn’t mention VR headsets specifically, but you’ll note that I also linked to the Codex article, and LOAF provided a third link to an article which explicitly mentions VR headsets. And even if my links don’t specifically mention them…by what other means was VR being delivered back in those days? Your intuition should be able to fill in the blanks that those articles leave.
As to the size of dungeons in Ultima 2…you can be the judge (that is one dungeon chosen at random). It’s big for its day, but when you consider that the player’s character occupied one square, it’s not all that big by modern terms.
As to the use of the term “tradition”, I am using something more along the lines of this definition: “the handing down of statements, beliefs, legends, customs, information, etc., from generation to generation, especially by word of mouth or by practice”. Although even that’s not the best definition of the term, and “tradition” might even be the wrong word to use in that context (strictly speaking). Though I’m not sure what the right word would be, at least not at 11 PM after getting half an hour of sleep the previous night.
But I digress.
That’s one definition, to be sure, although not the only one. That’s not quite how Torchlight handles it, for example; I observe that dungeon layouts in that game don’t change when I warp back to town and then back into the dungeon.
And really, we don’t know anything about how this game handles dungeons; it could (for example) cache dungeon layouts in some way, preserving the layout for a set duration. It could use random generation to create dungeons on each different game server, but then keep those layouts in perpetuity once they were in place. We. Just. Don’t. Know.
So why not wait for a bit more evidence, as opposed to just wildly speculating about things that might end up being totally different than anything we think we know.
BTW why are my comments automoderated? I hope you’re not editing my post to say things I wouldn’t normally say. Because the only thing you’ve actually edit out of my post is where I quoted how you are being intellectually dishonest a few times, because you hadn’t addressed it.
Editor’s note: Since Micro still can’t resist the urge to call me a liar, I am again helping him practice restraint.
I work in sales as well, and you know as well as I do EVERYONE lies. At least you have the honesty to admit it!
Micro: As you can see, I do sometimes edit your comments…but I only delete segments thereof. Nothing is added that is not clearly indicated as being my own words.
I don’t like having to do that, by the way, but I believe I did ask you to drop a particular line of commentary. Prove you can, and the auto-moderation goes away.
You are right that everyone lies (no surprise, given concupiscence) and admitting as much is no great thing; I could note the presence of oxygen in the air and in so doing say something approximately as shocking or revelatory.
But that’s…not really what I was talking about when I was talking about my experience in sales, was it?
Randomly-generated can mean it was a randomly-generated design that was staticly stored in the game. For example, the Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall had a huge amount of randomly-generated terrain/caverns/etc. It was the largest game world of all time, I believe. No way that a team could create a game that big.
What they did is have the computer randomly create the dungeons, but they were saved that way for release. So every single person who goes to the dungeon gets the same dungeon (it is static), but it was randomly generated by a computer instead of hand-created by a human. That may be what the others are talking about.
But I’m on your side. Ultima has always been about hand-crafted dungeons. Usually with a particular theme/purpose behind them. Wrong for example was usually made into a prison. Ultima would not be the same if dungeons were just randomly generated. In fact, if anything except the outside world was randomly generated (not the shape of course) then I’d find that extremely un-Ultimalike (I have no problem with randomly generated trees/rocks/etc, as long as someone goes around making sure they all work properly and fit the location. I had the computer generate all of that for my remake, and it all works well).
Building off of Thepal’s comment, a third possibility (third?) emerges: randomly-generated dungeon templates with by-hand touching up.
Still, again, this is all just a big steaming pile of speculation right now.
I don’t think that third possibility would work with Ultima dungeons. It’d be a lot harder to get across the “feel” of the dungeon without that being built into it by a human. As I said, I’m fine with computer-generated with touch-up for some things (trees, rocks, etc), but I don’t think it would work well for dungeons.
I’m not saying it isn’t possible, it is just very unlikely.
The thing about VR Headsets is that you need to put things back in context.
It seems ludicrous now, but there was in time in the early-mid ’90 where it seemed that VR Headsets really were the FUTURE. They were featured on magazine covers, in theme parks, in movies… every manufacturer and its neighbor were working on same variation of it : Atari actually plan for a VR Headset for their failed Jaguar and Nintendo eventually released the Virtual Boy which shall go as their biggest hardware failure of all times.
So it’s not surprise Origin and Garriott would have been excited by the technology at the time and would envision Ultima X (which was still many years away) with this. The tech never really caught on, and the limitations (headset to heavy, headaches, nausea) made it go aways as far as it appeared (though I wonder what would be capable in term of VR today)
That’s nice! Actually I didn’t know Erin Roberts was in UK as an actual part of the team. I always imagined he was based in Austin (originally at Origin, then DA) and was just with Warthog for the purpose or Privateer 2 and Starlancer.
I’d certainly love TT Fusion to go back to make a good space sim games!
…On VR Headsets and Ultima:
I have just uncovered documentation (which will be posted to Ultimaaiera this summer) that Origin was contemplating adding a pair of “3D Goggles” to the Dragon Edition of Ultima 9. Whether this was VR or some type of red/blue glasses is unclear, but it shows unquestioningly that Origin/Garriott were still proponents of immersion technology as far along as February 1998.
The reason they (somewhat consistently) say “Ultima X” when talking about the VR headset is because in 1990 no one imagined that Ultima VII-IX would take a decare of development and involve building three (or more) completely new engines. Richard Garriott had that trilogy set in his mind at the time–so Ultima X was the ‘next level’ of games.
Seregorn is right, though, the word of mouth on VR headsets was huge at the time and Origin was VERY conscious of the fact that they were supposed to be the company that supported cutting edge technology. You can see that the RealSpace engine built for Strike Commander and which was supposed to carry them through Privateer, Phoenix Force and Wing Commander III+ was built with the tech in mind–the “virtual cockpit” in Strike Commander makes a lot more sense as something that responds to head tracking.
Erin would go back and forth (often to help his brother specifically), but the group in the UK were his old buddies–when EA gave him the chance to start his own team there to build a Privateer sequel in ’94-95 he jumped at the chance (which became The Darkening and then Privateer: The Darkening and then Privateer 2: The Darkening and… well, we already talked about that!).
Probably the latter–there was a big, mostly unrealized push around that time for 3D accelerators to add value by outputting to 3D glasses. The thinking being that “YOU CAN PLAY GAMES IN 3D!” was a better selling point for the average PC user than ‘makes certain games faster/renders polygons X percent faster/makes fog look better’… but developers never really got behind it. (Anybody remember the “X3D” stereoscopic computer glasses infomercial with Wil Wheaton from before he convinced the internet he was cool?)
(I’d be interested in learning more. I get the feeling elsewhere that the teams at Origin were kind of chafing under the ‘you-must-support-3Dfx-in-your-games edict… it may well have been Richard Garriott trying to turn that awkward business deal into something positive for Ultima IX.)
Wow! That link was interesting! I stand corrected! I didn’t expect those to be different hyperlinks. Even a lord among mere mortals can be corrected rarely ;).
I remember the hype behind vr headsets. My only experience was at the Big E fair. This guy was running a booth charging x amount for x amount of time. I was really young. And I remember seeing people looking around up and down and being really blown away by it.
I looked up and down maybe once or twice, it really wasn’t that exciting. I just thought the whole 3d aspect of it was amazing! I just wanted to play a game which had 3d models etc.
About my bit about honesty. I wasn’t referring to you lying as a sales person. I was referring to customers. I wonder why you didn’t edit the last part out of the comment out. Everyone includes you too you know ;P. I’ve never seen you in action, I have no idea lie to customers or not. But just about every customer I’ve ever seen has lied to me about something. Whether it’s price, where they’ve previously been, where they’re going, how much they can afford, what they like, what they don’t like, etc, etc, etc. Little old ladies, police, yoga instructors, hell can you get a straight answer out of a woman about what her age or weight is?(Not that I ask!) Can a man honestly tell a woman she is overweight when she asks?
Honesty has it’s place and time. When I was a child, my mom once told me to never play in the stream when it was flooding. Being young and knowing the stream like the back of my hand I didn’t listen. I jumped in and let the flood take me away. I had a ball doing it, and I got SOAKED. It wasn’t the most clever thing to do. You never know how far a rock is going to move, or which rocks are going to be washed down, or even how deep the water is. But as I walked back to the house, I knew my mom was going to let me have it. I was not looking forward to it. She would have known I was swimming in the flooding water. It wasn’t raining hard at the time, and again I was SOAKED. So as I walked I tried thinking up an excuse for why I went in the water. But by the time I reached the house I realized. I have absolutely no excuse. There’s no plausible reason for what I had done. So I got up there and told her the truth. And to my surprise she didn’t punish me, and I was no stranger to being punished at the time. I don’t remember what she had done, but it made me feel good to have told her the truth, and her to understand I wasn’t going to bs her about it.
My first experience with learning, there are some circumstances the truth can not come out. Was back in middle school, when this kid would talk to me all the time. And he’d tell the stupidest jokes, and say the stupidest things. The kid wasn’t really insulting me, or hurting me in anyway, he was just not my cup of tea (remind you of something WTF?). I told him something along these lines, “There’s nothing wrong with you, I want you to leave me alone, I just don’t like you.” From then on out, he gave me a reason to not like him. He would pull stuff that would piss me off, and he became very rude and obnoxious. I realized that day, sometimes you won’t like people, and telling them you don’t is not the proper thing to do. The proper thing to do is have as little to do with them as possible.
It’s not proper to respond to someone’s comment when the comment can not be seen by everyone. It’s your website, you can obvious do what you wish with it. Don’t think I’m telling you how to run your website, you do a very good job of keeping up with Ultima, and I’m glad it’s here. But how fair is it to everyone when you delete a comment and respond to it without giving the person the ability to respond back, or giving the reader a chance to read the initial comment and make an informed decision?
In commended you for being honest, and it being a tough thing to do when you were being honest about what you were being honest about ;).
Also, it doesn’t make sense for you to have deleted one comment, and leave the second one in, if you believed I was referring to you as a liar in your career.
Back to the bit about dungeons. Again, I don’t like a super large game world, or super large dungeons. So either way, if the dungeons are super big and can’t be crafted by hand without Paul Barnett and friends sleeping under their desks every night. That is not a dungeon I would want to play. Even if it was randomly generated and stayed static for months on end, or even forever.
And if it’s randomly generated from day to day, or from every time a person enters, that is not something I would want to play.
Either way, this Ultima game does not look promising to me.
For the record: the only correct answer to the question “does this X make my Y look Z” is “I don’t know; I’d have to see your Y without X.”
Or think of it this way: when she says “does this X make my Y look Z”, you should hear “check out/ogle my Y”. Base whatever you say next on that interpretation. Keep it playful; nudity is the goal.
Strangely enough, women have always told me their weight and age when I’ve asked. I seem to be one of those people that other people just tell things to. Which is helpful, because I like to know everything.
But since we’re on honesty, I have to say I’ve found telling the truth works better for me. Whenever I’ve lied in the past it ends up bad for me. So I just don’t anymore (except for extremely occasional ones… Like I could count the lies in each year on one hand). However, bending/avoiding the truth is kinda necessary if you want to interact with people. You can’t be like the fox unless you want to be disliked.
Thepal: That’s why I like the reply I gave. It isn’t a lie since it isn’t really an answer to the question, and it flirtatiously and somewhat jokingly communicates attraction (which is usually what “does this X make my Y look Z”-type questions are really about).
Yup. Learning to use sarcasm and teasing on girls was the greatest epiphany of my life.