Ultima 9: The Bob White Plot
Thanks to the tireless efforts of Joe Garrity of the Origin Muesum, and courtesy of none other than Bob White himself, Ultima Aiera is pleased to present this document — which has been broken out into fifty three (53) images — which contains the final revision of the legendary Bob White Plot.
Look upon the cover and rejoice!
For those not entirely familiar with the development history of Ultima 9, Bob White worked with Brian Martin, Chuck Zoch, and the late John Watson, under the guidance of Richard Garriott, to put together what was probably the second version of the plot of Ultima 9, after Richard Garriott decided to move the setting of the game back to Britannia in response to fan outcry after Ultima 8. He teased out many details of this plot in a lengthy synopsis released over a decade ago, although many questions were left unanswered even so.
The date on this particular revision of the document — July of 1997 — correlates with the time frame in which Origin was moving the game over to the 3D engine that ultimately powered it. Indeed, this revision to the plot was done after the Ultima Online development team were being pulled back onto Ultima 9 development.
Sergorn Dragon was very helpful in analazying the plot, and he has put together a number of observations about it that will be posted in a separate article shortly. In the meantime, I would encourage you all to read the Bob White Plot thoroughly, appreciating its every detail. There will, I think, be much discussion of it in the days and weeks to come.
Most importantly, though: enjoy! Pull up the images, download the PDF, and pore over them. Search out every little detail, and enjoy a fascinating glimpse into the nuts and bolts of how the plot of the final single-player Ultima title evolved. Ultima Aiera is indebted to Bob White for providing these documents, to Joe Garrity for his tireless efforts in seeking out such treasures, and to Brian Martin, Chuck Zoch, John Watson, Bob White (again), Richard Garriott and everyone who worked at Origin Systems for their amazing vision and creativity.
Ha, fantastic! Made my day.
Needless to say I will also have a couple of things to say in the next couple of day concerning a little side-project of mine.
This is a wonderful great and mindblowing read.
I gotta say though I’m not sure the U9 team was back on Ultima IX had that point though this shows that some revision was being done at least – since I seem to remember the come back to U9 and the change to full 3D world happened in late 97 so still a few month after that.
Is Bob White saying there were major difference in there from his early version ?
So what did happen to John Watson? HHe looks pretty young in those photos.
As I recall from the CIC articles, he commited suicide 🙁
doh! 🙁
Did this revelation cause the Ultima 9 redemption project to disapparate? I was curious about if these revelations would make them rethink or revise their own plot a bit – but the website seems to be down with a case of 404. I hope their just relocating or something.
Probably jsut a host problem.
I doubt this would change anything for Redemption, the team never cared much about the Bob White plot in the first place, which is why they did their own thing.
They’ve been having hosting issues for a while and were planning a move. I guess they went through with it!
Well, I thought they might care about an earlier version of it, and things that shed some light on if ideas were in the developers head since ultima 7 or earlier – like the fundamental nature of the Guardian for instance.
Hello all,
First off the quote of me above was in response to the previous plot that Joe sent me, not this one. I think you have this listed as Ed’s plot.
The plot is not too much different from the versions in ’96, but was radically overhauled when they handed it over to the other design team after UO. Shortly thereafter I left for Ion Storm and Deus Ex. There was a definite push to establish Ultima as more of a console like game play than an complex role-plying game. It was a corporate level decision in order to expand the end sales. For good or bad, it is a business.
John died back a few years ago at his own hand and we miss him. His impact was deeply felt all through the later Ultima titles and he was the “Lexicon” of Ultima information for me as we pulled the original plot together.
Bob: My bad on the quote; I’ve pulled it from the article seeing as how it doesn’t apply. I never saw the initial email, only that pull quote, so I missed out on the context.
Oh! Welcome to Aiera 🙂
Thanks you for the precisions it makes more sense there.
While I still enjoyed very much the game we had in the end, I gotta say I really would have loved to be able this version of the game. If anything it sounded incredibly epic and much more than other RPGs of the time.
I hope not to sound too bold, but I was wondering if you had any detail to share about the sort of gameplay this version would have offered? (Like for instance if it was meant to use a dual scale map, the kind of combat it aimed for….) Because in truth I don’t think we ever heard much about how the original U9 *played* and the only began showing the game after the “full 3D” revamp.
Combat sounds turn-based, with the mention of rounds of combat being notable during the confrontation with Blackthorn at the Shrine of Justice.
@Marquillin – The Redeption guys never liked the whole Guardian/Avatar business so they wouldn’t care. I suspect their Guardian will be closed to the “Interdiomensional Warlord” aspect of UW2.
@Serg – Fair enough, I guess that’s more of what Forgotten World is for anyway. I’m just suspecting that I’ll fall in love with their version and it would be nice if it was tied into to the plan (as far as it’s known) rather then just the “released canon”. But everyone’s got to be true to their vision.
@Bob – Hi Bob! Do you come down to hob nob with we peasants often? I look forward to exploring your stories too.
Judging from the nice synopsis by Sergorn, the Bob White plot seems too complex to ever make it into the final version 🙂
Thanks for bringing this to light, much appreciated and thanks to Sergorn for his ‘short’ take on it 🙂
@WFT – Perhaps it was to use some sort of semi real time like Baldur’s Gate ?
@Dominus – It is incredibly ambitious, which was already obvious from these dungeon design doc. This might be why some cities like Yew or Minoc appears to have been cut actually. I’d suspsect there would have been some cut or streamlining either way, but probably not a full revamp they way the latest version ended.
That was an incredible read. THanks all involved.
So many years 🙂
Reading this makes me sad as this is a game I will never play…
I can only imagine how much better Ultima IX would have been with this plot.
I really hope that Joe Garrity will find a somewhat playable version of the original isometric Ultima IX in the vast archives… just wandering around in this Britannia would be enough for me…
Darkmoon: Even if such a thing were located, releasing it would be out of the question. At the very best, we might be able to fire it up on one machine and grab some screenshots and video. But even that is iffy.
Sorry Darkmoon, but WtF is correct–Even if I was able to locate the actual code [which I need to make clear that I do NOT have], we would be unable to distribute it. Our relationship with EA [as well as the relationships of WCNEWS and Ultimaaiera] are that we have a verbal agreement–we can release old info to the public, but it has always been stressed–NO CODE-NO NUMBERS (budgets, company stuff). I think that’s a more-than-reasonable thing to stick to. Considering that EA used to be very tight with the intellectual property (which they have every right to be–they paid for all of it–it’s theirs), they have been extremely generous to the fans for ‘looking the other way’ when we post artwork, music, photos, screenshots, and rare docs like this one.
By The Way–If noone in these forums has said it yet, let’s all give a GIANT Thank You to Mr. Bob White, who was kind enough to donate this doc for all of us to read–it was his generosity and forethought to preserve this doc that allows us to see his original vision.
To BOB:
HIP-HIP…..
Lawl, you weren’t bsing! But again, I wouldn’t have even opened this page if you hadn’t directed me. I’m not hugely interested in the Bob White plot, I’ve read the jist of it before. Would’ve been a cooler game. Yatta yatta.
Why would this enrage anyone?
Micro: The plot turns out to contain several details that hardcore U9 bashers have, over the years, asserted and convinced themselves that it would not. The Guardian/Avatar equivalency, for example, or the Raven romance subplot, or Hawkwind as the Timelord.
(Indeed, I seem to recall seeing a comment on RPGWatch just a few days ago in which one overly optimistic poster positively asserted that the Bob White Plot absolutely did NOT contain the Guardian/Avatar equivalency.)
The comments here have mostly been positive. On Facebook and IRC, some people have been expressing varying measures of frustration with the full details of the plot; elements of it do not sit well with them.
Personally, I love it; it’s a great story with many fascinating elements. But not everyone agrees, and a few people have been…incensed by what they’ve read. As I predicted would happen.
An Idea can be great, but if it’s told poorly or has a negative association attached to it, it can take a long time for people to see past their subjective memories; like the first time I had beer, and I was expecting apple juice, it took a long time for me to like the taste of some beers. I haven’t played U9, but I like the sound of this original synopsis, meshes with a lot of esoteric teachings.
Oh, right
…Hooray!
Plus, the Idea that you are taunting yourself in that voice throughout Ultima 7 is cool, fascinating and hilarious!
This was the epic Ultima 9 that I wanted. I’m satisfied to have read the plot, and will surely enjoy reading the other iterations.
I agree with WTF’s objection to U9 bashers getting riled up about details. My complaint about the released U9 was that it was incomplete — little details don’t matter in the bigger picture, when the bigger picture doesn’t really exist anymore. In my view the problem is that we got a watered down incomplete story, which happened to have really nice music and graphics. It was fun in it’s own way, but the truth is that THIS was the kind of story that I had been waiting for. So I stress my thanks again for finally being able to finally read what I had been waiting for since 1995.
It was neat to read the hints at these details in some of the in-game books, but in my view Ultima 9 is a damaged product. A beaten child, punished repeatedly for trying to achieve its true potential (from many directions), until it conformed to a limitation that still failed to please most of its more oppressive masters and sometimes even more oppressive fans. Britannia was in peril, the Guardian was cruel, so LB cast Armageddon on his land because he didn’t like what the Guardian would have done with its life force. When Origin disbanded, it was revealed that the Guardian was meant to be a symbol of EA. Interesting thought process…
Now I’m curious what they had in mind for non-Britannian sequels. I had never really thought about it, but that white ethereal hall of pillars at the end of Pagan was kind of neat, and looks like it was going somewhere interesting story-wise. Probably would have gotten more of the Guardian as a warlord plot revealed. The pillars are hinted at in this doc. If I recall, the decision to set the plot in Britannia was due to fan backlash afterall?
Agreed Marquillin. In the end it’s all about the execution. With a more polished writing and consistency the final UIX could probably have pleased more hardcore fans while in comparatively this original plot could easily have been ruined with poor ingame writing.
Also one obvious point to consider is that this plot would *never* have worked with the game as it is. I mean can you imagine a war between Britain and Moonglow as they are in the final game? It would have seemed ludicrous simply because they never had to time to build a world large enough to make the war aspect believable. While the whole “global scale Shadowlord” aspect can work in a more abstract way.
They should have used a 3d accelerated isometric engine with polygonal objects rather than the one they used in order to create the world in the scale originally envisioned. Ah…the virtue of sacrifice…
I’d agree. I think they should have added 3D acceleration the original overhead 3D engine and finished it like this – keeping an eventual full 3D world for Ultima X.
U9 was groundbreaking in many ways but was perhaps overly ambitious and killed by its own ambitions (well… That and a ship or kill deadline)
Greetings all,
It is kind of interesting to imagine that after 15 years this plot is still being talked about. I am glad that I kept a lot of the original stuff as a memorial of my time with Origin. I will point out a couple of things that I see being bandied about.
1. We were almost at the alpha stage in 96 when we all got rerouted over to the UO team to pull their tails out of the fire. The original UIX team was pretty amazing, even to all others in the game industry. We tried to tackle some of the hardest ideas and on the bleeding edge of the hardware and we were doing very well at it and we kept pretty close to our milestones. That was one of the main reasons we got thrown at UO. When we started returning to UIX, things changed and drastically. I won’t go into the politics but it was kind of bad and almost all of it came from the dolts they put in charge of Origin at the time. A lot of people ended up leaving or changing around and the game suffered as a result.
At the time we moved over to UO all conversations were at full alpha state, many game systems including inventory, combat, plot event tracking, manipulation of objects, set scripting and the like were either in place or being integrated at the time. Nearly all the flicks, and cut scenes had been written, rendered, and were just being polished there were a lot of them, something around 13 or so. The world map was close to 80% complete, but still needed mucho polish. The towns were in place, but still needed polish. The dungeons were mostly in place, but there was a rush to complete thre of them. Some of the things we were still focusing hard on was magical special effects (the spells were already written), people schedules, adding npcs, fleshing out side quests (non-plot specific) and a few other things. In fact we joked that we might release before UO…well that is history now.
2. Most of the stuff I see people calling impossible or we couldn’t do it…we were doing it. We had techniques and ways we were going to handle the wars and the armies, etc.
3. The first main engine that Gary Scott Smith constructed for us to work with was a 3D engine. As reported before the UVIII engine just would not do what we needed. However even though the world was to be 3D we were going to have the camera locked at the “high” angle and just have a camera you could rotate around (like many games do now). The technology was new and we were coming up with new quaternion algorithms to handle displaying and manipulating 3D objects, stuff that is pretty normal now. Then Tomb Raider came out…
Well that did it and the technical guys went bonkers. As you can imagine displaying meshes top down limited the number that would be visible giving a good frame rate, moving the camera down changed everything. Several of us fought to keep the cameras up since waiting for Moore’s law to help wasn’t viable. However Herman Miller kept coding on the engine while the rest of us went to UO and he was able to increase it’s frame rate significantly, but still I think it was way to slow even when the released the game.
So what this boils down to is the 3D aspect of the game was almost in there from the start, at least it was ever since 94 when Richard took the helm again.
4. The mismatch between the dungeons and the plot you read is because versions have been lost over time. All of the dungeons in the plot doc of dungeons you have were still going to be included. It wasn’t until much later that changed.
When Origin disbanded, it was revealed that the Guardian was meant to be a symbol of EA. Interesting thought process…
That’s interesting! Even in the days of u7 Richard Garriott knew EA was going to contribute to the demise of Origin. He’s so clever!
That’s so Richard Garriottian!
Really, Micro?
Dude.
Cube, Sphere, Tetrahedron — symbols of the Guardian.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Electronic_Arts_historical_logo.svg
Heh…I know the reference, darren. I used to be a pretty good EA hater back in the day.
I’m replying to Micro’s bizarre fanboyism, is all.
Well, now that my 15 year satisfaction high is over, I do have a few unanswered (or unanswerable?) questions which may be fun to discuss.
1)
It makes sense that the Guardian is a corrupted giant wingless gargoyle — he is big and red after all. But it also implies that he was from (underworld) Britannia, and then disappeared after influencing gargoyle culture. Why did he leave Britannia? Where did he go? Why was it such a big deal about him returning to Britannia via The Black Gate?
2)
I wonder if the serpents of Chaos and Order were going to be revealed as “Ultima”, as they do hint at the theme of balance and opposing forces etc.
2.5)
PS – I like how it leads to a justification for the name of the series. Not sure if it allows any sensibility to “Worlds of Ultima” having the Ultima name though.
3)
The game starts out with the Guardian already in Britannia. Was there going to be much explanation of how that happened, and how they ‘let’ that happen? Are they aware of his presence?
4) [Unrelated]
Ok, seriously. In Ultima 6 — what’s going on at the ‘edge of the worlds’? What’s with the expanse of ethereal void that appears before the “Torus topography wrap-around”? And when I climb down the stairs from a dungeon, why do I end up in a world with sunlight? It’s all very abstract and weird — any explanation?
PS – I checked out nuvie — it’s awesome.
5)
Are there any further plot documents for U9 for development prior to this, or shall I just sit back and wait for more clues and riddles?
(PS – Chuckles totally was the father. He was totally eyeing her when we played “The Game”.)
darren:
Nice to know I wasn’t the only one to get this vibe.
No, no more riddles for now.
And sadly, I know of no other plot documents at this time. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist, of course…it just means that nobody has stumbled across them and realized what they are as yet.
Ah, The link was a syncro-post.
Looking forward to more documents.
D.
—-
The release of ultimaforever has prompted me to DOSBOX my ultima collection….
Mr. White,I feel honored and appreciate your input. Thank you ever so much for informing the Ultima community of how things were going at the time. I have extreme faith and acceptance for what was happening before the iteration that we finally received, and feel vindicated for it.
Wtf & Micro, I feel for both of you, and for how we all have felt at one time or another. EA is/was a corporation that was cold, unfeeling, and did not like competition. I honestly no longer feel that way about the EA of today to a certain extent, since certain changes would indicate a change in policy and an outreach to us all. I hope not to regret feeling that way down the road. Obviously, EA has been reaching out to the community, though in a reserved and somewhat corporate way, though that is better than obvious past behavior, and I appreciate the efforts of certain individuals involved.
EA, Mythic, and fans are obviously at a crossroads. Where we all proceed from here is interesting, somewhat scary, and exciting indeed.
For now, I will go back to making custom brushes in Gimp for my Savage Empire Remake, and contemplate the information about the Ultima Timelord, since it differs from where I was going to explain the existence of Eodon in relation to Earth’s timeline. Good times, and Ultima lives.
@Bob White – This is just heartbreaking. I suspect the original U9 was well advanced, but never -that- advanced. I’ll just never understand why they didn’t just finish this version (with say, added 3D acceleration for instance) rather than doing a full revamp that lead to team conflict and was ultimately more than they could chew 🙁
@Darren
1) I don’t think the Guardian is supposed to be a Gargoyle… or is it ? I was kinda afraid they were going this way, but it seems they do mention the Shadowlords coaliscing in the void so I’d assume the gargoyle was just “possessed”. If they really aimed at a “The Guardian was a Gargoyle which explained why he was read” well taht would have been lame :/ Nevermind the fact he doesn’t look at all like a Gargoyle
2) I also had this feeling of the Serpents being potentially Ultima or related to them in some way. While we probably wouldn’t have known in this game since Serpent Isle never was much the point, I could have seen them going this way had they decided to revisit Serpent Isle down the road.
3) I thought this was pretty Obvious the Gargoyles must have built the Black Gate in Terfin to let the Guardian in and I’d assume British and all were aware the Columns was the Guardian’s doing. It doesn’t appears they had much choice in letting that happen considering how the Gargoyles wiped the floor out of Magincia and Serpent’s Hold.
I’m honestly more interested as to how Blackthorn returned to Britannia to pave the way for the Guardian.
4) UVI was a flat world because OSI thought it was cool at the time and worked with the plot they were thinking. One shouldn’t read more than that into this.
5) There are probably more UIX docs waiting to be found : City Docs from the Bob White plot, other docs from the Del Castillo version and the Seth Mendelsohn version, possiblye docs pertaining to the original pre-Britannia version of Ultima IX or such.
But obviously they’d need to be found before we can see them. But we can hope!
I feel vindicated – my theory that the failure of U9 was primarily about technological mismanagement turned out to be entirely correct.
Documents for the pre-Britannia version would be fascinating. Maybe a glimpse of what waas originally planned with the Guardian and his homeworld? I’d love if something like that turned up one day.
This is really cool though. Great stuff to read and ponder. I’m not the biggest U9 hater, but there is so much neat stuff in this that was lost and you can’t help but wonder what might have been…
Thanks so much to Mr White and everyone else involved. Very sad to hear about John Watson though. Terribly sad.
I like how my comment gets posted after Bob White’s, as though I disregarded him.
Editors note: Comments held for moderation are inserted into the discussion at the appropriate place, based on timestamp.
I am very appreciative of you letting this information out. It stirs up some good banter about what could have been. It’s also such a shame that the 96 version of u9 was canceled. It sounds like we almost had a killer game on our hands.
I also wonder how the pre-Britannia game would have looked like. It would be strange to think that the Guardian was created on a different world than Britannia when he was spawned from the virtues of Britannia. Unless the other world was also created at the same time as the Guardian. Then again, I don’t really try to make sense of movies/games in a canonical sense. Sequels rarely/never fit together perfectly, and it’s best to look at each as an individual experience.
Also makes me wonder why the Guardian would send the avatar to Pagan, rather than his home world to begin with. Just to screw around with him I guess.
Daren– Don’t mind WTF, he has an irrational dislike for my comments for some reason. It’s ok for you to. I say some silly things sometimes and he simply does not understand the humor, it’s not my fault some people don’t have a sense of humor. It does liven up the comments a bit though! But at least WTF goes through each and every one of my posts to make sure I don’t make him look bad. Gosh, I feel so special!
WTF Yes, really/i>, I think his comment was interesting.
What is so bizarre about calling Richard Garriott clever? Or calling someone’s comment interesting?
Yeah, it is kinda bizarre to call something Richard Garriottian. That’s a hard O sound in Garriott too. I think I coined the phrase myself, how do you like?
Golly Gosh, Jiminy Jilikers, Geeze Laweeze, Oh Deary Me I’m one wacky guy for thinking RG is clever!
For the record, Micro, it’s not so much the statement that Garriott is clever; it’s the sometimes implicit, sometimes explicit assertion that anyone else would produce garbage by comparison to Lord British that I find grating.
@Bob – you are a legend. Thanks for this. I was wondering if you could opine on how different world design was as imagined vs. The final release.
For the record it was never a hidden fact the Guardian generator stood for EA so they didn’t had to “announce it” after Origin closed down. Garriott’s feud with Trip Hawkins was well documented and that’s where this stuff came from. It had been going ingame since Ultima V (where sayint “EA” would actually make you lose karma!)
It’s hard to be sure of course, but I would assume the Guardian/Virtues/Avatar tie came (or came back) when they decided to make Ultima IX a Britannian Ultima. Most likely back when they were doing the “Guardian home world” version of the game, they had a different origin in mind.
Sergorn, that’s interesting, you lose karma by saying EA. Isn’t that a kicker.
WTF, for the record I think you’re the only one that was inferring anything about RG being the only developer to be able to make a good rpg. I’ve stated before that I believe Fallout 1-2 and Gothic were on the same level as Ultima. I know, not very Richard Garriottian games, but I enjoyed them just as much. And oddly enough RG didn’t have a hand in creating them.
My comment was meant to infer EA had a stake in hurting the later ultima games and franchise. To quote Bob White,
“Shortly thereafter I left for Ion Storm and Deus Ex. There was a definite push to establish Ultima as more of a console like game play than an complex role-plying game. It was a corporate level decision in order to expand the end sales. For good or bad, it is a business.”
As you’ve stated before that EA hasn’t had much to do with design choices for the game. It would appear, from a developer himself, that EA did. But since you brought up the subject of RG vs other developers…
I don’t believe Mythic has proven itself as a developer of videogames to create an Ultima game on the level of RG himself. The Man, The Myth, The LEGEND(kidding,)! But seriously, I don’t like mythic games, and I’m not excited about the new one. I hope it does well, and I hope I’m wrong, but I doubt it.
You’ll notice that Bob also pointed out that the team working on the game was very fascinated by e.g. Tomb Raider and made a number of design decisions — basically amongst themselves — that moved Ultima 9 in that general direction.
I’ve never denied EA’s involvement; I’ve never said they’re blameless. I have argued that they don’t deserve all/as much of the blame they have received, nor does Origin deserve to get off without any attached blame.
What we’ve basically been saying is that there’s plenty of blame to share for both U8 and U9’s issues, both on EA’s part, on Origin’s part and on Richard Garriott’s part. Eck we’re both very fond of those games and aren’t afraid to admit it so I don’t think one could blame us for being mindless bashers.
Of course there were developpers at Origin who did not like the direction the new Ultima IX was taking and left the company – which is perfectly understandable. But there were also developpers who championed it, including Richard Garriott.
Indeed for all the fuss that had been made when Ed Del Castillo departed and how Lord British was coming back to save the day… if you actually look at some gameplay videos from E3 98 (the one where the game got devastated by critics)… it looks like the *exact same game* that was released as far as gameplay is concerned, and it feels more to me that with Del Castillo’s departure, the new direction Richard Garriott wanted to bring the game into was a new direction in term of plot and thematics (ie: the whole “Avatar teaches Britannians the true meaning of Virtues and how to fend for themselves angle”) and not so much in terme of gameplay.
Bob, this document is proving to be really eye-opening and definitely gives me a better idea about reasons for certain design decisions made for the release U9. It is really quite surprising how similar some of the details here are to the released version.
Definitely gives me some excellent ideas to improve the final game for Forgotten World. The biggest issue I’ve been having is explaining the Guardian’s motivations, actions, and presence in the game, and the details from this doc will definitely improve any explanations FW incorporates into the game.
So thanks a bunch, Mr. White.
So at one point, the Abyss was to be tied (at least in some way) to the Shrine of Humility, interesting.
Definitely looks like FW will end up being a melding of this plot and the final released version.
Say Bob, can you clarify something for me? Are the unused maps in the final game just the leftovers from the pre-UO version or are they maps for the final (or post-UO) version that were left incomplete due to a need to get the game out-the-door?
There are other games published by EA with the symbols as plot devices. In “Tales of The Unknown – The Bard’s Tale,” the player must obtain a silver square, silver circle, and a silver triangle.
I must say that I view the people who decided that Tomb Raider was what was best for Ultima with derision. At best, it would have been better to create an Underworld III that was inspired by Tomb Raider.
During a phone call to Origin back in the day, the representative I was speaking with said that one of the ideas being tossed around was a game that would basically be Ultima IX/UW III combined. I voiced my lack of faith in such a game.
@Icebade: I really couldn’t say what the final decisions were about the release of UIX. I had left a year before it completed to go to Ion Storm. That being said, I have seen that most games have to be trimmed to get them out the door.
@Mark: Thanks for the enthusiasm, but a legend, no. Our imaginations run wild, but it seldom gets fully realized in the end. This is a case in point.
@Micro: It is hard to blame EA for being a business and wanting to maximize profits. It’s what they do and they are publicly traded. Did most of the developers like it, no. Nature of the biz I am afraid.
Mr. White, if I was wondering if you would willing to answer a couple of question? Notably there are topic I would like to ask you about.
* Would you mind sharing some specifics about how this version of UIX whould have played? While I guess we can safely assume this would have had a more traditionnal RPG feel, since this version was never trully shown we can only speculate. So I’d wonder if you share us a few details about how it would have handled for instance: combat (real time? turn based?), the world (big seamless world? dual scale map as rumored?), dialogues (keywords? full sentences?), inventory, character development… or anything really.
* This is more of a plot consideration but I was wondering some thing. Starting with Ultima IV, each of the core Ultima had been about putting in the forefront a strong moral thematic/philosophy (like for instance in U5 the danger of turnign ethics into law). Even the final iteration of Ultima IX had this clear (if somewhat underplayed) thematic about the Avatar having to teach Britannian how to fend for themselves through a true understanding of the Virtues while the end outlying the failure of the Quest of the Avatar. However… I’m not too sure about the original iteration. I can obviously see some thematics in there (like the relative of truth), but it’d hard to point some thing that would specifically be the central thematic of this game from just the summary, without exact dialogues of what would have happened. So I was wondering if you had some insights about this.
Thank you very much, and I hope not to be a bother with my questions!
As far as inventory goes, we know U7/U8-style, non-slotted gumps were definitely in there at some point. There are screenshots of them in the U9 data files and I’m assuming they are relics of this engine.
I’m also curious about the dialogue system and whether it was planned to feature character portraits.
And while I’m here, let me just add another huge thanks to Bob White for doing this. This is like scratching a twelve-year-old itch.
Hmm… Pity I’ve thrown out all my old computer magazines. Used to have a couple with U9 screenshots from its isometric days.
I understand a company’s sole purposes is to make money. I don’t blame them for wanting to make money. But I put more blame on them than developers for the end result of how videogames turn out.
I also like to reiterate this point to WTF, we’ve had a debate over this. He’d like to think it’s mostly RG’s fault.
Micro: Not Garriott’s specifically…though obviously, as Origin’s top man, he does bear no small amount of responsibility for making production decisions.
Nor, again, do I hold EA blameless…I simply think that EA doesn’t deserve all the flak they get from certain Ultima fans, especially those who have made an idol out of Garriott.
This is part of the reason why some here find you to be trollish in nature: you seemingly lack the ability to discern between criticism and hatred, mistaking legitimate examples of the former for the latter in many cases.
As to the role each entity played in The outcome that was Ultima 9, remember: EA set out certain design goals for Origin (e.g. mandating the use of Glide 3D), approved the budget Origin proposed, and approved the timeline Origin set…and approved changes to both after the project team was moved over to bolster work on UO (which, from Bob’s account, sounds like it was an internal decision at Origin).
The 3D aspect was already in the works, and Herman Miller evidently had little trouble porting it from a software renderer to a hardware renderer. So the issue with Ultima 9 was, ultimately, delivering something on-time and on-budget…deliverables targets which were set by Origin, remember.
Two rewrites later, added to the increased complexity of developing a 3D game…it’s not a surprise that Origin had to make some tough decisions about what content to cut (and yes, the game is poorer — but still not terrible — for it).
Nor is it a surprise, nor a particularly horrible thing, that EA eventually decided to enforce a ship-or-kill deadline. The game had been in development for no small amount of time by that point, and had cost no small amount of money to make. Origin’s — and Garriott’s — ambition and vision were laudable and exciting, but would have taken too long (and, probably, too much money) to fully realize.
Like it or hate it, but these are the considerations that are a necessary part of game development. Can’t blame a wolf for being a wolf, right? But if you do insist on appointing blame, at least do so correctly, and fairly.
That has been my main point to you since we began to bicker about this. It still is.
What WtF said basically. You just have to look at any interviews done by Richard Garriott during the development of Ultima IX, or any presentation of the game he did to see that if anything he was very excited by the new “Full 3D world” approach taken by the post 1997 iteration. Which is of course consistent with his behaviour, since he was always about pushing and trying out new tech – and that very much was the new thing back then.
To be fair, I have the feeling the ship-or-kill deadline was more related to EA’s decision to turn Origin into an all-online company that even the unexpectedly long development of the game. I remember an interview with Andy Hollis after that point (where as I recall he was handling of of the Wing Commander Online games). I don’t recall the interview word for word, but he basically spat out that the only reason Ultima IX had not gone down the drain like all the other single players OSI games at the time were because it was tied to Ultima Online and EA felt it could bring new players to UO.
The feeling I got basically from this (but also from a couple of later interviews by Richard Garriott) was that Ultima IX was becoming kind of a thorn into Origin’s new policy side but that they didn’t want to cancel it ouf of the blue because they didn’t want to alienate what was basically Richard Garriott’s pet project.
We’ll never know of course, but had OSI not switched to a full online company, I would tend to think they might have delayed the game a few more month to polish it properly.
Ultima Online = The death of a company…
And of course, Ultima Online turned out to be a commercial dead end anyway.
There was some really poor management all across the board at both EA and Origin in those days. No foresight whatsoever.
I’m not sure I would call UO a commercial dead end considering it’s still making money to this day, almost 15 years after release, which is more that can be said of many MMOs that launched after it.
They did however handled things very poorly with all the other MMOs they tried to create. The fact that none of the numerous MMOs OSI began development on were released and that UO remained their only MMO is sadly a testament to it 🙁