Todd Howard: "Then Ultima 6 came along…"
It should come as a surprise to nobody in particular that Todd Howard, the director of The Elder Scrolls games (including the imminent Skyrim) is something of an Ultima fan. Nor should it come as any surprise to hear that he lists the series — and in particular some of the later entries in the series, beginning with that which is my personal favourite — among his influences as a game developer.
And yet, it’s still lovely to hear:
FOR a man who spends his life creating fantasy worlds, Todd Howard is remarkably interested in prosaic items like plates and cutlery.
They come up twice in our conversation — the first when he’s asked about his influences.
He mentions Ultima, which he loved even though in retrospect the early versions were quite crude.
“Then Ultima 6 came along and they had all the plates and the forks, and for the reality of the game, everything made sense and was real”.
The point he’s making is that fantasy games depend on everyday reality — and the more sophisticated a fantasy world gets, the more work you have to do on the details.
“The more graphics you can put on the screen, and the more detailed you can make things, the longer they take.”
“The amount of time it takes somebody to make a plate or a chair for example, every game, is longer.”
There’s two points he’s making, both equally valid. The first is about immersion in the game; an empty game world, or a game world filled with lots of environmental detail that remains all too unfortunately static, is never going to be as immersive as a game world in which you can pick up a plate, set it down again, pick it up, and then dash it against the floor…and see it break. And yes, in a sense, that’s kind of a “yeah, d’uh” statement…to those of us who grew up playing Ultima games that implemented such systems as that with the use of 2D sprites that could quickly be swapped in for each other.
But in a 3D game, it’s more difficult, because not only do you need to render a plate in 3D…you need to make it destructible. That is a much more complex piece of artistic and technical work than drawing a pair of 32×32 (or 16×16) sprites.
Which would be his second point, which in turn is a sort of apologia for why even the venerable Elder Scrolls games have not yet managed to deliver quite the same level of interactivity as the old Ultima games did, and may in fact not be able to for some time still to come.
Still, if anyone is going to deliver such an experience, it will probably be Bethesda that does it first.
Of everything I’ve read on Gamasutra, Aiera, or anywhere else, that is one of the truest and most profound statements ever written about the relationship between asset cost and asset worth in games. I’ve often argued that the stubborn adherence to polygonal meshes, texture mapping, animation, etc., brings a visually stunning but shallow experience to the player.
Imagine if Bethesda made a 2D (or 2.5D; whatever) game with the unadulterated work ethic they’re accustomed to employing. Instead of infinite grinding to create complex assets, they used simple but effective bitmaps: a heightfield with billboards. What if they concentrated on interactivity, physics, emergent gameplay, and simulating a natural world without the distraction of exponentially costly asset generation?
Guess that’s the good thing about imagination. It’s always a step ahead of the best, who are always making that one critical mistake. Queue us.
Speaking of wasting manpower, what’s up with Bethesda bragging about how every plant was manually placed in the game world in Skyrim? Just stupid.
Quite. Unless the entire world is to be one vast, ornate shrubbery maintained by a legion of immortal dragon-gardeners, procedural plant placement with modest manual tweaking would probably have been fine.
I think they’re bragging about the handmade aspect because The Elder Scrolls series has often received criticism (sometime legitimate, sometime unfairly) fors its procedural generation of landscapes and dungeons, as people will often argue that having everything handmade gives more personnality.
There is some truth to this, but obvious exageration as well.
“Which would be his second point, which in turn is a sort of apologia for why even the venerable Elder Scrolls games have not yet managed to deliver quite the same level of interactivity as the old Ultima games did, and may in fact not be able to for some time still to come.”
I think this is true as a far as interacting objects with each other, but I think Obvlivion (and hopefully Skyrim) is one of the rare games which does allows you to move almost anything in the game world as you want – even the Gothic/Risen series don’t allow this.
This is really something I miss about modern RPG. For all the flack U9 got, being able to move so many things around was one of the immersive aspect of it trully.
I don’t know about the world, but I like it when treasure and loot are non-randomized.
I’m tired of finding chestfuls of vendor trash.
I’m just tired of loot in modern RPGs. It just sucks. It’s clunkered with useless pointless junk and there is no point and fun in it. All it does it clutter your inventory with items that have no points outside of being sold at shops.
I remember the horror of Dragon Age: after one battle I had an inventory filled already. Feh.
And most of time of course, loot doesn’t make any sense whatsoever wheter what you find on the ennemies you kill or chest anywhere.
I blame Diablo for this. RPG weren’t like this. Loot was sparse, but mattered and made sense. Then Diablo came, and ever since RPG games have been filled with crappy loot. Except they just didn’t get that what made loot work on Diablo was not the quantity of it but the fact that it was made revelant by its use in game.
If they are going to do crappy loot like this at this time, I think I’d rather have it the U9 way with every monsters dropping golds and nothing else.
I’ve got my copy of Skyrim on PreOrder. 11-11-11 can’t waiiiiiit 🙂
Sergorn:
The Infinity Engine games came after Diablo and had pretty good loot (especially I think Baldur’s Gate 1 which was 100% non-randomized except maybe randomly spawned monster’s inventories).
But yeah, you’re right.
Agreed about the Infinity Engines games. Obviously loot didn’t turn crap immediately after Diablo, but it clearly started a trend that has be come a norm. Sad thing is that gamers now WANT to have gazillion of useless loot.
I remember some negative comments about Risent because it only had a few different sort of armors, and how that “sucked”. But that was actually great because… you actually *felt* the difference every time you got a new armor.
That’s kind of the same thing with leveling – people want ton of levels now, you couldn’t imagine a game like Ultima with only 8 levels anymore.
Loot should be made more realistic. If some guy has a sword, he should also have a scabbard and belt unless he just carries it in his hand all the time. After knocking him out (or killing him), it should take some time to kneel down and sort through his clothing looking for various items, all the while making sure no one’s watching you who shouldn’t be.
There should be some clutter, some of which may just make you feel guilty for killing him, and every now and then something you might find utilitarian. Requiring that you take off a belt, pants, or turn over the body to see what’s on the other side may further sicken you while yielding up the object of your desire.
Putting a box on the screen with a list of stuff doesn’t really drive home the act of robbing a corpse, your murder victim no less. Ironic how games trivialize savagery and yet still struggle to elicit an emotional response from the player while doing so.
And once an elder scrolls is as interactive as an ultima is the day I buy an elder scrolls at launch…
I’d argue they already are, if not always in the same way.
Requiring that you take off a belt, pants, or turn over the body to see what’s on the other side
Kinky.
Could be if your defeated assailant was a female and still warm, as in not dead. Guess that’s where imagination comes in to play. If you found a small painting of her child you’d have second thoughts, not wanting to become a step-father. All this while “looting”.
Out of curiosity sergorn, how so? Definitely not in simulated world interaction and definitely not in depth of dialogue. Just out of curiosity dude.
Well the simulated world interaction in pushed very far in Oblivion already. As mentionned you can pretty much move everyhting around which is something games just don’t do anymore, and while it’s not quite like Ultima did it, it stll had a lot of crafting which I would argue is a form of interactivity. There are also NPCs schedules, which bring a lot to world interaction.
I would say also that the way the allows you for instance to use stealth like you’re in a Thief game by hiding in shadow, makes you go to jail for misbeaviour, allows you to steal from NPCs and things that are also a big aspect of world simulation which never went that far in Ultima but still here makes the gameworld more alive.
So I would argue that some aspects are still better in Ultima, but in some ways Oblivion did went farther than Ultima.
I’ll go out on a limb and say that Skyrim will probably improve on these things and push things farther, so perhaps it will reach a new high point of world simulation.
Regarding dialogue depth well, I wouldn’t put dialogue in the interactive world aspect of the game, though I could argue there were Ultima that had less depth. That being said there is likely a limit to what a Elder Scroll can accomplish in term of dialogue depth as long as they’ll keep wanting a thousand NPCs or so, altough I again expect Skyrim to improve on these things.
But seriously ever since Oblivion, TES has been turning into a neat spiritual successor to Ultima in term of virtual world to me, which is something I would never have expected based on previous episodes.
I see. I use the word interactivity the way most people use the word today. As the player interacting with the environment around them. But if you count npcs interacting with the world that makes sense. Also the combat is a lot more involved. So in a way you could say you’re interacting more with the combat. Although I always felt combat was usually some of the more boring aspects of the game.
And sure, you can move items around but its nothing like placing items where you want them. Or stacking up boxes so you can reach the second floor of a certain area. Or opening up the food barrel you conveinently put on your flying carpet and telling your buddies to dig in. Or changing a babies diaper so you had something to throw at liches.
Being arrested is very similar. In tes you have the option of bribing. I guess sneaking around gets you arrested too huh? Can’t argue that’s an advancement.
The dialgoues in tes are very very shallow. The towns ppl will repeat the same “rumours” a million times. Say the same thing about their city. And then you have a minigame that becomes very tedius that has to do with building rapport to haggle. Well since you played the emotion wheel for 5 minutes I’m sold ill give you a deal. Just like real life huh?
I guess you’re right. Having every npc have a real purpose to their existence through indepth dialogue might not make it more interactive. But it does make you buy into the game world much more. I hate the nameless npcs that say they’re to busy. I guess it makes a city look more like a city. But u7 didn’t have a problem with making cities look like a real city without nameless faces. There were bakers, butchers, farmers farming various foods, bankers, preformers, and knights. I never really saw too much of that in oblivion where people would be doing meaningful jobs. They would walk around talk to eachother and stand behind a counter… come to think of it was there even a pub in imperial city? Maybe skyrim will be different. But I doubt it.
How is the dialogue more interactive in oblivion?
That’s why MMOs are popular (hopefully). The NPCs are people, and the stories are real rather than background pictures you’re supposed to just believe and feel something about.
Oh I certainly agree that NPC depth helps to make the world more believable – but to me it’s a separate thing from world simulation. I mean the two aren’t dependant from each other – you can have great world simulation without exactly having a lot of dialogue depth (eck the Gothic games are a good exemple), and likewise have great and believable characters but no world simulation whatsoever.
Regarding NPCs in Oblivion, you’re right – all they could do what move and stand around while awak, altough it was dependant on the time and they DID gather in taverns and such. This was not as good as what Ultima or Gothic does, but somewhat compensated by the fact they made good use of schedule during quests.
That being said it appears Skyrim DOES go much further in this aspect, with NPCs having a lot more range of stuff they can do (such as the obvious “working at a forge bit”). As I recall the idea is even to have dialogues with NPCs happening while they are still doing their work rather than them freezing to speak to you. Guess we’ll see how that went soon.
Since we’re talking about interactivity and all I just need to point this video because this is awesome:
http://www.joystiq.com/2011/11/11/wanted-buckets-accomplices-to-theft-and-murder-in-skyrim/
There are some that would argue this is a bug or such, but I’d say this is an awesome creative use of the interactivity however, the same kind of crazy use Ultima fans could made of it in Ultima games really!
That is impressive! Now where’s the powder kegs! 😉
The Witcher (maybe the 2nd one also, haven’t played it yet) also had a kind of NPC schedule system, though it was somewhat understated.
Yeah the Witcher did quite a bit in term of world simulation, though without the sandbox world approach.
Oddly enough it seems that outside of Bethesda, all the world simulation attempts in the last years have been done from easter europe RPGs – Gothic, Risen, Two Worlds, The Witcher…
It seems it doesn’t appeal to US developpers anymore.
-Sergorn