Stephen Emond posted a link to this video in the Ultima Dragons Facebook group, in which he (along with the CEO of TGN and the director of Stratics) sits down for an interview with Richard Garriott. A very…long…interview:

Much of the discussion focuses on the Ultimate RPG that Garriott is currently working on at his Austin-based company, Portalarium, and throughout the course of the interview a number of details about the game come up for discussion. The Ultimate RPG — which is not, at present, the game’s final name but is in fact its working title (although Garriott notes during the interview that Tabula Rasa was only ever meant to be the working title for that game!) — is still very much in early development; a “loose alpha” might take place next summer. The game will feature what Garriott terms a “scene-based” design, which will be realized using a dual-scale map. The game will feature an overland, which Garriott terms the “travel map”, and numerous smaller, hand-crafted scenes or zones used for towns, encounters, and suchlike. Much of the game is to be centered around these scenes, with the travel map there to connect them together.

Portalarium also feel the the need, as Garriott explains it, to create a believable fiction that explains how you, as a person, are able to enter into New Britannia, rather than simply adopt the persona of some other character in the land. As with the Ultima games, he wants this game to be about each and every player at a personal and ethical level, rather than making it about some other character whose ethics may or may not align with those of the player.

Not unlike Ultima Forever, the Ultimate RPG (or New Britannia, or whatever it ends up being called) will be released on tablets first, and possibly smartphones as well, to be followed thereafter by web-based releases and (possibly) stand-alone clients for PCs. The reason for this, as Garriott explains in the video, is that targeting tablets first forces his team to keep the game within the memory and performance constraints that most mobile devices impose on apps, and also helps keep their scene-based game design philosophy front and centre in mind.

Later in the interview, we also learn that the Ultimate RPG will be skill-based, not class-based. That said, Garriott also expresses a desire to avoid giving players the opportunity to create “uber-tank-mage” characters. Ultimately, he wants to deliver a more “natural”-feeling skill system that lets people explore a variety of skills and gameplay styles, but also builds in various incompatibilities between skills and other elements of the game that prevent creating jack-of-all-tank characters. (The example he gives, specifically, is that certain magical skills might conflict negatively with heavier armour.) One potential sour note: skill trees may be monetized, but that isn’t settled yet; Portalarium want to find a reasonably fair, non-nagging way to monetize the game, but still encourage players to pay even a little bit for it.

Portalarium are also trying to find a solution for PvP and thievery that will allow them to be incorporated into the Ultimate RPG without creating a threatening context for new players and players who would rather avoid that side of the game.

And yes, there will be a cloth map. And yes, Lord British will certainly be a part of the Ultimate RPG.

More details about the game get revealed throughout the two hours that the video runs for, so if you have time and enough to eat and drink, do give it a watch for yourselves!