Ultima 8 and Diablo
Malstrom, who blogs about gaming and other topics on a WordPress.com site, offered some interesting comments on the relationship between Ultima 8 and Diablo early last year. He errs in some details (several typical “blame EA” tropes come up), but in general grasps well what Richard Garriott and Origin Systems were trying to do with the eighth entry in the Ultima series:
Ultima 8 was really interesting in what Garriot intended. The Avatar was always in Brittania following the Virtues. But what if the Avatar got thrown onto a completely different world? And what if this world knows nothing of the Virtues? The actual content of Ultima 8 was supposed to be the virtuous Avatar surviving in this non-virtue realm. In order to beat the game (to get off Pagan), the Avatar must do horrific things like destroy the Titans, steal their power, cast Armageddon upon the world, and create the Black Gate. While the goal in Ultima VII was to prevent the construction of the Black Gate, the goal in Ultima VIII is to create it. It is exactly the opposite.
One of the most memorable things about Ultima VII was the Guardian taunting you throughout the game. He would intentionally give you bad advice, make fun of you, and joke around with you “Yes, that is the proper direction to go…”. My favorite was when you walked into a bar and his thundering voice booms from your speakers (making you jump): “Yes, Avatar, go inside and tell them you are THE AVATAR.” Inside are a pair of gargoyles. When you speak to them, they ask who you are. If you choose to say you are the Avatar, they immediately begin to attack you.
In Ultima VIII, the Guardian does taunt you some. But most of it is that he is talking about his conquest over Brittannia. “Lord British cries out your name!” Throughout Ultima VIII, you are wondering if the Guardian is actually conquering Britannia or just trying to depress you.
The ending of Ultima VIII I found shocking then and quite interesting. Viewed alone, separate from the game, it doesn’t make much sense. But Ultima 8 was entirely about the Avatar getting back to Britannia. And when you do, as the newly minted Titan of Ether, you arrive too late. The Guardian has conquered the world. Fade to black.
He then notes that, some years later, Blizzard made quite the pretty killing off of another dark-fantasy, isometric, action-focused RPG:
Ultima is the most influential video game series ever created… aside from Mario and Zelda. Ultima invented the computer role playing game, inspired Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, defined the 3d RPG with Ultima Underworld (and infuriated John Carmack when he saw the Ultima Underworld engine running better than his current game engine which, I believe, got him to focus heavily on Quake), and, lastly, invented the MMORPG with its legal rulings in Ultima Online.
When Spoony castigates Pagan for being demonic and having mushrooms, he should remember that Blizzard designed WoW’s Outland to be Pagan (if not that, then using the same exact source material. There are too many similarities). From the mushroom land of Zangermarsh to Hellfire Peninsula, Outland is Pagan.
Ultima 8 (which came out in 1994) has as its legacy of a game that followed in its footsteps which had an identical theme and similar design (this game came out in 1998). Perhaps you heard of it. The game was called Diablo.
When Diablo originally came out, it was panned by several reviewers for being like a sequel to Ultima VIII. Even in the game’s perspective, themes, and the ‘click, click’ nature was taken straight from Ultima VIII. Even the box art has the same hellish fiery theme. Diablo is identical in graphical design to Pyros, the Titan of Fire in Ultima VIII. Game developers get inspired by Ultima the way writers get inspired by Shakespeare.
The Ultima 8/Diablo connection has been made before, but I like Malstrom’s straightforward presentation of the particulars. And the bit about the Outland in World of Warcraft is, at least to me, an interesting detail that I was previously unaware of.
Smacks forehead…
Diablo came out in Dec ’96: http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/games/legacy/
Also, it would be more accurate to call it Warcraft 2X’s Outland (April ’96) wherein everything is bleak with basically no plant lift and wood was collected from giant mushrooms: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPQdS_jsVZU
I pretty much agree with the essence of the blogpost. I’ve always commented about similarities between Pagan and Diablo – really Diablo always felt to me like a cross between Rogue and Ultima VIII.
I know a lot of people tends to scoff at the idea noawadays, but Malstrom is spot on about one thing : there WERE quite a few reviews that compared Diablo to Ultima VIII back in ’96, some on positive, some on more negative light.
Ultima obviously was and remains influential to game design, but as with modern games it was as much a product of its time as it was individually inspired. We’re all affected by the things we see around us, and game designers are no different. Garriott has spoken about his influences repeatedly and was generally successful at articulating those in his earlier games.
What’s interesting to me about Ultima’s influence is that many of the concepts it pioneered have since been expanded upon if not improved, yet many of the things that made it unique have largely not been emulated. I’d like to know -why- that is so. Perhaps designers have concluded that the sensibilities of the modern gamer would find them unacceptable, burdensome or tedious, or perhaps they are too difficult to replicate at today’s expected production values. Maybe it comes down to a cost/benefit ratio, as with the virtual ecology in Ultima Online.
In Garriott’s day, creating a day/night cycle was a matter of a few dozen lines of code, and yet those few mathematical sentences fueled the imagination like one’s first time at the precipice of the Grand Canyon, or one’s first childhood campfire. Today it implies the creation of additional content, so much so that a team of fifty may be diverted from their paths to extrapolate the consequences, missing their deadline and perhaps even losing their jobs.
I think Ultima may have come at a time when innovation was easy, and that by the end of the series the “Hey, let’s do this!” mentality had become a liability met with increasing punishment by budgetary and time constraints and the technical expectations of the market. Ultima was a poignant demonstration of the old guard dying in the wake of the new.
and infuriated John Carmack when he saw the Ultima Underworld engine running better than his current game engine which, I believe, got him to focus heavily on Quake
Uh, what?
I guess this is one of those erred details you mentioned.
Ultima invented the computer role playing game
I’d like to take issue with this statement.
While it’s true that U7, and especially Serpent Isle, seems to have predicted the heavily scripted, dialogue-heavy Black Isle and Bioware style of CRPGs of the late 90’s and afterwards, it’s never been clear to me that the creators of those CRPGs were actually directly influenced by Ultima.
As far as I can tell, they reinvented those elements on their own, or copied them from the adventure game genre.
My point is, while Ultima was influential in its time, it’s not obvious to me that its influence matters that much today.
It depends on who you ask. There still seem to be a goodly number of developers who will list the series — or specific titles from it — amongst either their own influences or as an influence for a game they helped develop.
But I suppose that nobody has bothered to actually do a survey about it.
Not quite sure about Bioware, but quite a few Black Isle people were quoted as saying Ultima as one of their inspiration and influence. As I recall Torment had a “special thanks” to Ultima for “inspiring us” or something among those line (it also thanked Final Fantasy though a lot of people don’t seem to get why :P) and there’s a reason that Feargus Uruqart’s dream project is to create a new Ultima game.
I’m not sure Ultima’s influence matters today beyond TES and PB’s games though indeed.
quite a few Black Isle people were quoted as saying Ultima as one of their inspiration and influence. As I recall Torment had a “special thanks” to Ultima for “inspiring us” or something among those line
Interesting, I did not know that. Can you find a source for this?
Well IIRC it was in the end credits of the game actually!
I was referring to this part of your message in particular:
quite a few Black Isle people were quoted as saying Ultima as one of their inspiration and influence.
Having read only what you quoted, I think there are far too many claims without backing evidence, or which are trivial. “Panned by several reviewers for being like a sequel to Ultima VIII” – which reviewers? Do we really say one game is a spiritual successor of another because they are both isometric and they both have a big demon? Or because they both have mushrooms and they both have a peninsula? “Blizzard designed WoW’s Outland to be Pagan” – that’s a pretty heavy claim to make without backing evidence.
That’s Maltrom for you. His blog posts are filled with sensationalized claims and fallacies (such as his claim that 3D Mario games are bad games because they don’t sell as well as the the old school 2D Marios, totally ignoring the fact that Platformer games in general don’t sell nearly as well these days as they did in the 80’s and early 90’s) and nonsensical BS (such as claiming that a game’s quality is determined by its sales (that dumbass must think that Avatar and Titanic are the greatest movies ever made), totally ignoring that a game’s sales are determined by plenty of factors, many of which are unrelated to its quality (such as its marketing), or that some largely successful games such as Farmtown are 100% ripoffs of lesser known games and play the same without improving upon the original one in any way, or that he himself admitted in one post that how good a game is is unrelated to its sales).
And how was Zelda more influential than Ultima? I know that Zelda is more well-known, but unlike Ultima, Zelda didn’t define TWO genres. Every single RPG and MMORPG you see these days owes its gameplay to Ultima. What genre did Zelda define? Action-adventure? Most games belonging to that genre don’t play that similarly to Zelda. Not to the extenct that RPGs and MMORPGs mimick Ultima and UO respectively, anyway.
It’s would seem you have a grudge against Malstrom, and so be it if so.
There’s no need to leave a half dozen comments (or more!) all saying slight variations of the same thing to make the point known, however. One is quite sufficient. I have, as such, selected this one as the one which shall remain in view.
Holy shit, does someone need a stick to bite down on? That was a seizure of the likes I’ve never seen.
Good grief, bite down on a stick. What an epic spasm of posting.
Damn dude, forget to take your meds today? That was pretty strange, you posting nearly the same thing over and over again.
[Ad infinitum…and beyond!]
Oh, so that was it. I thought there was some bug in the email notifications system. 🙂
I find it hard to take someone who claims that a game is as good as its sales serious. Only a tool determines the quality of a game, movie, or whatever based on outside factors like that. The only way of saying how good something is is by trying it and deciding by yourself. In the case of a video game, you can only determine its quality by playing it and seeing how entertaining it is. Having higher sales in no way changes increases a game’s fun factor, or any product’s quality, all what it means is that it appeals to the masses.
Since no one bothered to respond I assume my statements remain absolute and uncontested. What a feeling of gratification!