The Titans of Ether would like to thank everyone who participated in the party-focused poll they recently held, and have announced the results thereof. The long and short of it is that Ultima IX: Redemption will, for the foreseeable future, not feature a party system; the player will adventure through its narrative alone.

The following is included in jest (language warning):

Actually, the Titans’ reasons for dropping party support are sound, and there are two of them in the main. The first pertains to the technology being used to develop the mod, which at this time is still the Morrowind engine rather than OpenMW:

The technical issue is more complicated than you might think. Without wanting to sound arrogant or anything I am quite sure that we gathered a lot of knowledge about the workings of the Morrowind engine over the last few years, all parts of it, and I don’t think anyone can help us there technically (thanks though for the offer ThePal). It’s about the origin cell of the NPC (party member) which has to be activated before the new cell he is in in order to prevent crashes and so on… Zini could write up a detailed technical analysis, but that’s not what this thread is about anyway. Just trust us, that it is not possible to implement fully working party without breaking the game.

They note that transitioning to OpenMW would solve this issue, since that engine will feature support for a full-fledged party…but the Titans do not feel that the party is so critical a feature as to justify waiting any longer for OpenMW to reach a state at which it would be useful as the new engine for Redemption.

The second reason they offer concerns the actual gameplay experience of a party in the Morrowind engine:

Try to imagine a first person game where you have 5 people CONSTANTLY running behind you. In combat they ll hack away at the enemy like a swarm of goblins,bees, whatever…

The party is more in the way than it is a good addition!

The only benefit a party brings in an environment like this is the potential for interesting dialogues and I get that this is something that could be a great addition to the overall feel of the game no doubt.

But: We can have a lot of this by letting single old friends follow you from time to time, communicate with you in other ways and being an integral part of the story in other ways. Imagine Shamino not going with you because his leadership is needed in Spiritwood (and beyond). He still can help you with quests in Spiritwood. You still will meet him often in the game, he just won’t follow you like a love sick dog.

So, this long-awaited Ultima 9 remake/re-telling will have to do without a party. Which, as the Titans note above, is not at all the same thing as having the canonical companions be completely absent from the narrative. They will instead opt for an Ultima 9-like solution of having the companions feature in pivotal roles in the narrative in other ways, as people you can talk to…if not as temporary followers.