[HN Gopher] Ultima VIII - How to destroy a gaming franchise in o...
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Ultima VIII - How to destroy a gaming franchise in one easy step
Author : doppp
Score : 212 points
Date : 2021-02-19 16:56 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.filfre.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.filfre.net)
| pantelisk wrote:
| Ultima 6 and 5 have been remade by modders for the Dungeon Siege
| engine (full remakes with functionality and systems not just a
| re-skin/tribute)
|
| Ultima 6 - http://u6project.com/wp/ (sorry for non-https link)
|
| Ultima 5 - https://wiki.ultimacodex.com/wiki/Ultima_V:_Lazarus
|
| Worth a shot if somebody finds the originals too difficult to get
| into now. (Though gameplay is brutal regardless, I keep running
| out of food when adventuring - the map doesn't show your
| position, you need to use landmarks (eg; follow the edge of this
| lake) and the compass to orient yourself)
|
| (disclaimer: I did some map/dungeon building some 15 years ago
| for the U6 one)
| mysterydip wrote:
| For you and those that played any of the 4-7 for comparison,
| how was the change in map scale compared to pace of wilderness?
| I was reading this https://simblob.blogspot.com/2014/05/map-
| homunculus.html?m=1 and it shows dev reasoning for the changes,
| but I'm curious how gamers actually took it. Was it better
| before or after?
| bdowling wrote:
| There are also the open-source Ultima game engine remakes:
|
| Nuvie (for Ultima 6, Martian Dreams, and Savage Empire) -
| http://nuvie.sourceforge.net
|
| Exult (for Ultima 7 and 7.5) - http://exult.sourceforge.net
|
| Pentagram (for Ultima 8) - http://pentagram.sourceforge.net,
| now merged into ScummVM - https://www.scummvm.org.
|
| All of these use the original game files to play the games and
| offer improved user interface options, higher resolutions,
| graphics scaling, wider fields of view, gameplay improvements,
| etc. These are a great way to play these old games on a modern
| computer.
| Klwohu wrote:
| For those who look first at a project's last release, Exult
| could seem like abandoned software but it's really not - it's
| done and finished like xterm. There's (almost) nothing left
| (of consequence) to do. Which is not to say it's perfect, but
| it's stable, allows you to complete the entire game and all
| side quests, allows a bigger viewframe which of course breaks
| the game in some ways but is an extremely useful comfort
| addition, etc.
|
| Nuvie is also good and has seen much more rapid progress in
| the last decade. It's great that these projects exist and of
| course dosbox will run both games smoothly and has for a long
| time too.
|
| I'm more skeptical of the remakes myself, the original
| graphics in VI and VII still look great, it's one thing to
| give, say, a 3D shooter game the enhanced remake treatment.
| Real-time 3D rendering speed and quality has improved by
| leaps and bounds yearly or so for decades now. But pixel
| graphics can't really be improved with any technology _ducks
| to avoid scaler warring_ and you lose all the charm by
| translating the games into the 3D rendered realm.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| > Exult could seem like abandoned software but it's really
| not
|
| There is a new release within the last year. And there are
| still lots of commits happening, including several within
| the last 24 hours.
| Klwohu wrote:
| Neat. I know the original plan was to have an editor /
| scripter to create your own games ala Gary's Mod too. I
| still have Exult installed on my old Zaurus SL-5500, lol.
| viseztrance wrote:
| A departure from the series, but it doesn't change the fact tha
| Ultima VIII was a gem and easily one of the best rpgs I ever
| played. There was something absolutely amazing about how little
| hand holding it provided, especially playing back when I had no
| internet to help me out.
| gavanwoolery wrote:
| April 16, 1992 - Ultima 7 is released
|
| September 1992 - Origin Systems acquired by EA for $35m
|
| March 15, 1994 - Ultima 8 released
|
| ...
|
| I will credit Garriott and Molyneux as being some of the most
| [overly] ambitious game designers, and this is not at all a bad
| thing in my opinion. Not everything they did worked, but when it
| did, they created history. And even when it did not work, at
| least they attempted to break new ground.
| mschaef wrote:
| > Not everything they did worked, but when it did, they created
| history.
|
| This reminds me of Seymour Cray... he had his share of
| setbacks, many due to ambitious designs, but when he succeeded,
| it was historic. (CDC6600, 7600, and Cray 1 come to mind
| immediately)
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Ultima 8 was the end - the jumping Super Mario mechanics and
| crappy story.
| Klwohu wrote:
| Pagan was pretty bad. I was one of the superfans at the time, I
| had played every Ultima on my Apple II and then my PC. I was one
| of the first people to beat Ultima VI and still have my award
| certificate from Lord British which I got in the mail. I spent
| late nights tweaking my autoexec.bat and config.sys to get Ultima
| VII to run properly. Pagan was unplayable on release, it was
| actually impossible to across the stones leading across an
| underground river without falling in. Later they released a patch
| which fixed the most glaring issues and I completed the game, but
| it left a sour taste in my mouth.
|
| What REALLY killed Ultima was the absolute state of Ultima IX.
| Also released in an unplayable state, the patches rolled in.
| Finally after about two months, it was playable but as one
| progressed in the game, incongruities almost immediately popped
| out. The lore had been changed, sometimes substantially. And this
| wasn't the worst thing - it became clear after not too long that
| the game wasn't done at all. This was later admitted by an Origin
| team member who released the real plot, and later on people
| attempted to fan-patch the game to make it more like it had been
| planned originally.
|
| Of course, EA is to blame for all of this, but Garriott shares
| this blame for allowing them to take too much control away from
| his organization and okaying the releases before they were ready.
|
| http://hacki.bootstrike.com/english/nitpicks.htm
|
| Hacki's page is still THE internet resource for the pissed off
| former Ultima fan.
| josephorjoe wrote:
| Ultima VIII was the first (and only) Ultima game I played.
| There was so much hype for the franchise and I had never
| played, so I bought it new and had high expectations...
|
| ooof. i tried to play it but got into some boring dead end
| where i didn't know what to do next and figured i missed
| something but realized i just didn't care and would rather do
| some chores than keep playing.
|
| i was just confused that anyone liked ultima at all and forgot
| about it.
|
| kind of interesting to see the story behind that game (i forgot
| about it so much that i never bothered to look into why it
| sucked so much before today).
| Klwohu wrote:
| If you're still up for gaming UVII is one of the greatest
| classic games ever made, IMHO it's still the best open world
| game and it feels more alive than say, Morrowind or Skyrim or
| Fallout 4 or anything really. I saw somebody closing their
| shutters over their windows before going to bed in UVII when
| I first played the game, so I double clicked the same shutter
| a minute later and it opened again. As I sat there, just
| marveling at what I had done and the level of life and
| interactivity in the game, the woman came back and _CLOSED
| THE SHUTTER AGAIN._
|
| The game is chock full of astounding details like this.
| Feeling poor? Just thresh some wheat, take it to the mill and
| grind it into flour and bake some bread and sell it.
| rado wrote:
| I loved 8, even though it's very different to 7. Pretending to be
| virtuous, looting in secret and making spells by drag and drop
| was great.
| lanevorockz wrote:
| Ultima VIII was an excellent game and many friends spent hours
| into the game doing things completely unrelated with the quests.
| It was such a classic that it followed into the Ultima Online
| which was the first truly successful MMORPG which events went to
| be copied WOW. Unless you say WOW is also terrible and the end of
| the Warcraft franchise, no amount of revisionism can change
| reality.
| mrits wrote:
| Ultima IV and XIII are both in my favorite games of all time.
| They are very different but I thought XIII was the coolest game
| I had ever played at the time. My first CD-ROM game as well.
| pavlov wrote:
| Are you thinking of Ultima VII? It was indeed an excellent game
| where you could do endless things unrelated to the main quest,
| and was the precursor to Ultima Online (set in the same world,
| mostly similar game engine).
|
| This article is about Ultima VIII, a very different experience.
| fatnoah wrote:
| I played every Ultima from IV through UO. I have such fond
| memories in VII of finagling a cannon into the back of a cart
| and driving around with my own artillery. Aiming was tough,
| but it was fun.
|
| I had a great time in UO and spend a surprising amount of
| time making and selling furniture. My career ended when I
| entered the game, only to discover that a house had been
| placed on that location and I was unable to open the door to
| exit. :(
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| I had a buddy who had gotten to max level poisoning and he
| would just go around poisoning fishsticks and leaving them
| innocently on the ground for people to find and innocently
| eat and the die instantly. The amount of crazy things you
| could do in UO when it first came out was awesome.
| aksss wrote:
| In UO, I once suckered a new player into buying a dragon
| that wasn't even mine, just with proper timing of
| pretending to give commands and its natural behaviors.
| Player was maaaad when realized she'd been taken. But it
| was kind of neat to realize a whole new dimension of
| player interaction had opened up with UO. And it
| scratched a bit of the Ultima 7 itch. At some point the
| game turned into a grind though, and a lot of players
| were grinding more than I ever would. The pattern got
| kind of boring. Have a friend that still plays it though.
| thom wrote:
| I remember really enjoying playing marbles in Ultima VIII. Also
| being able to climb meant the world felt much more explorable
| than other games. Somehow I remember the game fondly overall,
| despite never bothering to finish.
| CamouflagedKiwi wrote:
| I feel like a lot of this comes from an "Ultima fan" perspective
| where Ultima VIII "ruined it" because it was too different.
| Conversely, I played it first, and enjoyed it; it did many things
| no game I'd played before had tried, although was not short of
| many flaws (which tbf the post-release patch resolves quite a few
| of). Playing other Ultimas later, they were in many ways good but
| also felt a bit trite in their morality.
|
| I don't think it's trivially an awful game. I've heard a lot
| about how wonderful Ultima VII is, but more recently I get the
| impression (after reading articles like
| http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2020/08/ultima-vii-black-gate...)
| that there's another side to it: also dramatically flawed in many
| ways, maybe less obviously so than Pagan but the writing may have
| already been on the wall. Assuming everything just went terribly
| at the end and blaming on "the bean counters" seems a bit lazy to
| me.
| jdlshore wrote:
| > I feel like a lot of this comes from an "Ultima fan"
| perspective
|
| I think that's selling The Digital Antiquarian (filfre.net)
| short. It's an impressive body of scholarship. If the author
| has a fandom bias, it's for text adventures, not Ultima.
| Gimpei wrote:
| I agree. I liked Ultima 8. Don't get me wrong. 7 and 7.5 were
| better, but 8 was still enjoyable. I was disappointed when they
| didn't release an expansion pack.
| bstar77 wrote:
| This was a brutal takedown of Garriott, which I think is fair.
| The guy was a visionary, but lost touch with what made Ultima
| great after Ultima VII.
|
| What's not mentioned is that Ultima Online destroyed any chance
| that the Ultima franchise would ever come back as a single player
| game. So much was left on the table after Ultima VII that this is
| really a shame.
|
| I'm working on something that is highly inspired by Ultima 6 & 7,
| but is it's own thing. These are my takeaways of what I set out
| to share and improve upon (from the U7 model):
|
| - shares the skewed 45* orthographic view... I love this
| perspective.
|
| - world is much larger than Ultima 7's, underworld is
| substantially larger.
|
| - NPCs have needs (think Tropico) and that will influence what
| they do
|
| - story driven, but many in game events are unscripted
|
| - similar inventory style to Ultima 7 (bag if items), but much
| easier to organize
|
| - everything is interactive (bake bread, forge a sword) but not
| streamlined like a modern crafting system
|
| - camera view is further out, so the game feels much larger than
| Ultima 7 ever did
|
| - more consistent pixel art (not a mix of scanned graphics and
| hand drawn pixel art)
|
| - real-time pausable combat- combat un U7 is terrible and a step
| back. I'm attempting to make it less chaotic, but not take away
| from the immersion.
|
| - the world has a stability factor, so good and bad events can
| happen if the conditions are right
|
| I think, if done right, one can take the spirit of the Ultima
| series forward from where Ultima 7 left off. What I'm doing is
| currently at the stage of mechanics building, but I encourage
| anyone to make the development effort if they are so inclined.
| There's a great game to be made if someone can take the torch
| from Ultima 7 and made a proper modern inspired game.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| Also, another thing is how almost everything was able to be put
| into your inventory and moved around. Forks, Plates, Curtains,
| Candleholders, Chairs, etc.
|
| I remember taking over a house in the first town and stealing
| so much stuff from everywhere to decorate it.
|
| I haven't seen that kind of dynamic item management in a game
| engine I don't think ever since. The worlds have become super
| static.
|
| I think that lent a lot of magic to the game as well.
| rbtprograms wrote:
| I mean, Ultima Online was out there at the time and had a great
| playerbase. It's not hard to imagine that most of Origin's focus
| had shifted toward the MMO platform they helped invent.
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| Ultima online came out 3.5 years after Ultima VIII. I think
| it's unlikely that serious development effort went into UO
| during Ultima VIIIs development (Ultima IX and Ultima Online
| were definitely developed in parallel though).
| darkwater wrote:
| > After acquiring Origin in late 1992, so the story goes, EA
| forced them to abandon all of the long-established principles of
| Ultima in order to reach the mass market of lowest-common-
| denominator players to which EA aspired.
|
| /me raises hand, I'm one of those lowest-common-denominator
| played who discovered Ultima with VIII and loved it a lot
| Alex3917 wrote:
| It only killed the franchise if you don't count Ultima Online,
| which is probably one of the most important games in video game
| history.
| debaserab2 wrote:
| UO is the only game that allowed players to completely dictate
| the social norms between players and didn't allow players to
| box themselves into their own segregated safe experiences. It's
| easy to understand why MMO's evolved away from this approach as
| they attempted to reach the masses, but there's an entire
| audience looking for something else that got abandoned. It's a
| shame, really.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Shadowbane allowed this too. Was a great experience with the
| natural politics emerging since resources were fairly scarce
| and you needed to stick together to survive and not get your
| things taken from you.
| duxup wrote:
| Due to an unstable modem connection during the UO timeline I
| never could play.
|
| UO always seemed like more of a sand boxy 'lets see what
| happens' kinda world. Meanwhile MMORPGs all seem to be more
| 'lead you by the nose progression'.
|
| I miss more of the 'lets see what happens' kinda games.
| fatsdomino001 wrote:
| Ultima Online is the best gaming experience I ever had. In my
| opinion, nothing has come close to it in regards to game
| dynamics, was a proper open-world sandbox.
|
| As I never found anything close to Ultima Online, I basically
| stopped gaming entirely. UO raised the bar too high.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Tibia comes pretty close The older versions, anyway.
| Apparently it even started as a copy of Ultima. Never found
| anything close to it either. Every kid in my school played
| this game... It was like an IRC client with a fun game
| embedded in it.
| agentultra wrote:
| It's being revived: https://uo.com
| jackstraw14 wrote:
| They've tried so many times to "fix" it. At this point, I
| think UO Outlands is probably the best UO experience you
| can get.
| NickBusey wrote:
| There are plenty of great, free Ultima Online servers to play
| on. No need to stop playing!
| dstick wrote:
| Same here - though Dark Age of Camelot came close. It wasn't
| sandboxy but the RvR did scratch the PvP itch!
| waynesonfire wrote:
| Nothing has come close and nothing ever will. Mainly due to
| the fact that it wasn't just the game mechanics; but that
| all player types had no other option except to play UO.
| This, combined with the game mechanics, is what made UO a
| one-of-a-kind experiences. I feel blessed and honored to
| have had the opportunity to be a part of it. After so many
| years failing to find a UO replacement; I've accepted this
| conclusion as reality and as result, have stopped
| searching.
| matwood wrote:
| DAoC had some of the better PvP mechanics of that
| generation of MMOs. I played DAoC for years, and eventually
| moved to WoW for a little while. WoW always felt too easy
| and never really gave me the same rush that DAoC did.
|
| I still remember the day I gave a friend of mine my DAoC
| accounts. He later sold them when he quit, and gave me some
| cash back :)
| andrepd wrote:
| Star Wars Galaxies was another absolute gem at its prime. I
| never played it, but reading stories about the game makes
| me feel it's the one game apart from UO which truly came
| close to fulfilling the promise of a "virtual, persistent,
| shared world".
| bovermyer wrote:
| I played SWG from its release until its final shutdown,
| though I had several months-long breaks during the run.
|
| I posted a few articles on my blog after it was shut down
| in 2011. Here's one of them, going into the crafting
| system:
|
| https://benovermyer.com/post/2012/star-wars-galaxies-
| craftin...
| syoc wrote:
| Just want to say that I really liked the blog posts. Very
| insightful.
| gpderetta wrote:
| I played UO on an unofficial RPG shard for about one year.
| The server was was only up only a few hours during the
| evening (and would often crash), most of the mechanics
| weren't implemented, and those that were were often buggy. It
| still was one of the best (if not _the best_ ) gaming
| experience I ever had as well.
| andrepd wrote:
| It's incredibly sad that by far the best MMO experience ---
| indeed one could say the _only_ game which lived up to the
| promise of a _shared, virtual, persistent world_ --- was also
| one of the first.
|
| It was all downhill after WoW. It was a great game, but it
| was precisely _because_ it was so good that it soon
| hegemonised everything. Rather than being one possibility out
| of many, it became "the" MMORPG, in that due to its success
| every subsequent game copied WoW, often superficially, and
| maybe even sometimes accidentally. Its specific conventions
| became the genre itself.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| EVE Online as well but that's quite a different flavour. I
| played loads of UO back in the day and spent four years
| working on EVE. Very few games come close to touching
| either in terms of being so complex, almost to the point of
| being real spaces to navigate and live in.
| avdlinde wrote:
| I'd just like to point out the 'played UO' and 'working
| on EVE' =] I love EVE, I just can't find the time to work
| on it anymore.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Haha, in my case I literally worked at CCP making EVE
| rather than the second job it can become playing it.
| Still some of the best community moments were with that
| job and the awesome people that play EVE. I had several
| great Fanfests.
| milofeynman wrote:
| It was a great experience. And I'll cherish it. Free servers
| aren't the same. Might setup a server on my local network
| some day to play with my kid.
| User23 wrote:
| I earned my college spending money arbitraging UO real estate
| between in game gold and Ebay prices. It wasn't a huge amount
| of money, but I recall earning well over minimum wage per
| hour.
| jedberg wrote:
| I only very briefly play UO. I'm curious if you could give
| more details of how how it was different to make it the best
| experience you ever had. What are games today missing?
| fatsdomino001 wrote:
| It was a incredible world to discover and explore
| (especially custom servers with custom maps and content).
| There was no 'point' to the game, i.e. no final destination
| or quest to complete... in fact there were barely any
| quests at all. It was all just up to you. However you
| wanted to play you could. I.e. you could just have a blast
| logging in and hanging out in a player's house which they
| converted into a bar and play chess chatting about w/e. I
| even played some great roleplaying shards which were legit,
| e.g. a LOTR one and it was soo epicly awesome. Good pvp
| dynamics. I did love the ruthlessness of losing everything
| when you died. I loved how custom shards could tweak so
| many of the variables pretty easily. I just have so many
| absolutely golden memories, hilarious and absurd memories.
| Idk... it's just really hard to convey how the game was the
| best. I think a lot of is just because it let you do
| whatever you wanted, but also provided you with fun PvE,
| PvP, roleplaying, etc.
|
| What are games today missing? They're not persistent open-
| world sandbox games. Sure we have open-world games, but
| they're not sandbox and often not persistent, and we have
| sandbox but they're not open-world and often not persistent
| too.
|
| I can't do it. I can't adequately describe what games today
| are missing which UO had. It's a quality of the combination
| of all the features UO had that just resulted in the best
| memories and fun I've had when gaming. I just don't see
| enough support for player-generated content as UO had,
| which I suspect is a big part of it too.
| Shivetya wrote:
| UO was definitely a new direction, considering for online you
| had MUDs or limited graphical games like The Shadow of
| Yserbius.
|
| However it was quickly eclipsed by Everquest which came in 99
| and I would say is far more important to the MMO landscape than
| UO ever was. Asheron's Call quickly followed EQ and while it
| never had the numbers was the first no zone MMO - you could
| travel anywhere and no load except into dungeons which were
| nothing like what people are used to today.
|
| It was certainly a time for experimentation to see what players
| liked and disliked and for all sorts of fun bugs if not
| exploits in each game to rile a community.
| jerf wrote:
| If you zoom up a bit from the level this article is in, as I
| understand it, while Ultima was on the rocks anyhow, it was
| Ultima Online that comprehensively killed the franchise by
| being _too successful_. Rational business logic said to pour
| the effort into the moneymaker UO and the single-player Ultimas
| couldn 't compete for resources.
|
| IMHO, there would still have been a lot of winds against the
| series anyhow. The exponential increase in the difficulty of
| technology was not playing well with Origin's high level of
| aggressiveness on that front. And perhaps a bit more
| controversially, the series just wasn't headed in a good
| direction; after the impressive founding of the series'
| reputation on the virtue system in 4 and 5, the series was
| headed ever faster into a nihilistic undercutting of its own
| foundations. (And I'd highlight the undercutting aspect over
| the nihilistic aspect; while I'll cop to being less impressed
| with nihilism than probably the average HN reader, nihilistic
| RPGs aren't intrinsically a bad thing, but in this _particular_
| case it undercuts the foundations.) Even a fully-realized
| Ultima 8 was never going to fit the series very well, and IMHO
| could even have ended up with a _worse_ story in some aspects
| than we got.
| musicale wrote:
| > It only killed the franchise if you don't count Ultima
| Online, which is probably one of the most important games in
| video game history.
|
| And Ultima Online has been running since 1997 and is still
| going ?!?!
|
| https://uo.com
|
| That it is still "Online" with active players is an
| extraordinary accomplishment. It really is one of the most
| important games in video game history.
|
| (Note FFXI and WoW are also remarkably long-lived MMOs.)
|
| Also imagine playing a full MMO on a 233 MHz CPU with 32MB of
| RAM and downloading updates via blazing fast 56kbps dial-up
| internet...
|
| GameSpot gave it 4.9/10. ;-)
| datalus wrote:
| UO was my #1 gaming experience and sadly like others have
| mentioned: probably won't have that exceeded by an MMO again.
| However, there was a brief moment when Sierra had more control
| over the LOTR MMO (known as Middle Earth Online) and it looked
| very similar to early UO.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| > probably won't have that exceeded by an MMO again
|
| It'll happen once VR takes off, even if that takes another 20
| years to happen.
| kowlo wrote:
| UO was great. Lots of games from long ago that were good:
|
| - legend of mir 2
|
| - phantasy star online (dreamcast)
|
| - lineage
|
| - myth of soma
|
| - ragnarok online
|
| - many more
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Yeah. Had friends who played Ragnarok. So many memories of
| dead games... How many are still online? I know Tibia still
| is, they emailed me a free week of premium last christmas.
| kowlo wrote:
| mostly private servers now I think - the old days are gone
| rrivers wrote:
| Just hopping in to agree about UO, one of the primary gaming
| experiences of my life. A fascinating culture, community, and
| experience. Chesapeake baby.
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| I couldnt make myself play that and eq. The amount of
| repetitive tasks was just daunting. It felt like these games
| were designed by sadists
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| The thing I really loved about Ultima Online is you could
| have fun without caring about that. I mostly just hung out in
| the "town" my guild created and built furniture / organized
| our resources and managed our vendors. Most of my skills
| didn't ever get far beyond newbie level.
|
| That's unthinkable in WoW - the game is 100% focused on
| progression and advancement.
| scythe wrote:
| > _" Richard", they told me, "your release of games is extremely
| unreliable". They wanted us to change our development process to
| meet their deadlines. The game we were developing when we sold
| _Origin* was Ultima VIII; EA wanted it on the shelves in time for
| the following Christmas.*
|
| versus
|
| > _Yet the actual EA executives in question have vociferously
| denied micromanaging the project, insisting on the contrary that
| it was conceived, created, and finally shipped on terms dictated
| by no one outside of Origin._
|
| Someone is lying. Either a new deadline was imposed on an
| existing project by EA executives or it wasn't.
| mnd999 wrote:
| Lost me when they said Ultima was more expensive to make than
| Wing Commander. I mean Mark Hamill and Malcolm McDowell can't
| have been cheap.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| These games all predate wing commander III (which was the first
| with FMV). Wing Commander I and II both had two expansions that
| sold well, so it was 6 games with one engine, and with the
| exception of the base WC 2, had little more novel animation
| than e.g. Ultima VII.
| CountSessine wrote:
| That was Wing Commander 3, which hadn't been made yet. Wing
| Commander 2 was mostly just using the Wing Commander 1 game
| engine, which is probably why Snell liked it so much. Savage
| Empire and Martian Dreams were the "Worlds of Ultima" series of
| CRPGs, and were based on the Ultima VI engine - very little new
| programming involved - just new content. That was probably
| pretty cheap too.
| speeder wrote:
| Well, you should then read the entire article again, since you
| stopped reading, and you stopped reading in a part you read
| wrong, since nowhere in the article he says Ultima was more
| expensive to make than Wing Commander, he only mentions
| "cheaper" Wing Commander "spin offs", and didn't said cheaper
| in relation to what... it could be cheaper than the original
| wing commander, that notoriously is credited as being the first
| AAA game ever (Wing Commander was the first game that splurged
| millions to make, and it not even broke even, ever. Only reason
| it is considered a success was that the franchise as whole
| ended being very profitable and eventually paid off the costs
| of the first game).
| jimmyvalmer wrote:
| I agree with "Scorpia" that _Ultima IV_ is the greatest game of
| all time. I only played the occasional pirated games my brother
| cadged, so missed Ultimas 5 through 7. _Ultima VIII_ did come my
| way, and I remember already being turned off by the 3dness. I
| believe I played it all of ten minutes and gave up.
| HugoDaniel wrote:
| I loved Ultima VIII because of the little details, like the
| sounds of the Avatar steps changing according to the surface that
| he was walking on.
| kcb wrote:
| Spoony's Ultima retrospective is an absolute classic. Heres VIII
| https://youtu.be/wpui9EKNTzE Recommend finding the whole series.
| depingus wrote:
| I can see why they took the risk to change with the times.
| Spending 4+ years to create a game targeting the (at the time)
| smallest audience doesn't sound like a great business venture.
| Though maybe they should've made it an Ultima spin-off like
| Underworld, instead of the official VIII.
|
| Interestingly, we've seen some great success stories of franchise
| games shifting play style. Off the top of my head: Yakuza 7 Like
| a Dragon, Final Fantasy VII Remake and FFXV.
| mywittyname wrote:
| FF7R... :(
|
| It sold well, so I guess it is technically successful, despite
| not really feeling successful in terms of being a better game.
| haolez wrote:
| I think the biggest success story of a shifting play style is
| GTA. The first ones were 2.5D games with a very different feel.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| Many years ago I started playing Ultima VIII out of a nostalgia
| trip, and not having been exposed much to the legendary Ultima
| VII before, I thought VIII was a fun game for the most part.
| Can't remember much of it today, but a really bad experience
| would have made a more lasting impression ;)
|
| But I also liked Ultima IX (the 3D Ultima), despite being plagued
| by bugs and terrible performance in the beginning, it was
| eventually brought into pretty good shape by enthusiasts.
| op00to wrote:
| I loved Ultima VIII. Played it for hours and hours and hours.
| briandarvell wrote:
| I was a huge Ultima VII fan and played the game for hundreds of
| hours. I remember getting Ultima VIII and playing it for an hour
| or two and never playing it again. But until reading this article
| I didn't understand why Ultima VIII didn't capture my interest
| like VII did.
| diragon wrote:
| Except for Ultima 9 and UO, I finished every other Ultima,
| starting from III. In fact, Ultima 3 was either the first game,
| or at least one of the first games I ever played.
|
| The game world in every game was amazing in their time, the most
| interesting combination of ideas and stories I have ever known.
| Every game in the series attempted to be a pioneer in some way or
| another, and almost every one succeeded at it.
|
| Which makes it triply sad how fast and how deep the series fell
| after 8. Even though very different, 8 was still solidly Ultima.
| It tasted like it. It also tasted like it was not quite Ultima,
| and of course now we know why. The bean counters ruined it, like
| they ruin most artistic things. Well, ultimately Garriot ruined
| it, because he sold Origin Systems.
|
| And now we have Shroud of the Avatar, in which Garriot and the
| whole management team became bean counters as well and the game
| is, well, not very good. It probably too tried to pioneer
| something but I'm not sure what that is.
| vidanay wrote:
| I have fond memories of playing Ultima I through Ultima V on
| green screen Apple //e and //c computers.
| Scramblejams wrote:
| Monitor III for the win! I'll never forget looking at Ultima
| through that monitor's silk-like anti-glare texture while
| being serenaded by the restful tones of a Mockingboard...
| glonq wrote:
| I also started with U3, on an 8-bit atari. Played through U7.5
| but passed on 8 and 9.
|
| I think the series probably peaked with U6.
| warp wrote:
| I think Garriot is no longer involved with Shroud of the
| Avatar, I'm not sure of the details but it seems he sold or
| left the thing in 2019 and probably stopped actively working on
| it earlier than that.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Garriott#Games
| hinkley wrote:
| The only one I played was Ultima VII. Found a few easter eggs,
| then one day I'm walking through the woods and get attacked.
| Two of my people are on the ground, bleeding out. They are
| completely clipped behind trees and I couldn't figure out how
| to heal them. And that was the end of that.
|
| Older me probably could have worked out the UI (maybe clicking
| on the character image) but young, post-fight me got lost and
| felt helpless, which is exactly the sort of thing you should
| not feel in an adventure game.
| curiousllama wrote:
| > This classic passive-aggressive apology -- "I felt awful that I
| had let down so many people in my effort to be loyal and learn
| from EA" doesn't exactly ring out with contrition -- isn't even
| internally consistent; if the development team loved their game
| so much, why was Origin's management forced to devise stratagems
| to keep them from going home out of the fear that they wouldn't
| come back? Nevertheless, it does contain a fair amount of truth
| alongside its self-serving omissions
|
| Ugh - those omissions are not self-serving. The reality (which we
| all see) is that the dev team f*cking hated the game, probably
| gave up on quality, and everyone knows it. But saying so is an
| attack on the people Garriott screwed when he screwed up; the
| omissions are of other people's contributions to his faults, not
| his faults themselves.
|
| The apology was _incredibly_ well-written: it highlights all of
| garriott's mistakes, in detail, and places the blame squarely on
| his own shoulders: he could say "EA is evil because they enforce
| business discipline," but instead said "they did their job as a
| business, and I didn't so mine as a creator."
|
| If anything, this was probably _too_ self-blaming (we all know EA
| would just replace him if he didn't bow down, accomplishing
| nothing). But don't criticize him for failing to throw his team
| under the bus. Knowing very little, I'd love work for this guy,
| based on that apology alone.
| nkoren wrote:
| If you need another data point, I worked on a (non-software)
| project for Garriott. He was awesome and I'd do it again in a
| second.
| jboog wrote:
| I know EA is the evil empire and whatever else but it doesn't
| seem obvious to me that Garriott threatening to resign means he
| would just get replaced. I'd say more likely they would give
| them more time.
|
| The Ultima fanbase has always had a cultish love of RG for many
| good reasons, sure. Firing the guy would not be a smart
| business decision.
|
| We're also only hearing his side of it. I tend to think EA was
| in the wrong, but also know that it's almost always the case
| one side of a story is biased, even if unintentionally.
| anonymousab wrote:
| Despite a poor modern track record, EA back then is not the
| same company as EA today.
|
| The decision makers directly above him could have easily
| replaced him without actually replacing him, but I don't
| think they would have cared about the bad PR from cutting him
| at all. Acquiring a studio or rockstar is both good pr and
| good for business, but firing be a bad employee or cutting a
| failing studio is also good for business as far as
| shareholders and execs were concerned.
| jboog wrote:
| In what world do shareholders believe that firing the
| principal talent, creative director, and founder of a new
| acquisition--within a YEAR of acquiring the company!--is
| "good for business"?
|
| Only if you believe businesses are run by mustachio-
| twirling villains who sit around trying to ruin games for
| fun.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| I don't play games (as much) and have never played any of
| the Ultima franchise.
|
| To answer your business-management-related question
| though, I am looking at the price of their stock over
| since 1990.
|
| https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/EA/financials
|
| 1990: $0.xxx
|
| 2000: $20
|
| 2010: $17 (valley between 2008-2013)(the global financial
| crisis?)
|
| 2015: $55
|
| 2021: $145 (there is a drop between 2018-2020 down to
| 100)
|
| Whatever these guys are doing, judging from their stock
| price, it works. Shareholders like them.
|
| Sales/Revenue filed:
|
| 2016: 4.37B
|
| 2017: 4.81B
|
| 2018: 5.16B
|
| 2019: 4.93B
|
| 2020: 5.47N
|
| Cash cow...
| Tarsul wrote:
| EA makes 1,5 billion with FIFA ultimate team cards. It's
| disgusting.
| tubularhells wrote:
| EA also killed Nox and Westwood, and we have some bits and
| pieces of anecdote about how that went, so I tend to believe
| what Garriot had to say about that.
| m463 wrote:
| I don't know, I think when someone is acquired, there are two
| things going on:
|
| - people have finally cashed out so motivations are changing
|
| - an investment has been made, so people start accepting
| business goals are important.
|
| So reading this story I wonder if EA is the villain here, or
| human nature.
|
| Now I _do_ blame EA for popcap. I 'll never forgive Plants vs
| Zombies 2 with literal pricetags in dollars on all the
| plants.
| blibble wrote:
| > But then, for the eighth game in the mainline Ultima series,
| Origin decided to try something just a little bit different. They
| made a game in which you played a thoughtless jerk moving on
| rails through a linear series of events; in which you never went
| to Britannia at all, but stayed instead on a miserable hellhole
| of a world called Pagan; in which you spent the whole game
| adventuring alone (after all, who would want to adventure with a
| jerk like you?); in which the core mechanics were jumping between
| pedestals like Super Mario and pounding your enemies over the
| head with your big old hammer.
|
| ah, so this is where Blizzard got the idea for the travesty that
| is modern World of Warcraft
| andi999 wrote:
| Actually Ultima 7 serpent Isle also felt like being on rails
| (didn't finish it), maybe later it's better.
| Klwohu wrote:
| SI was also clearly unfinished on release, presaging Pagan's
| disastrous debut. And it was never properly finished, either.
|
| http://hacki.bootstrike.com/english/nitpicks_u7si.htm
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| >> Many of our programmers had worked twelve hours a day, seven
| days a week for ten months. We would bring dinner in for them
| because we were afraid if they left, they might not come back.
| The last month or so we gave them every other Sunday off so, as
| one of them pointed out, they could see their family or do some
| laundry.
|
| And they shipped a terrible game after all that? Incredible!
| haolez wrote:
| Me and my brother, we loved Ultima VI and Ultima VIII. I guess we
| were an exception :)
| muro wrote:
| I loved Ultima VIII. It had a great story, cool lore. There
| were parts that seemed missing, but it added to the mystery of
| the world. I really liked how you could master the various
| elemental schools, yet there was never enough resources or time
| to cast spells in many fights and water was completely
| impossible to master. I ended up mostly running away from most
| fights and still remember the exciting side track to fetch a
| maze from underground. I couldn't fight any monsters there,
| they were too difficult, but managed to grab the mace and
| escape. Was a great start of the adventure.
| haolez wrote:
| It was one of those old DOS games where the gameplay sucked,
| but it kind of contributed to the difficulty and ambience of
| the game somehow. Fun times.
| giobox wrote:
| In a similar vein, there was a chap who would appear and end
| your game very quickly if you stole anything from shops.
| However, the game let you drag items in stores 1 or 2 pixels
| without triggering the "crime ghost" (I forget who he was)
| who would end your game. Eventually we worked out you could
| drag an item to the door, pixel by pixel, then pick it up and
| run away without being caught.
|
| I may be remembering aspects of this wrong, it was a long
| time ago!
| haolez wrote:
| In the same vein, if you kill (later in the game) the
| "omnipresent guard", next time you stole something you
| would be attacked by him regardless, but now his
| sprite/skin was that of a zombie :) cool easter egg (or
| bug!).
| bdowling wrote:
| Ultima 6 is a great game for many reasons. e.g., epic story,
| seamless open-world, non-linear progression, lots of side-
| quests/hidden secrets, multiple solutions to problems, plot
| twists, groundbreaking graphics, great music, etc.
| codezero wrote:
| I'm kind of amazed in retrospect how readily they adapted a late
| 80s game into a mid 90s MMORPG - and it looks almost exactly the
| same. It wasn't until the first expansion pack I think, that they
| added better/real 3D isometric graphics. I never liked the new
| graphics either, I really wish there were easy to play modern UO
| worlds, it was quite a fun game :)
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Origin reminds me of what happened to Bioware , selling out to EA
| that is used to reselling filler paste games like Madden XX or
| FIFA XX is just the death of a gaming studios.
|
| I am glad that Steam/GOG/Xbox/Sony with digital downloads lowered
| the barriers to entry for independents to make and publish fun
| quirky and enjoyable games again.
| brobdingnagians wrote:
| > Origin came up with a relativistic jumping system whereby the
| length of your leap would be determined by the distance the
| cursor was from your character when you clicked the mouse, rather
| than opting for the more intuitive solution whereby you simply
| pointed at and clicked on a would-be destination to attempt to
| jump there
|
| My father had all the Ultima games, when I was younger I tried
| playing VIII and couldn't figure out how to jump properly, which
| meant I couldn't go anywhere interesting, so I quit. It is very
| unintuitive to click and hold to jump on a desktop game.
| giobox wrote:
| Exact same experience here. Ultima 8 came free on a CD-ROM that
| I think accompanied a Creative Sound Card my father had
| purchased? The same disc had Wing Commander 2...
|
| Anyway, I played Ultima 8 to death as a child - explored the
| map obsessively. Eventually I hit first jump puzzle and
| "abandoned" any attempt to play it properly after that.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| The only ultima games I played before seeing VIII were Underworld
| games I and II, and they were pretty great. (Probably, I is my
| second-favourite RPG from the 1990s, bested only by the great
| Betrayal at Krondor.)
|
| 8 was a huge disappointment. I couldn't figure out how to do
| _anything_, the movement and controls were so thoroughly broken,
| that I gave up in 30 minutes, completely frustrated, not being
| able to figure out how to do anything.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Forget the 90s; I have yet to play a better CRPG than _Betrayal
| at Krondor_.
| defen wrote:
| The same site did a great post about BaK
| https://www.filfre.net/2019/10/betrayal-at-krondor/
| ekianjo wrote:
| Underworld were not real Ultima games. At least the first one
| was a different game on which they stamped Ultima for brand
| recognition
| dfan wrote:
| Underworld developer here. We certainly started it before we
| got the deal with Origin, but a lot of the design was done
| afterwards with the fact that it was an Ultima in mind. I'll
| grant that its Ultima-ness was thinner compared to many of
| the games with Roman numerals on them.
|
| Ultima Underworld II, of course, was designed to be an Ultima
| game from the start.
| Tornhoof wrote:
| I still remember the uncountable hours I played Underworld
| I & II. Thank you for these games.
| Sunspark wrote:
| I had a lot of fun with Underworld and I am someone who
| played Ultima IV and VII. Great game!
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| Just so you know those games were badass! I had so much fun
| playing them. Elder Scrolls came out later and that was the
| first fantasy FPS game that I has as much fun with as
| underworld.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Since I experienced Underworld first, it was the reverse to
| me: other Ultimas felt not real Ultims games.
| gekkonier wrote:
| It was my first role playing game. I went into every house and
| stole everything I could find. Then the kids in town started to
| throw rocks at me. After that I deleted the game, because a
| deinstallation routine was not necessary. Great times!
| IronWolve wrote:
| I was playing the Ultima and related rpg games on my c64 (and
| later Amiga) way back then, auto duel, Moebius, bards tale,
| wasteland. The closest thing to those in modern games that I've
| really enjoyed was Witcher 3 and DLC, Far Cry 5, and most
| recently the Panam quest line in Cyberpunk 2077.
|
| GTA and other games are more about repeatable grind and forcing
| users to buy in game currency, less of a story line and game
| play. Look at what they did to Cyberpunk 2077, forced it to be
| released and it has the same repeatable side quest issue. Watch
| Dogs Legion story was mediocre story line, but the gfx are pretty
| darn good. Control had a very interesting story line and good
| gfx. Death Stranding was interesting but boring walking around.
|
| World of Warcraft is all over the place, its really trying to
| force people into guilds, and the casual aspect isn't as fun, and
| the gfx are really outdated.
|
| Its almost like, the games out now are super high quality gfx
| with shitty story lines. Or outdated gfx and good story lines. Is
| there any game people are even looking forward too anymore?
| Really feeling let down in the story/gfx department of newer
| video games.
| the_af wrote:
| Wow. Is Pagan universally reviled? Perhaps because I was never an
| Ultima fan (didn't play the series) I actually liked Pagan: the
| graphics, the huge world, and the plot in which there was some
| sort of conspiracy of fake elemental "gods". I wasn't emotionally
| involved with Britannia, so I didn't care that the game wasn't
| set there.
|
| It's news to me that this game was a disappointment to fans.
|
| Unsurprisingly given what I wrote above, I absolutely _loved_
| Worlds of Ultima: Savage Empire. Also not set in Britannia but in
| a pretty cool pseudo Aztec world.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| Well, the PC was truly booming when U8 dropped and I hoped it
| would recapture the Garriot touch from the 1980's.
|
| U3 was my intro which was a huge world and an epic grind for
| gold. U4 blew us all away with its depth. Remember at the time
| titles like Bards Tale and Wizardry were the main go-tos for
| party based RPG. So U4 was truly epic with it's NPC interaction
| and depth of plot.
|
| But this was still the 1980's when Apple //e's mostly dominated
| the computer game scene. The big switch to PC happened around
| U5, but for those of us still shelling out money for the
| franchise, it became repetitive with U6 and U7. Odd that
| Garriot would blame EA for the NFL cycle when Ultima started to
| feel like it.
|
| Ultima Underworld was a fun preview of 3D and a refreshing
| departure from the tops down U# series, but U8 just ... hurt. I
| had bought my first Pentium machine and was quite disappointed
| with how much of a departure it was. You literally leveled up
| by whacking things, anything, thousands of times. The plot was
| lame, the game play was uninteresting.
|
| But I was already bored of Ultima titles by that point, so it
| was more tedious than reviled. I think until UOnline, U4 was
| the high watermark, IMHO.
|
| Great article though, it was written with care by a fellow
| enthusiast of times long gone.
| the_af wrote:
| I agree the article is great, as is most of the series from
| that website.
|
| > _The plot was lame_
|
| I can't agree with this. It was thrilling and involving!
|
| It probably has to do with what you said: you had
| expectations about Ultima. I didn't. That it was action
| oriented didn't bother me, for example. The other game I
| liked was Savage Empire, which is not set in Britannia either
| (I liked it more than Pagan, I'll grant you that!).
| JadeNB wrote:
| > Wow. Is Pagan universally reviled? Perhaps because I was
| never an Ultima fan (didn't play the series) I actually liked
| Pagan ....
|
| The article touches on this:
|
| > Indeed, it's quite common to hear today that Ultima VIII
| really wasn't a bad game at all -- that it was merely a bad
| Ultima, in departing way too radically from that series's
| established traditions.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| Same, I had played 7, which was AMAZING, and 8 was fun. But I
| was young and not a long time fan of the franchise.
| pixelpoet wrote:
| Ultima 7 utterly blew my mind as a kid. I remember one
| evening coming downstairs to dinner after playing it all day,
| and realised my whole sense of reality was somehow altered...
| there was an entire living world in that computer. That
| feeling completely changed me.
|
| U8 was pretty great too, but somehow not the same as U7; what
| was gained in graphics quality was lost in sheer scope and
| detail.
| aksss wrote:
| Same, but I quit after Ultima 7.2. I remember trying 8, and
| just never getting into it. Huge disappointment, as 7.2 had
| improvements over Black Gate, and I just expected 8 to be
| an iteratively better new adventure. I wanted Ultima 7.3
| and instead got Diablo 0.1.
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