Comment by Klwohu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Klwohu | Hacker News Reader

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.

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).

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.

I agree wholeheartedly but it can’t go without saying that this is most true when you take into account the Forge of Virtue expansion and to a lesser extent The Silver Seed which added even more detail to the world.

> I THOUGHT I CLOSED THIS!

The World Building was incredible. Nothing quite like it since which is surprising. The NPC schedule system is actually quite simple. Simple systems that allow for the bank heist :)

If I ever create a game it will be very focused technically on world building. Multi-resolution AI system to create those local details and also track NPC schedules, movements, and etc globally.

For added interest, Ultima VII - The Black Gate contains satirical references to the then ongoing conflict (SPOILERS):

- The game's villain, The Guardian, is described as a destroyer of worlds, which is the antithesis to Origin's motto: We create worlds.

- The Guardian uses two acolytes named Elizabeth and Abraham (EA) who, benign in appearance, spread funds throughout Britannia for evil purposes.

- The Guardian has set up three devices named Generators that prepare his conquer of the land in the shape of a Cube, Sphere, and Tetrahedron, respectively (EA logo).

- Alagner's notebook reads: "(...) Already, The Guardian is promising to be a powerful threat. Magic in Britannia has taken a turn for the worse in the past few years.", a possible side reference to EA's push for creative control over RG.

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