Most of the combat was very easy and a bit crap, yeah. But if you go back to ultima4/5, with the dungeon “rooms”, there’s some gameplay there.
What was great about them was their ambition and unique sense of exploring a world, rather than the gameplay.
I would include that in a definition of ‘gameplay’ as it applies to CRPGs, however.
Combat was never the strong suit in the Ultimas, although it did get better. I think U5’s was actually fairly strong. SSI was often doing more interesting things with combat in the same timeframe.
The Ultima IV keyword system seems rudimentary now, but damn was it a step forward in 1985. And the NPC scheduling and day-night cycle introduced in Ultima V were a flat-out revelation.
These comments are disappointing, but Garriott still gets my $40. He’s a legend, he kindled my childhood imagination more than almost anyone else, and a few tone-deaf comments don’t overwrite that in my book.
A lot!
In my mind, ever since U7, Garriott has not done anything that was wow-worthy. And he is doing a Kictstarter project and we are buying to his view and vision. Kickstarter is entirely based on a person, his credibility, his words and vision, meaning base on him as an individual. And if this individual become arrogant and thinks other developers suck, then I am not so sure how good is his words and vision. So it is affecting my judgement of him and therefore I am considering pulling out of backing him.
Sure! I wouldn’t argue with that. Like I said, I’ve got fond memories of the Ultimas - IV and V especially. I still love that IV was about living up to a set of ideals - that’s not something that’s been explored much since. And discovering the underworld in V blew my 12-year old brain: a whole new region as big as the overland map? Woah!
But they’re also products of their time, and I bet I’d find playing them now frustrating. There’s been so much great design since then. I think your description of his comments as “tone-deaf” is bang on. I’m pretty sure they’re shameless click-bait to drive eyes to the Kickstarter. It’s depressing that this is how he chose to do it, though. It’s ten times as depressing that it worked and the gaming media happily slap his comments all over the front pages.
Combat was never the strong suit in the Ultimas, although it did get better. I think U5’s was actually fairly strong. SSI was often doing more interesting things with combat in the same timeframe.
I wasn’t a fan of V’s combat either, although it was a relief to see Brittania discover diagonals. I totally agree about SSI - Pool of Radiance was such a revelation. Amazing combat. PoR is one of my favourite games of all time. I’m pretty sure I’d play the hell out of that now if I could get a working copy.
The Ultima IV keyword system seems rudimentary now, but damn was it a step forward in 1985.
Controversial statement incoming! Not sure if I genuinely believe the following: but wasn’t everything a step forward in 1985? It couldn’t not be, right? The space that had been explored by games back then was so small that it was hard not to innovate.
These comments are disappointing, but Garriott still gets my $40. He’s a legend, he kindled my childhood imagination more than almost anyone else, and a few tone-deaf comments don’t overwrite that in my book.
Amen!
I still read Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories for god’s sake - I totally sympathise with loving someone’s work despite their opinions. And as opinions go, the ones Garriot’s expressed in this incident are merely disheartening, not abhorrent. I don’t want to act like this is some huge thing.
I’m mister critical of the modern games industry, mostly because i grew up playing (and making) games and saw through the 80’s the explosion of a new medium held back by technology that found it’s base in the 90’s. The kick on from there never really materialized for the most part as the industry became nearly mostly obsessed with graphics, then marketing and now ‘gaming the gamer’, and what could have been is mostly now impossible or irrelevant to the general game industries desires and ambitions.
While I can agree to some extent on the caricature of the game designer as neither good enough to be a coder or good enough to be an artist, i found it pretty sad that the only designers he did mention as being good were the typical ‘expected’ names, that to be honest have made as many poor designs as they have good (but their good were often genre defining). What about Sid Meier or Brian Reynolds or a whole raft of other older designers of that era (Paul Woakes, Philip Price, David Braben and Ian Bell etc)? Or the more experimental perhaps? People like Chris Crawford have contributed so much down the years to the medium, if not perfect games themselves. Or what about the explosion of new talent we are seeing in the indie boom? Notch (Minecraft + cool upcoming stuff), Tarn Adams and Zach Adams (Dwarf Fortress)?
It might possibly just have been a controversial piece to get media attention, but i found the lack of detail on what is quite a controversial statement, maybe more so given his recent history in the games industry, enough to concern me. Maybe his gaming passion has past? Maybe he has branched out into other things since the Ultima’s and hasn’t needed that drive to keep him interested in the wider ‘happenings’ that have been going on all this time, and yes that does mean not just WoW. What a weird piece to put out there, especially when you are trying to get as wide spread approval for your game via a crowd-funding method, or maybe as i first thought, the KS isn’t about funding the development so much as mitigating risk away from personal funds?
After all these years, Schild’s still trying way too hard.
Yes, but he does have a point. RG is clearly shitting where many people eat.
he does have some points.
Oh for sure, but it’s a point that others here are able to convey (and have conveyed) in 2-3 sentences: Richard Garriot threw a lot of people under the bus, people who have kept the industry alive, and he has his own poor track record recently so who is he to cast stones? Also, he’s a millionaire, why is he on Kickstarter?
I guess there’s bonus points for Origin/nepotism trash talk?
I don’t agree with all of it, but +50 points to that rant for being more entertaining than every game Garriot worked on in the past 15 years.
but wasn’t everything a step forward in 1985? It couldn’t not be, right?
Well, there were a lot of CRPGs in the mid '80s – a veritable glut. And there were a lot of ‘me too’ clones that competently got the job done without really revolutionizing anything (Questron comes to mind, and that’s a game I’m quite fond of). The conversation system in U4 seemed at the time like something particularly new, as did the vast size of the gameworld and the more complex reagent system for mixing spells. Add all three together, to say nothing of the much-hyped ethical component, and you had something that pretty much blew the doors off the genre, its nontrivial flaws notwithstanding. Until three years later when U5 blew the doors even further off: NPC scheduling, day/night schedule, richer conversation trees, much richer loot/inventory system, active enemies that would invade cities, and a surprisingly deep physics system that allowed nonscripted solutions to gameplay problems. And, oh yeah, all tied to a theme that was actually thought-provoking and mature.
I remember how it was then. Everyone was making CRPGs and I was playing most of them. Bard’s Tale. Phantasie. Deathlord. Legacy of the Ancients. Rings of Zilfinn. Alternate Reality. Adventure Construction Set. Might & Magic. Shard of Spring. Wizard’s Crown. There were a lot of great games released in those days, but each Ultima release was an event.
Everyone was moving the genre forward in their way, I guess, but Garriott tended to move it a lot further forward with each increment between U1 and U7, and the amazing thing is how consistently he was doing it. It’s really an almost unparalleled streak in game design, I think.
When people say ‘what’s he done lately?’ I totally get where they’re coming from, and I’m right up there with the skeptics as to whether he can produce something today that would stand alongside Skyrim or Dragon Age or even Din’s Curse or whatever. That said, I can’t help feeling it’s a bit like asking what Paul McCartney’s done since 1977. Fair question (even if you are a fan of Flowers in the Dirt or his symphonic exercises), but he’s still Paul McCartney.
Well said Gordon. That largely reflects my views.
Yes, but Paul McCartney isn’t asking me to buy his new album two years in advance. When the album is released and positively reviewed, I’ll buy it. Paul also didn’t say that every other artist sucks.
Well, that’s more a conversation about what Kickstarter is as a business model or a way of ‘buying’ games. You’re always taking a chance. It’s a weird model. I’m willing to support Garriott’s but certainly understand the other point of view. This is actually the first Kickstarter I have ever given to, not because it’s the best-looking one (it’s certainly not) but because I’m that much of a Garriott fanboi. And because this feels more like ‘his own thing’ in a way that Tabula Rasa didn’t, though that may be denial on my part.
As for what Paul said about other artists, I dunno, he probably did a lot of interviews over the years. :) Frankly Garriott’s trash talk is probably laughably mild by the standards of a lot of rock musicians…
Yeah, you’re right. It was Ultima games I kept returning to during the IV and V days, while lots of other RPGs didn’t hold my interest. The Ultimas were head and shoulders above the others, for the reasons you’ve given above.
Yep, I also agree with everything Gordon said above.
Matt Barton has posted an interview with Richard Garriot. It’s about 60 minutes long but I found it very interesting.
Ocean Quigley and Kip Katseralis of Simcity really proved Garriot’s point.