1979’s Akalabeth: World Of Doom, eventually renamed Ultima 0, is the first commercial game by Richard Garriott (himself aka'd Lord British), and one of the very first roleplaying video games to enter the market. It’s also a precursor to Garriott’s Ultima series, introducing many elements that formed the core of the following games. But everything that Akalabeth invented would eventually be abandoned, first by its sequels and then the entire RPG genre.
]]>Back in June, Syndicate and Ultima Underworld I & II disappeared from GOG.com at EA's request. Then they returned to the digital storefront earlier this month without much explanation, and are being given away for free for a period of four weeks by way of apology.
Now EA have said they'll have a "process in place" in future so things like this don't happen.
]]>Syndicate and Ultima Underworld have returned to GOG. The classics and their sequels were removed from the service back in June for unclear reasons, but are back now and for the "foreseeable future." Better still, they're all free to keep if you grab them anytime during the next four weeks.
]]>Perhaps being nine years old when it was released may have dulled my appreciation of the original Ultima Underworld. Looking back, it's a vitally important, genre-defining game, but I was just too young and inexperienced to appreciate it at the time. Decades of playing immersive sims later, and I am practically buzzing with anticipation for spiritual successor Underworld Ascendant. Today, OtherSide Entertainment (who are also working on System Shock 3) released a new gameplay trailer as well as announcing that the game is due out this September.
]]>The past few years have been dense with reboots, remakes and Kickstarter-funded drives to return old franchises to life. When it was first announced, Shroud of The Avatar seemed like a relatively safe bet; the original mind behind the Ultima series, returning to not only dust off the singleplayer and story-driven side of the franchise, but blend it with the fondly remembered gameplay mechanics of Ultima Online.
We've not covered Shroud of The Avatar at all since November 2014. Now, almost five years since it first raised $2m on Kickstarter, and over three years since it first debuted on Early Access, Portalarium reckon it's about ready for launch.
]]>Underworld Ascendant is a game for anyone who has ever tormented a GM during a tabletop RPG session. The maps have been drawn up, the traps have been primed and all of the plans are coming together. You're deep in a dungeon and the story is about to take a very unpleasant turn. And then...
“You said the spikey pillars are made of the same wood from which the ancient throne of Catharsia was carved? Fine. I'll set fire to them.”
“You can't do that...there are another six distinct phases of this particular peril...”
“I'm pretty sure I can. They're wood. They'll burn. Let's get out of here.”
]]>Imagine you’re on a quest for a powerful artefact in Divinity: Original Sin 2. Perhaps you conversed with a ghost who pointed you in the right direction. Now you see demons close by. You cast Chameleon Cloak to try to sneak by, but alas! you are spotted. The fight begins. You draw your weapons, inscribed with runes. You weave protective spells. You summon your cat familiar to enter the fray and confound your enemies. A fireball scroll sets a puddle of oil ablaze, but you misjudged and now you’re on fire as well! But a potion you concocted earlier heals your wounds just in time.
It’s a typical scenario for D:OS2 and similar fantasy RPGs. Magic is everywhere, and you could barely swing your cat familiar by the tail without hitting a fellow Sorcerer (don’t do that though, it’s cruel). But where do these spells, demons and artefacts come from? Games have so inundated us with magic that it’s easy to forget that even the most outlandish, videogamey spectacles have their Source-drenched roots in historical beliefs and practices.
]]>Not only does a great hero need a great villain, villains are usually just so much more fun. Whether it's the tortured lost soul who can only find peace by destroying the universe or the cheery psychopath looking to see the world burn, it's no wonder that many of the greatest films of all time have been defined at least as much by the baddie as any individual scene. Darth Vader, the Terminator, Norman Bates, Dracula... villains get people excited. A great villain lives forever, death be damned.
]]>The sign of a truly hardcore world is that it has its own languages. Klingon. Dothraki. Elvish. The term for these is 'Conlangs' - aka 'constructed languages' - and whether you see them as a vital part of world-building or a joke-in-waiting on The Big Bang Theory (they're due a third one one of these days), there's more to them than just slapping together some uncommon syllables and hoping it sounds alien. Well, actually, that's exactly how Klingon started, but never mind. Done right, paying attention to language offers more than just another DVD extra. Or at least, it can do...
]]>Backstage areas have always fascinated me. Behind the scenes in theatres, where all the glitz and glamour dies instantly the moment you step where the public isn't meant to see - down lethal staircases and in filthy preparation rooms. The tunnels in places like Walt Disney World, where cast members travel to avoid ruining the magic, and tough security guards probably not wearing mouse ears emerge to haul off trouble-makers. And in games, especially online ones, there's often parts that we're just not meant to see, from developer tricks to places for the GM team to hang out.
Quite often, these include prisons. For the really naughty players to go.
]]>Looking back on System Shock, one part inevitably stands out more than any other. SHODAN. The goddess of Citadel Station. With her words she turned a futuristic maze into a horrific hunter/hunted situation, where survival was about clawing back control and beating the machine at her own game. It’s an impressive achievement… but especially when you consider that really, she was little more than a few well written voice files and a world that let them temporarily seem like something more.
Since the start of gaming though, there’s been technology… and there’s been showmanship. One often gets mistaken for the other. We see advanced AI in characters that simply broadcast what they’re doing. A simple line of dialogue at the right moment can make a game. In Deus Ex for instance, being shouted at for going into the ladies’ wasn’t simply a cute bit of scripting, but its way of saying that it was always watching. And you were never going to know what it was watching out for.
Sometimes, characters just commenting at all can create wonders.
]]>Full disclosure time. I'm about to talk about Fallen London [official site] by Failbetter Games, a game and company that I've now done a fair amount of writing for. Please pause to get the necessary pinch of salt to take with anything that follows, if you wish. However, my love for this crazy Victorian universe goes back a lot further than that, and this week I'm not going to talk about anything I've had a hand in. Instead, I thought I'd discuss Seeking the Name. It doesn't sound like much, but it's one of the most interesting, disturbing quests you'll ever regret taking on.
Some minor lore spoilers follow, but nothing too deep.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
1993 was the best year of all the years. I was 16, life was splendid, music was incredible, Doom and Day Of The Tentacle were released, what a time. And it was also the year of Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth Of Worlds.
]]>I must confess, since finishing Siege of Dragonspear the other week, I've not actually fired up any RPGs. It's not for want of them to play. I'm particularly looking forward to finally trying Final Fantasy IX, which I missed back in the day, and Beamdog's recently announced interquel, Planescape Torment: The Nameless One And A Half. (It's very similar to the original, only now whenever someone asks "What can change the nature of a man?" a furious little goblin pops onto the screen to yell "#notallmen!")
The problem has simply been timing - not having a nice satisfying chunk of time to really settle down for an epic experience. So instead, I thought I'd take a look at a few speed-runs, and see how fifty hours suddenly becomes a minute and a half... provided you don't include the hundreds of hours to get to that point. Here's a few of them I dug up to make your completion times look like crap, from RPGs old and new.
]]>Spoiler alert, RPGs are kinda ridiculous. Most games are, of course. While the Mythbusters may have shown that carrying Doomguy's loadout into battle isn't as bad as it might sound, there's a reason they've never done a follow-up about doing it after taking a few rockets to the face. Likewise, we can't know the effect of glugging down fifty health potions a day, but it must mean a lot of pauses for the heroic knight to hurriedly get his armour off for a quick pee-break.
Like a lot of things, there's a line here - on one side, things that are interesting to see a game justify, and on the other, things that are probably best handwaved. Where does that line lie?
]]>In the kind of Getting The Band Back Together news that makes me hyperventilate ever so slightly, the news just broke that Warren Spector has joined Otherside Games, the studio working on System Shock 3 and Ultima Underworld spiritual successor Underworld Ascendant.
]]>"A rogue's view of the dwarven magic controlling the flow of lava in the Stygian Abyss' Volcanic core."
That is how the folk at OtherSide Entertainment teased a video for a prototype of their RPG Underworld Ascendant [official site]. I'm a sucker for wanting to peer into Stygian Abysses (provided they don't start peering back into me) and thus here we are. They did not mention it was a very bad day to be a Shadow Beast:
]]>Most RPGs ask you to save the world, but not all of them offer a world worth saving. Honestly, there's been quite a few where given the choice I'd have joined the evil overlord just to beat up all the potion vendors who wouldn't even give me a discount before the final battle, and for the mere chance of stabbing the guard in Act 1 who wouldn't let me into The Town Where The Actual Bloody Game Starts.
This week though, I'm interested in the other side of that - the worlds that become more than just a place to grind for loot and XP. The places that feel real. Beloved worlds, which don't necessarily correlate with beloved games. I really enjoyed Skyrim for instance, but Skyrim as a world largely leaves me cold for reasons that have nothing to do with the Frostfall mod. That's not the same as saying it's bad, or any real quality judgement at all, simply that for me it never became a second home, more than a playground. Fallout New Vegas meanwhile, despite its problems, ticked all of the boxes. It was a world I could believe in, get immersed by, and not want to leave, which given the current political climate around the world is quite probably for the best.
Here are some of the most special worlds for me. How about you? Note, we're talking entire worlds, as in the settings for whole games, not specific places like, say, Gold Saucer in Final Fantasy VII or FFXIV. Those are cool too, but... another week!
]]>Given a choice, I almost always play as a mage. Swords? Pah. Divine magic? Save it for Sunday School. Give me control over the elements, the power to reshape the very building blocks of the universe according to my every whim, and if at all possible, a cool hat. It's an easy fantasy to indulge in almost any RPG out there.
I just wish it was a more satisfying one.
]]>As wonderful as RPGs are, some tropes and cliches and just general bloody annoyances really do spoil the fun. Some of them might only crop up occasionally, others just won't go away. Some, you might think, are just petty irritations. But no! All these incontrovertible sins must be destroyed at once! Here's a few of my least favourite offenders. What others would you add to the cursed list?
]]>Though rarely doing much with the rights to the old PC games which once made EA's name, they do at least have this pleasant habit of occasionally making some retro delight free for a week or two. This time, it's Ultima VIII Gold Edition, the Richard Garriot-designed roleplaying game from towards the twilight of the Origin years.
]]>Oh goodness me. If Underworld Ascendant [Kickstarter] can at least match my hazy, confused memories of Ultima Underworld 2, the first game I ever played on my dad's PC, then I'll be a happy bunny. If it can match what's being said by the team about their "improvisation engine", then my jaw will hang agog. They are, it seems, attempting to create a setting where you'll be able to - at least feel like you can - approach scenarios in your own way. Hmmm. It's a claim I've heard a lot of times before, but heck, if I had to pick who was make it happen, I'd likely choose former Looking Glass members. Talking of whom, Warren Spector shows up in a new video, reminiscing on the original games.
]]>Underworld Ascendant [official site] has some big shoes to fill. Big shoes of Nostalgia +8. As a continuation of the Ultima Underworld series, with a team led by Looking Glass veteran Paul Neurath, Ascendant is picking up where the immersive first-person RPG left off a couple of decades ago. The game is currently well on its way to a $600,000 Kickstarter target and I spoke to Neurath about the project, and how it's possible to move forward while looking to the past.
“This isn't Looking Glass 2.0,” he says, even though Looking Glass 2.0 seems like a hell of a good thing to be. “We're not just looking back and trying to recreate something from the past. We're hoping to be part of the future.”
]]>Edit - links fixed
As old school PC gamers' desires for a comeback go, a new Ultima Underworld is right up there with new System Shock or new true-blood X-COM. While a huge number of '90s PC devs have burst back into the limelight thanks to Kickstarter and a legion of people who are terrified of new things, I don't believe we've yet seen anyone from revered UU/System Shock/Thief studio Looking Glass sing for their crowd-funded supper. Today, Looking Glass co-founder Paul Neurath does, with spiritual Ultima Underworld sequel Underworld Ascendant. It's a subterranean, first-person RPG, which he claims is set in 'a living, breathing fantasy world.' While EA retain squatters' rights to the Ultima license, Ascendant's protagonist will be named 'The Avatar', and it even gets the Garriot blessing.
You know you want it. Take a look below.
]]>Every Sunday, we reach deep into Rock, Paper, Shotgun's 141-year history to pull out one of the best moments from the archive. This week, Adam explores his own gaming history to understand why he plays and why he writes.
This is my first week back from a holiday, during which time I barely looked at an internet, let alone wrote on one. I didn't play any games either, unless you consider freezing to death on a remote Welsh hillside to be some sort of game. As is often the case, not doing something for five minutes has made me think about why I do it in the first place. Why, of all the wonderful and fascinating things that exist, do I spend so much time thinking and writing about games?
]]>Be still my beating heart. No, wait, not quite that still. Somebody fetch the defibrillator.
There's a new Underworld game in development. That's Underworld as in Ultima Underworld, as in a couple of the greatest RPGs that have ever graced computing devices. Underworld Ascension doesn't have the Ultima name and we know very little about it, but the developer at the head of the team has just the right pedigree. Paul Neurath, founder of new studio OtherSide Entertainment, was a founder of Blue Sky (later Looking Glass Studios of legend), and worked as creative director during the development of several games, including Thief, Terra Nova and the original Ultima Underworld. I want to believe.
]]>That's right - Ultima 1-9, plus the two Underworld games, for the price of a pint. And not one of those fancy craft ales that you'd sup in a tweedy pop-up bar that charges sixteen quid for a thimble filled with 'paprika-spiced apple cinnamon wedges' that taste like rancid Doritos. GOG.com are currently offering the Ultima bundle for $7.14. That's the price of a pint of Carling round these parts, with a pack of Transform-a-Snacks on the side. Ultima is far better for body and soul.
]]>In this second part of my conversation with Warren Spector, we discuss the good and bad of Disney, Spector’s new role as an Academy director, the benefits and drawbacks of growing up as a gamer, and the parallels between Hollywood in the late forties and the games industry now. Also, why indie development is the place to be.
]]>There are a lot of words being written about the new consoles this week but when I spoke to Warren Spector a few days ago, he was clear about where his future lies: “I think all the interesting stuff is happening on PC now… Assuming I make more games, which I intend to do, PC and Mac are going to be my targets.”
It’s good to hear. We spoke at the Bradford Animation Festival and covered a wide range of topics, from his theories of design and pioneering role in PC gaming to thoughts on the current state of the industry. In this first part of our conversation, there’s insight into how Spector see his own legacy and the work of his former colleagues, and how frustrations with Thief’s difficulty inspired the player empowerment of Deus Ex.
]]>Like so many role-playing pioneers before him, Richard Garriott has joined the boom-or-bust gold rush that is Kickstarter. However, unlike literally all of those same pioneers, Garriott's kinda, you know, been to space. He also owned an actual, factual castle at one point. The fates, in other words, haven't been unkind to his rather formidable fortune, and it stands to reason that he's not in what mere mortals like ourselves would refer to as "dire straits." So then, why all this Kickstarter hoopla for Shroud of the Avatar? Moreover, how will its episodic structure work? And Garriott's gone on about how the pseudo-MMO is actually single-player at heart, but how will the teeth of one puzzle piece interlock with the sawblade edges of another? Click past the break for Garriott's best attempts at explaining some of his Ultima successor's stickier issues.
]]>This is my first week back from a holiday, during which time I barely looked at an internet, let alone wrote on one. I didn't play any games either, unless you consider freezing to death on a remote Welsh hillside to be some sort of game. As is often the case, not doing something for five minutes has made me think about why I do it in the first place. Why, of all the wonderful and fascinating things that exist, do I spend so much time thinking and writing about games?
]]>Free RPGs of old! I hadn't thought about the Worlds of Ultima games for a long time but they are now free on GOG.com and seeing that made me hunger for a continuation. Rather than taking place in Britannia, land of vice and virtue, the short-lived spin-off series transports the Avatar to fantastical Vernian environments, namely a savage jungle empire and a Victorian era Mars. The second game, Martian Dreams, even had Freud and Tesla in it which earns an automatic +2 points out of arbitrary number of choice. I love this sort of thing in my RPGs but for now it's enough that both games can be mine again for free and more of the same, old or new, would be very welcome. They are hither and thither.
]]>It's no secret that Richard 'King English' Garriott is working on a spiritual sequel to Ultima, having left the series' rights locked in an EA basement somewhere. It's no secret because he's said so, repeatedly. But what's more surprising is that he apparently isn't resigned to never getting them back - and he's even talking about working with EA again. The lion and the lamb! Cats sleeping with dogs! THE END TIMES.
More specifically, he told Eurogamer that "We've had discussions at very high levels with Electronic Arts about access to the property [and]...a possible marketing and distribution relationships and things of this nature."
Which is rather promising, presuming he's not just making wild public declarations in the hope of changing minds. More below.
]]>Lord British, aka Richard Garriott, aka the creator of clasic RPG series Ultima: he's been to space, which makes me instantly worry about him being some sort of replicant. It seems that since he's been back on Earth he's been pondering his next game. In a lenghty post on Facebook, he's announced his intention to make the "Ultimate RPG", distilling everything he's learned in 36 years of game design into the new project, his New Britannia.
]]>Good Old Games are once again scooping up the games of the past, dusting off the cobwebs, teaching them about the future ways, and then setting them free into the internets, unfettered by leashes or DRM. And if you've been concerned that their definition of "Good" has been somewhat loose of late, this time they have some true classics. How classic? Pretty much as classic as classic gaming gets. They've finally got EA on board with some of the most famous names in PC gaming history. One of them is going to make Alec squeal like five girls. I'm teasing you. I'm making you want to click to carry on reading, and thus increasing our ad loads. No! Don't look at the tags!
]]>Here's some news for you. And not just news. NEWS. Valve Software have just hired a new employee. And not just a new employee. A NEW EMPLOYEE.
Doug Church. Doug 'Thief' Church. Doug 'System Shock' Church. Doug 'Ultima Underworld' Church. Doug 'Deus Ex' Church. Doug 'helped (to varying degrees) design a good dozen of the most beloved PC games of all time' Church.
And now he's at Valve, who have themselves made several more of the most beloved PC games of all time. To don my Hat of Supreme Hyperbole for a moment, Elvis* has joined the Beatles.
]]>This isn't like other Ultima Underworld II retrospectives. This is Dan Griliopoulos' account of Ultima Underworld II as a "memory palace", a mental construct which Wikipedia describes as a "mnemonic technique that relies on memorised spatial relationships to establish, order and recollect memorial content." That's the starting point. Let's find out what he's up to in there.
Let me start in the middle; I own a palace.
]]>You can take the Lord British out of Ultima, but you can't take the Ultima out of Lord British. Does that make sense? Probably not, but it sounded good, which is essentially the story of my career.
EA still jealously guards the Ultima license, despite not doing a whole lot with it outside of an only tangentially related free to play strategy game. However, it appears Ultima creator Richard Garriot has managed to personally retain the rights to sometime alter-ago and in-game ruler Lord British, which he now intends to use as the cornerstone of a new online game. "Lord British's New Britannia" awaits...
]]>It seems worth noting what Mr Richard Garriott has been up to since his trip to outsidespace. Back in January Alec noted that the deposed Lord British would still very much like to work within the Ultima license. Since then he's announced his involvement with Portalarium - an online gaming doodah that intends to create social media type stuff. (Hard-hitting analysis.) Which is to say, he's planning on making more games, this time for social networking sites like Facebook, mobile phones, browser-based affairs, and they say for the PC. So far Portalarium has launched the bizarrely named Sweet @$! Poker for Facebook. But yesterday, speaking to Kotaku, Garriott revealed his ambitions to create an "Ultima-esque" game for the service.
]]>After all that Garriotian goodwill generated by Kieron's welcome 'hey! Remember Ultima?' nostalgia-tickle over the weekend, brace yourself for a shock. EA have brought Ultima back at last! Yipee yahoo hooray! Except... it's not Ultima.
]]>No, don't get over excited. No news of any new Ultima. But before I do the Sunday Papers, I thought this may make a worthwhile talking point. I was chatting with Paul Barnett of EA Mythic on Friday about Ultima, specifically people's memories of it. As in, it's one of the series which a towering thing in the PC history, but what it actually means to you can vary enormously. In its original golden age, I'd argue it was particularly American-centric in terms of its appeal. And then there's a second, seismic impact with Ultima Online. And some of you reading will never have actually even played any of the things, and it lives on sheer reputation. Anyway - that's the question for the comments thread. What was the first time you became aware of Ultima? What did it mean to you?
]]>Brian RPGWatch brought news that The Ultima 6 Project has reached the public beta stage and is, by all accounts, pretty stable. The idea, much like the previous Ultima 5 Lazarus, is to reincarnate these seminal games in a more modern engine. In this case, Dungeon Siege. You can go and download the beta from here if you fancy a trip to Britannia. To see it in action... well, the only footage I could find is from Milestone 5. So bear in mind, the full Beta is 3 milestones along from this. Though, to be honest, this looks pretty nifty to me.
]]>Who can tell? But Lord British has given his blessing, apparently. As picked up via Game Set Watch who picked it up from Armchair Arcade. Italian photographer Enrico Ricciardi has created an Ultima-themed calender, showcasing the 12 virtues. Which sounds like a euphemism, if I've ever heard one. Anyway, skimming through the images, it seems like it's probably one for the Witcher fans. Oh yeah. I went there. Oh yes - ladies and/or gay men! You're not left out. You're just - er - marginalised. Check out Courage, eh? Pwoooar! (Are you sure? - Ed).
]]>As we mentioned last week, after hurriedly deciding to do the Gaming Made Me feature we hurriedly sent a mail around to those RPS-correspondents and famous-folk we didn't feel too bad about hurriedly asking to hurriedly write a little thing about the games that made them who they are. 2K-Boston's Ken "System Shock 2/Freedom Force/Bioshock" Levine didn't write a little thing, instead giving us a thousand words on the games who made him who he is today. And you'll find it below...
]]>Just a quickie about GameDaily's fairly candid interview with Lord British hisself. The sometime space voyager mostly shares about his thoughts on the upcoming Tabula Rasa closure. He seems saddened but not devastated; perhaps that's because the old boy's seen plenty of his games suffer in the past, or perhaps it's endemic of how TR was never what it should have been.
]]>Gaming archaeology: now there's an idea. It can only be better than Bonekickers, anyway.
Upon hearing that EA Mythic had received several crateloads full of Origin Systems (the long-dead studio behind the Wing Commander and Ultima games, plus System Shock, and once home to the power duo of Warren Spector and Richard Garriot) archive materials, a group of fans arranged to catalogue the treasure trove. It turned out that EA seems to have hung onto an incredible amount of stuff, making this find perhaps the PC game equivalent of discovering all those fossilised folk in Pompeii. Best of all, there's a good chance all these historical goodies will be released to the public.
]]>[At this point in these postmortem features, I decided to mix it up a little for PC Format. Since they were integrated into the mod-section of the magazine - with the subtext that they were inspirational things for readers thinking about becoming games developers - I thought a look at how a designer got to be a designer could be fun. Luckily, Harvey, who's previously worked on landmark games including Deus Ex and System Shock, was up for it. The interview was done after the end of Ion Storm Austin, but before he'd joined Midway to work on Blacksite.]
We all look back, in an unholy mix of nostalgia and self-analysis. It’s what this column is all about. This time, however, we’re going to take an alternate route through this terrain. Rather than follow the path of a game, and what went right and wrong, instead we’re going to follow a career. How it started, how it moved on and what was learned at each step. And, indirectly, one of the most common questions that arrive in our inbox: “How do I get into the games industry”. Here’s a case study of how one man did. The man in question? Harvey Smith, who started back in 1993 in Quality Assurance at Origin and continues to this day at Midway.
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