What I miss in modern RPGs

[crakkie]

The most non-linear RPG I know of is Daggerfall, but it is still one of the greatest games of all times. If you count out the bugs, that is. Graphic-wise it may suck compared to present-day data, but its atmosphere is 100 times better than Morrowind's.

 

And the first Ultima I remember playing was Pagan. Man was that great. What number was that in the series...

*goes to dig up the cd*

Pagan was Ultima 8. It was actually a bit of a departure from the previous games in the series as you were on a separate planet with none of your companions.

That and it was THE worst (surpassing U9 by far) Ultima game ever conceived. It was like diablo, but even less of an RPG and with godaweful controls.

Oh god the memory, stab it out of my eyes

[Iolo]

It was Super Mario Bros. with all the jumping puzzles. They did a patch for it I think so it wasn't as bad and I imagine Ultima 9 went away from that more.

[Magnum Opus]

The original release of Ultima 8 was a nightmare, but the patch at least let you jump to where your cursor was pointing, instead of a predetermined distance from where you were standing... a distance that was damnably difficult to judge sometimes, since the screen always scrolled in the midst of jumping.

 

Still, even so it's not nearly as bad as I remember it being at the time, considering some of the things I've played since then. Just goes to show how much I liked Ultima 7, given that I played 8 right after, thought it hellish, and yet still play it today (well, yesterday, to get technical about it). I suppose y'all ought to take that into consideration when reading anything I've got to write about Ultima7...

[Judge Hades]

Ultima 7 was the last great Ultima games. U8 and U9 were total crap and not worth playing. What we need is a game that has a good balance between story/character driven plots like PS:T/KotOR and the open-endedness of Morrowind. Fallout series I would say be a closer balance, leaning towards the Morrowind side of things with BG series being closer to the balance leaning towards PS:T.

 

If Obsidian could make a game that is in the middle ground like Fallout or BG in terms of character creation, exploration, and story then I think we might just have a near perfect game.

[Morgoth]

If Obsidian could make a game that is in the middle ground like Fallout or BG in terms of character creation, exploration, and story then I think we might just have a near perfect game.

I wouldn't expect too much for Obsidian's first run, honestly I'm currently not more expecting a game like Bards Tale for multiplatforms.... Unless godlike powers like Bioware helps them out of course.

[Judge Hades]

Well, Troika did a pretty good game for their first run with Arcanum. Not the best game but decent enough that has good replayability. If Troika could do it, Obsidian shouldn't have a problem, but then again Arcanum was strictly PC. All we can do is wait and see.

[Morgoth]

I do not doubt about the talents there, but you've to agree that many poor devs today (especially US devs and without big names) are just victims and slaves of the fat, capitalistically addicted gaming market. I know it sounds corny, but pulishers today aren't anymore interested in progression and art, just commercial & multiplatform. So will not say it's impossible today for newbeginners to establish something unique, but it's getting harder and harder... And I'm surely not that one that bashes OE afterwards just because they "betrayed" their fans with a "dumbed down" game...

[Dissident]

So... the next question is what really is project X?

 

When will Obsidian release more info 'bout it???

[Morgoth]

This question is probably the only reason why people here are currently lurking around like trolls for their next fodder... including me of course! :D

[Judge Hades]

At the latest I see them releasing information at the E3 show.

[G3N13]

Topic A:

The challenge and insane unfairness.

[mkreku]

I agree that Ultima 7 was a really good game, although I never got the speech to work. Ever. But it's disturbing to hear people say that Ultima 8 & 9 weren't "real" Ultima games. Well, in that case, neither was Ultima 7!

 

I have played the Ultima series from the very beginning, Ultima 1, and that was nowhere near Ultima 7 in either gameplay, setting (the world was known as Sosaria!) or even atmosphere. It was mostly hack & slash, with a few short quests thrown in for good measure.

 

Ultima 2 was mostly more of the same, but this time the world had evolved and started to resemble what most people think about when they hear Ultima; Britannia.

 

The biggest change in Ultima 3 was the ability to form a party of adventurers. This and the combat engine was what separated it from the previous games in the series.

 

Not until we reach Ultima 4 does Ultima start to resemble what most people associate Ultima with: The Avatar. It had colour graphics (!), a huge, interesting world, real conversations with NPC's (typed in by hand!), lots and lots of side quests and your ultimate goal wasn't only to "kill the bad guy in the end" but also to become a lighthouse of hope for the people of Britannia, by following eight different virtues. (Side note: Ultima 4 is the Ultima I, personally, consider to be the true Ultima).

 

Ultima 5 was just more of Ultima 4, but with twice as much world to explore (the Underworld) and more features built into the NPC's, the combat and the overall world interaction. It also had a very strong main story, probably the best in any of the Ultimas, but the game never felt as "fresh" as Ultima 4.

 

Ultima 6 entered the scene in 1990 and, unfortunately for the game, by this time the graphics had taken the central role in a game's success. It had great graphics (for its time), a fully interactive world and all the names/characters of an Ultima game. Yet it didn't feel like one. Maybe it was the cumbersome controls or the weak story, I don't know, but this is probably the weakest of all Ultima games.

 

Then along came Ultima 7 which revived the series once more. This game has been excellently explained in another post so I won't go through it again, but it really is a great game, even by todays standards (You can still play it using DosBOX 0.61).

 

Ultima 8 was a great step forward, since the graphic style became more important than the actual gameplay. It was a brave attempt but unfortunately the game engine was so clumsy it didn't work out. It did, however, have a decent story and all the ingredients of a classic Ultima otherwise. People tend to forget that.

 

Ultima 9.. What can I say. Personally I love this game. It has superb graphics. It still works, even under XP. It has lots and lots of equipment, quests, spells, NPC's, locations and so on. What it lacks is.. continuance. It doesn't take the Ultima story in a new direction and it doesn't even try to build on the previous games. But it is still a great game in itself!

 

Who is to decide which of these (mostly) great games are "real" Ultima's or not? People tend to think that their favourite in the series is what the entire series is all about. What if the _first_ game in a game series define what the entire series is about? In that case the Ultima's are nothing more than Diablo-style games with extremely crappy graphics..

[Iolo]

Each new Ultima game in the series pushed the envelope and that was always a trademark of the series. But Ultima 8 was a big divergence from the formula with you being on a different planet with a different magic system. I don't think Iolo, Shamino or the others were around either. Did the game allow parties? Was the world as large as Ultima 7? To be honest I never played Ultima 8 that much. The graphics looked good but the addition of jumping and jumping puzzles didn't go over with a lot of people. After the masterpiece that was Ultima 7, it stands to reason that many people expected the envelope to be pushed more but instead Richard Garriott wanted (or perhaps EA did) to broaden the market a bit by trying to appeal to a wider audience, at the expense of alienating some of the traditional audience. Was the environment still as interactive in Ultima 8 as in Ultima 7? I don't think it was. I certainly don't agree that graphics style is more important than gameplay. You can have both but if I had to choose I would choose gameplay. How many references to the previous games were in Ultima 8? It really seemed to me to be a very different game than the previous games in the series. An experiment perhaps but Garriott I think eventually indicated he would go back to roots more in Ultima 9 (and I am not sure that he did).

 

I never played Ultima 9. The biggest complaints I hear is that the graphics engine ran very slowly and the game was buggy. Not sure if it had a party either and they didn't go with the original ending as planned for the storyline either. The fact that the game's lead designer changed one or twice during development must not have helped it.

[WolfCatBot]

I miss nonhostile animals...

 

I hate hurting wolves and bears and the like, but they always attack first in RPG games lately.

 

I hope they won't be automatically hostile in Projecty X, that would be hip. :D

[Karzak]

I just hope for a good evil plotline not nerfed by some publisher for a teen rateing, and some fallout type humor and action.

[mkreku]

I never played Ultima 9. The biggest complaints I hear is that the graphics engine ran very slowly and the game was buggy. Not sure if it had a party either and they didn't go with the original ending as planned for the storyline either. The fact that the game's lead designer changed one or twice during development must not have helped it.

Ultima IX: Ascension was very buggy at release, and it didn't even have proper Direct X support. But it ran like water on a system with a Glide-compatible graphics card!

 

Anyhow, the game was heavily patched, and the last patch (unofficial patch) was even said to have been developed personally by a disgruntled member of the development team who was mad that EA left the game with such an unfulfilling graphics engine.

 

I recently (about a year ago) bought this game in a games sale. I found this huge box lying at the bottom of a barrel full of games. Imagine my surprise when I saw it was an Ultima game, complete with cloth maps and all. Needless to say, I bought it. And it still works perfectly, even under Windows XP! And I must say it's much better suited for today's computers. I'm running a standard rig (2800Mhz, Radeon 9800 Pro, 512 Mb) and after tweaking it HEAVILY I'm getting viewing distances that are almost fantastic (almost like Gothic!), polygon counts that even todays games have trouble competing against and a game design that's way better than I ever hoped for. It doesn't really feel like an Ultima, probably because of the change of game designers, but it sure as hell works as a game on its own.

[Darkmoon]

I think that the Ultima series evolved with every game. Sure the first games were hack n' slash but still they got bigger, they got more features, they got better stories up to Ultima 7. I think that every fan expected a continuation of this evolution with Ultima 8, but ultimately the game was a step backward. The graphics were great and the expanded movement was good, too. But the item interaction had been toned down, there was no party anymore and the NPC schedules that worked so well in Ultima 7 had been toned down, too. Many fans were very angry.

Richard Garriott promised that Ultima 9 would have all of those features back, an interactivity that surpassed that of Ultima 7 (he said that the player would be able to mine ore, melt it into iron and forge it, or that the player would be able to cut wheat and make it into flour etc.). He also said that the game would feature a party and that daily schedules for NPCs would be back in. The story would be about the Avatar returning to Britannia. The Guardian (the big evil being of Ultima 7-9) would then send twisted visions to Lord British about the things the Avatar did on Pagan and Britannia for him to distrust his old friend. There would have been a civil war etc.

None of these things made it into the final game. When Electronic Arts wanted to pull the plug, Garriott created a different Ultima 9, so that he could finish his series as fast as he could. Unfortunately there was nothing left of the original design and story.

[Synaesthesia]

I miss using 'Secret of the Silver Blades' characters in 'Pool of Radiance'.

[Darkmoon]

Wasn't Secret of the Silver Blades released after Pool of Radiance?

Wouldn't it make more sense using the Pool of Radiance characters in Secret of the Silver Blades?

[Synaesthesia]

Wasn't Secret of the Silver Blades released after Pool of Radiance?

Wouldn't it make more sense using the Pool of Radiance characters in Secret of the Silver Blades?

No. Why not play a game designed for level 1-3 with level 15 characters? Some of the items were fun too. One of my characters weilded a + 5 Bronze Ioun Stone as a weapon. Kicked arse, he did.

[Powerslave]

Mentioning "Pool of Radiance" did bring into my mind the horrible memory of it...Argh, the pain!!! As some reviewer greatly summed up in his walkthrough of the game:

 

"Party Member 1 attacks Orc - Miss!

Party Member 2 attacks Orc- Miss!

Orc attacks Party Member 1- Hit! -10HP!

Party Member 1 attacks Orc- Miss!

Party Member 2 heals Party Member 1, +10HP!

Orc attacks Party Member 1- Hit! -10HP

Repeat this for about half an hour then try something new:

Party Member 1 attacks Orc- Miss!

Party Member 2 casts Magic Missile at Orc- Immune!

User Exits to Windows..."

 

You can read the walkthrough at http://alexandria.rpgclassics.com/PC/ruins...thdrannor_2.txt , it is hilarious

[JJ86]

When games lose the incredible flexibility and detail that text adventures had in exchange for pretty graphics, then something is very wrong. Border Zone had a incredible mood and detail to it even though it was stuck with the limitations of text. Even Fallout didn't lose text descriptions to enhance the game experience. When games abandon those descriptions and substitute the player's imagination with pretty graphics then the game sufefrs. The best graphics today can't compare with my imagination. So developers need to keep the player's imaginations active and functioning.

[G3N13]

I miss nonhostile animals...

 

I hate hurting wolves and bears and the like, but they always attack first in RPG games lately.

 

I hope they won't be automatically hostile in Projecty X, that would be hip. :D

The one thing I liked in NwN: SoU was the ability of a ranger or druid to communicate with and tame animals.

[Magnum Opus]

For me, the Ultimas (the ones that defined the series... 1 - 7) represented huge, interactive worlds, and a pluralistic way of looking at things. Ultimas 8 and 9 did a complete 180 on that. World interaction went down the toilet in many cases, and the party was nowhere to be seen. "Baking bread" became sononomous with the level of detail that was just expected with those games after Ultima 7... gather the flour, mix it with water into dough, pop it in the oven and sell it for coin. That sort of player interaction just wasn't there in Pagan... although I did rather like the destructible tables and chairs in that one. Covered the entire rooftop of the palace of Tenebrae with flasks of oil, fire gems, and chaos gems, and then just lit one. Great fun, that, watching the whole thing go up in flames.

 

That's not to say that I think those last two are bad games, but they just don't measure up to the previous standard that was set by Ultima 7, in the ways that Ultima made its trademark. Ultima 8 is fun, if a bit frustrating in certain areas, and Ultima 9 has great music, gorgeous graphics and a detailed plot to explore, but there's just something lacking with them with no companions complaining in your ear and a plot that sheperds you through the game like you're on a guided tour.

 

Either way, though, they still have something that I miss in the most recent games I've played: The ability to have fun just messing around with the world you're adventuring in. Ultima 9 may have cut out a lot of the interaction, but you could still build bread bridges that reached up higher than the clouds to see what was really at the top of Stonegate tower... although using empty flasks was more convenient, if a little harder to climb up. Ultima 8, while it didn't have the variety of monsters or quests that its predecessors had, still had enough world interactivity that enterprising minds could find ways to have fun with the inhabitants of the world that might be considered "unethical" by more rigorous Avatars. Even in those games, the worlds were like little games unto themselves with all the things you could do in them.

 

That's what I 'd like to see again. A game world whose existence isn't limited to its relevance to the quest at hand.

[Dark Lord Revan]

I wish someone would make a 21st century text based rpg.