Lord British Speaks at DragonCon 1996 (part 2)
Transcript by : Brewmeister Dragon aka Mark Carlson (bashar@sundial.net)

From the crowd someone says
He aged about 100 years in one day didn't he? He aged so fast, because last time we saw him he looked like you.
Well, ah, yeah, that is part of the story actually is the ageing verity of some of the companions, including Lord British. Above that is a Dragon. Obviously. The cool things about the dragons is that not only are the Dragons used in the flicks but that same model or actually the same texture put on a smaller..

Joye McBurnett
It started with that model and just cut down the polygon pieces It actually in the game as monsters and also as steeds. So you get to use those in the game. The last screen shot that I can hardly see is another woods scene with a cart and some food.

(Joye McBurnett smiles and adds and polygonal pigs, they're my favourite. )

Ahh and the little polygonal pigs, yeah, over there, I was looking at that. So anyway I think you'll agree the look where getting out of this I think is a major step forward for Ultimas.

The kind of interactive detail is also a major aspect. So let me talk about some of the game design aspects of the game that aren't plot, if I may. As Joye was mentioning we have a sort of back to basics attitude. One if the ways we mean that is, where as one of the things we liked about Ultima 8 was kind of the audio visual detail, one of the things that we didn't intend and one of the things that people really didn't like about Ultima 8 was what I call its arcadeness. And so by no means do we want to include or repeat or enhance the arcadeness but we are going to keep the audio visual detail. One of the things we lost in Ultima 8 was the epic scale of the world. One of the things that Ultima 9 is, by the way, Ultima 9 is the most epic of the Ultimas by far, to date. Its Land mass, well actually Ultima Online, the one Starr is working on there in the back, is actually the largest of the Ultimas. Its land mass is actually larger than all the other Ultimas combined. But that is because it has to have thousands of people playing on it forever. But Ultima 9 is I think the largest in the sense of scope, and places to travel. It also has the most NPCs to talk to, so in the sense of populating the world, and it's again a completely interactive world, in the sense of everything that you can see can be touched and interacted with; every knife, plate, cup, bowl, spoon, that sort of thing. Every lever can be operated. Doors can be opened or broken, furniture can be knocked over or stacked and used in pretty much any way you can imagine. Things like the physics system are way better too. When things used to be tile graphics one of the problems with tile graphics, of course, is every different orientation you want it to show up in is a new piece of art, and so if you want to make it fall over that's a new piece or art, and if you want to show it animating between those two pieces... that's a new piece of art! And so when your in tile graphics you learn to be very efficient in the way you generate art. And so when you like set off a powder keg in a room and things would go flying everything is nicely oriented you know, as it flew across the room. Now, with things being polygonal, you build a table and a table is a table in any orientation and so you don't ....

(I ran out of tape here and had to switch tapes... but he was just talking about the ease of creating in a 3D environment... )

Richard Garriott
Object and so when you double click on the drawer the drawer actually slides out. Again in the old way of tile graphics you have to draw individual frames of animation for every state you wanted it to have now you can actually slide out every drawer and slide back in the ones you don't want to have open. If you know what I mean. So the physics of the world the tangibility, the reality of the world become much improved when we move to this 3D model. It also, by the way, became painful more complicated to code, which is something we're finding out as well. Now lets talk about plot for a minuet too. Oh and by the way, anyone can just step in and ask questions throughout. Don't hold back

(Questions About Blackthorn ).

You were going to say something about Blackthorn?

Hmmm, Ahhhh,... Blackthorn continues to be a major character in Ultimas in the future. That's probably all I can say.

The blackthorn from Ultima 5?

Yup, same guy.

Can you say if he was the nameless monk on Monk Isle?

Was he the nameless monk on Monk Isle, in Serpent Isle?

(Joye answers Undecided): Possibly.

Actually that's a good question, I haven't really given that enough, I don't know.

(Joye gives a distinct "No" with her head)

So here is the Plot low down, and by the way, I have never talked about the plot publicly so if I pause for a minute I'm just debating in my mind what I should be saying.

(Joye says jokingly): And I'm reporting back to the team if he gives anything away.

(Background to Ultima 9).

A lot of you who have seen me talk before all know how I pretty much spout all the details and I always get in trouble when I get back home, always, because someone in this group always goes and talks about this stuff on e-mail (evil grin), which of course I expect too. So I get slammed when I get home What in the world are you thinking. So now they've got spies. So she can smack me as I start to ahh deviate. For those of you who have actually played the other Ultimas, or were just in on the discussion we just had, you know. Ultimas 1 2 and 3 were basically go kill the big bad guy games. And otherwise unrelated. 4 5 and 6 were the Goodie goodie two shoes game where you tried to prove you were a person of good virtue and there really weren't any antagonists. And then Ultimas 7 8 and 9 were to be a kind of departure to the dark side. Which I'm kind of enjoying is a sort of sick and twisted way myself. So in 7 we introduce this character the guardian as a sort if true ultamently evil force who tries to come into Britannia, but you stop him by destroying the black gate. And at the end of Ultima 8 he is pissed off enough now, and at the end of Serpent Isle you were left in the ethereal void so he grabs you and drops you in his world Pagan where you end up having to not pay too much attention to the virtues where you fight fire with fire and eventually become the titan of ether and escape the land of Pagan. And that brings us up to Ultima 9.