Lord British
Speaks at DragonCon 1996
(part 3)
Transcript by :
Brewmeister Dragon aka Mark Carlson (bashar@sundial.net)
(Story Line of Ultima 9 )
I think it is acceptable to say the Ultima 9 does take place back in Britannia. Which is good news, at least for me, I enjoy Britannia a lot. The game starts with you, let me pause so I can think what I'm going to say here... Let me sort of give an overview and come back to details later. Over all of course this is going to be the end of the third book and third trilogy of Ultima so therefore it had to be a true epic profound game in the sense of not only did it need to bring what I call the Guardian Trilogy to a close but it is also going to bring the Avatar history and close. While we were doing that we said well we may as well go back to the first one. Of course there really wasn't that much plot in the first three so revised, we added we revised history a little bit for the first three. One of the hardest revisions I have to deal with is how in the world earth got into this (He points to the Ultima 2 map). So we kind of avoid that when we discuss histories in Ultimas. So anyway we got elements the involves, basically, a truly epic story that revolves around and brings to a close story elements out of all 9 Ultimas to date. Which was tricky to engineer and also to present properly. We wanted to be able to use elements out of those games but not even remotely required people to have played those games because you know most of those games aren't even playable on today's machines and a lot of people are too young to have been around to have played those games. When they first came out. So by no means for those of you who have not played Ultimas, don't go back and play them in preparation for Ultima 9. If you want to go back and play them, please do, go buy them, make us money but it's perfectly acceptable to start right off in Ultima 9 and you'll get a good sense of the history and every thing that had gone on before. One of the things I think is really cool about the Ultimas is how rich the history is. In the sense of even if you don't know the story and anecdotes, they are eluded to in such a kind of fond manner that you kind of get a feel that it really isn't something that wasn't made up today. It really has a lot that has gone before. And even little anecdotes like I talked about in the last session how Trip Howkins and Pirt Snikwoh and how much I hate Trip Howkins and how much I make fun of him in the game. So to construct an epic tale of this size, like I said, was sort of a difficult engineering. So we wanted it to be epic in the sense of scope and we also wanted it to be epic in the sort of deeds you performed. So it couldn't just be, you go out and collect puzzle pieces and Ta da, you win! It had to be really profound and so that's why we brought back a number of characters and story elements from the previous Ultimas so that way you have a sort of tangible evil that has a history that therefore has some profoundness for. That is why we brought in the riding of dragons because we said people have always longed to do things on these grander scales that the engine has never had the tools to be able to perform and so the deeds you perform are truly epic deeds with truly epic equipment against truly epic foes. That was really general wasn't it? So it's very epic. It's big big big big big. Some of the details of how big it is, there's literally hundreds of characters. There's 40 characters in what we call the main line, that's plot critical people that you must deal with significantly to get through the game. There's another hundred or so main conversations in the sense of fully developed personalities in the game.
(Joye interjects): They actually have something to say besides Name, Job, Bye.
And then beyond that there is a plethora of what we'll call fillers; Beggars, guards, ect, ect, ect... that kind of flesh out the rest of the world. All spread around 12 or the 15 cities, Dungeons and other kinds of environments. So again that's kind of an idea of the scale. So what can I tell about the plot in detail? O.K. what I can say is that as the final battle, the guardian... ah, o.k. I can say this. Your back in Britannia and the Guardian is here. And the guardian has been here for the whole time you've been gone in Pagan. Or at lease a significant fraction of it, so therefore all the bad things that were immanent in Ultima 7 have come to Fruition, in the sense of his authority is well entrenched. As such his influence in the populous level, like individuals that may be sensitive to or favourable to are now well in place. All the way up to the sendings that are being sent to Lord British, which misrepresenting your deeds within the world. Like I'll go ahead, I'll get in trouble for this tomorrow, I'll describe sending one to you, which kind of sets the pace for this kind of out-of-favorness that you and Lord British will share. The first sending is kind of a re-visiting of what happened in Ultima 8. One of the scenes that you have to do in Ultima 8 is you have to summon a demon. You actually participate, in building the pentagram, lighting the candles, and summoning this great demon Pyros. Well, that's not a very Avatar like thing to do. So one of the first sendings is going to be the Guardian talking to Lord British saying this person you thought was suck a great ethical responsible hero has been out summoning demons. So Lord British gets to watch that scene. Later on in the game one of the first times you get to meet Lord British one of the things he asks you is were you off summoning demons? Were you off doing these kind of Paganistic anti-avatar kind of stuff? Paganistic, I use that loosely. Anyway you get the idea is that the guardian uses things that were truthful and as you play through the game Ultima 9 you actually continues to use actual events against you. Which will be an interesting thing to combat... no, no it wasn't that way really I didn't say that, well I did say that, well... didn't mean that. Well you get the idea, so throughout the beginning of the game you and LB get to be widely separated from mental perspectives. Another thing I can tell you is that the Guardian will now have set up a kind of great Cataclysm for Britannia. A very tangible measurable cataclysm that will be apparent when you first see a map of Britannia.
When you look at Britannia, those of you who have seen Britannia will be able to recognise it, and of course in the game there will be old and new maps. When you see the cloth map for Ultima 9 you will see that there are substantial tectonic plate movements taking place. That also of course any time you have a society with massive tectonic plate movements it probable means that a lot of things are going badly.
Because things like weather and
crops and Plague and famine are going to be amiss at times like
this. This is going to be a time of great strife which unless the
avatar manages to fix things it could leave to really bad results
for the populous of Britannia. Boy that's way to vague I know,
and I apologise for being Vague but this is the last one we are
really trying to hold back some of the detail. Because we really
spent a lot of time engineering what we think is a rally cool
ending. And a really cool kind of epic puzzle that we don't want
to give away too much detail on.
(More Questions )
Are there Gargoyles?
There are Gargoyles. Any more questions?
Will this be the last Ultima?
It will not be the last Ultima. At the very least there is Ultima Online, actually Ultima Online will come out first.
(Joye jumps in): It will pretty be the last Ultima with the Avatar as the main protagonist, he will probably be making appearances in the Other Ultimas, but yeah next time around you will have a whole different player character.
Yeah, but with Ultima 9, there will be other Ultimas, but we are trying to close this history, if you know what I mean. And do it in a way so that people don't feel like they have to play the other Ultimas first. If I can drive one thing home it's don't go play all the other ones first because you don't need to. If you have not played an Ultima before, start with this one and you will be extremely happy.
Are you going to have a party?
Yes, you do get to have a party. The party size is being debated right now but it will be pretty small, you and a couple other companions that you can change out.
Will the companions be more useful?
Yes, we are working very hard to make them much more useful. In the sense that not only will they generally feed themselves and arm themselves, but also make much more useful commentary throughout the game. Offer advise.
Will they step in the fire?
I sure hope not. But of course we get a lot of character development as well. Shamino, the character who is the ranger, often helps you find yourway through places. We've got this one part of the game where it is really critical that you get through this maze, we'll call it, correctly and Shamino was not in a proper mental state when he previously went through there and so you have an interesting time getting through this maze with his help, because his help is somewhat dubious. There are a variety of cases like that where he really get to expand on the character development of the individual.
Joye adds In fact every one of the traditional companions, in Britannia, has expanded. As well as with you.
Dupre's role?
Dupre ah..
(Joye says): Take the 5th.
We take the 5th about Dupre. Which is also telling in its self,
so...More questions?
Are there any races besides human and Gargoyle?
Oh yeah, well, for main PCs those are the two primary character classes but you know all of the creature monster types all of those could be sentient type things.
Any traditional Hobbit, Dwarf, Elf type thing?
Definitely no Hobbit no Dwarf, no Elf. So ah, no to those. Something interestingly enough I was 19 when I started Ultima 1 and 14 when I started the ones before that. So like in Ultima 1 not only are there things like Hobbits elves and Dwarves but things like Fuzzies. Which clearly I could have got in lots of trouble for and I'm lucky I didn't. One of the guys who was working for me in Ultima 6 put a barmaid named Tika in there which I found out later when I was on a panel was from Dragonlance. All kinds of.. The earlier stuff, I like to write it of as sort of youth and ignorance. As the product line and also the development group matured we've tried to focus on stuff that we have created on our own, which is always a plus. Even though Dwarves and Elves and stuff are basically classic mythology we have been focusing more and more on races and creatures and fiction and history that have been strictly evolved with in our product itself.
I was wondering what your going to do with character stats.Are you going to have the sort of traditional, you know you kind of pull up the little picture and it has got their stats.
(Joye answers) :Yeah, we're going to have that, and we're going to have a skills system. Much like we have in Ultima Online. Very similar to the one in Ultima Online, on purpose. Yes we'll have the full paper dolling, you know, take on your armour and you can see it on your little guy walking around. Take it off, you see him without the armour walking around. Base attributes there's only going to be a few but they can influence your rate of gaining skills how many skills you can remember at one time. That sort of thing.
Yeah, the theory of attributes and game mechanics, which have been very minimalist as you have noticed, is in a computer game specifically an attribute that does not get used, that is not a game mechanic is literally, obviously, totally useless. And a attribute that only gets used for one or two things in the game is mostly useless. And I always wanted to make sure that if your tracking points in one area, that it going up is something relevant to you as a player. I think that makes some pretty good sense obviously. That's why I have kept the attributed down to pretty strict minimum of three. In fact as the teams have grown and changed their numbers I have always nixed it and kept it at three. However we do have more variety now with the skills system. For each game like Ultima 9 and Ultima Online will be a different set of skills because there will be a different set of activities you can do within the game. But that gives you individual determination to the exact kind of deeds you can perform within the physical game.
Are there any plans to go back and re-doing the old Ultimas so they can be played on today's systems?
Yeah in fact in fact in Ultima 9 is the game Ankhalabeth, which is the very first Ultima, Ultima 0 is in the game. That game was never converted to any platform beyond its original Apple ][ basic, and so that one is available. In fact, also, all the earliest Ultimas are available for free for download from Origin. Or sites we can steer you to.One thing that I would like to do personally, and I really can't say Origin would do this, is rewrite Ultima 4 from scratch. And the reason why is, out of all the Ultimas, by the way 5 and 7 are my favourites because the plots have a lot more grey area in them in the sense of the plots weren't black and white. And 4 the way I originally wrote 4 was very black and white, the good guys were obviously good and the bad guys were obviously bad and you go around and you act like the good guy and your done. You act like the good guy in very obvious ways. You be honest, OK you go out and do the little honesty quest. OK now there's compassion, OK go give money to beggars OK, do that quest. Valour! OK, go fight some monsters, finish that quest. After these 8 fairly repetitious quests, after you figure out the concept you can sort of just plod through it until your done, but the high concept of kind of proving yourself to be a person of good virtue and obtaining the state of Avatarhood I really still dig that a lot and so I would love to go re-write that sometime in a more modern tool, so maybe we'll take that on in the future. By the way, something nobody asked, is Underworlds. So... Joye...