While it was the early Ultima titles that went on to inspire the entire RPG genre, it was the second trilogy of Ultima games that cemented Garriott, and his company Origin Systems, into the minds of an entire generation of gamers.
#ULTIMA III PROJECT SERIES#
The real takeaway from this story is that Garriott took his own D&D games and casual game-coding hobby and created one of the first computer RPGs of all time, then for an encore started a series that would be so enduring that it would feature one of the longest-running MMO games of all time, inspiring an insane amount of the important parts of RPGs that we know and love today. Hell, before the Ultima series, most games of this ilk would dump you in a dungeon and expect you to explore it, rather than giving you a living, breathing world to explore. These games popularized the use of tile-based maps, party-battling systems, and using an in-game narrative to tell a wider storyline rather than focusing mostly on combat. In particular, Ultima III: Exodus is considered by many to be the first modern CRPG of all time. By 1983, Garriott had released an entire trilogy of Ultima titles, and in doing so had inspired an insane amount of future RPGs. The real important part of this origin story jumps ahead a few years from this point.
Ultima: The First Age of Darkness might seem like a standard fantasy adventure, but in what sort of fantasy adventure can you buy a spaceship, a phaser, meet up with a time lord, and of course go to space and shoot down TIE fighters? Considering these games are based on Garriott's D&D games, I have to imagine they were some of the most insane sessions that have ever been had by anyone. Honestly as basic as the story might sound, it doesn't prepare you for the insanity that is this game.
No longer are you some random schlub questing to be a knight, but you're a hero who must save the land of Sosaria from the evil wizard Mondain.
Back in the mid to late '70s, a 16-year-old Garriott was attending high school in Texas, spending his evenings playing Dungeons & Dragons with his friends and his days baffling all of his teachers by producing “dungeon games” on a teletype machine, then presumably baffling himself by getting As for them. The story of Ultima's early years is really the story of the game's designer Richard Garriott, otherwise known as Lord British. So on this, the 40th anniversary of the series' inception, we've decided to take a look into the sordid history of Ultima and it's rise and fall. Ultima is a series that started life in the early '80s as the nerdy bedroom coding project of Richard Garriott and eventually become a series that spawned over 20 titles across two decades, before crashing and burning at the feet of one of gaming's biggest companies. Despite how important it was in getting the genre off the ground, not that many people have actually heard of it. The difference between lesser metals and heat forged brass is noticeable the minute you hold it in your hands-solid brass is heavier, smoother, and naturally resists corrosion.When it comes to famous RPG series, the first game many people think about is Final Fantasy, but there's another series that started life half a decade earlier and is one of the most influential games in the genre's history.
0 kommentar(er)
