Quote:
Originally posted by MasterGrazzt@Jan 7 2005, 03:06 PM
Ultima 8's idea was very interesting. Strand the Avatar in a hostile world.* See what he would do to get out. Explore his dark side. Too bad they didn't focus on fleshing out the plot and concept of the game instead of jumping from platform to platform. And also, they forced you to be bad. At the very least they should have made the less virtuous actions the absolute last resort and have the Avatar express regret about the whole thing.
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What you suggest--doing evil to progress, and considering the implications--would have been perfect: very much the kind of moral dilemna that Garriott was trying to put players in back in Ultima VI and VIIa. It's too bad as you point out that he decided to concentrate on non-stop activity. And such poor choices of activity, too: dying if you jumped and missed a rock in a small stream you had to cross; getting killed if your messy inventory backpack (which couldn't be organized, remember) didn't open correctly to have the right random attack spell scroll immediately available--since inventory checking occurred in realtime.
This wasn't anywhere near as bad as Ultima IX, though. Do you remember the insulting way monsters would walk around humming and whistling if you checked your inventory? Garriott's way of telling you how un-RPGish in his opnion your actions were. Breaking the illusion of reality to condemn players probably isn't the best way to sell a title, in my experience. And we won't even go into the braindead AI, aboslute linearity of the title, dull dialogs, absence of a party, and horrific bugs...
