Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Shortly after Torment: Tides of Numenumenumenuma-BATMAN claimed its title as the most-funded Kickstarter game in the short history of Kickstarted games, Richard Garriott’s definitely-not-an-Ultima sequel, Shroud of the Avatar has raised over two million dollars. The Kickstarter campaign, which had a one million dollar goal, finished just shy of doubling the target but direct pledges through the RPG’s website pushed it to a current total of $2,057,992, a figure which will almost certainly be out of date by the time you click on the link. Understandably, recent updates have been focused on clarifying and altering reward tiers, although as is increasingly common, I find the whole system cumbersome in the extreme. There were details about crafting last week though and some of that information is below.

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It’s no secret that Richard ‘King English’ Garriott is working on a spiritual sequel to Ultima, having left the series’ rights locked in an EA basement somewhere. It’s no secret because he’s said so, repeatedly. But what’s more surprising is that he apparently isn’t resigned to never getting them back – and he’s even talking about working with EA again. The lion and the lamb! Cats sleeping with dogs! THE END TIMES.

More specifically, he told Eurogamer that “We’ve had discussions at very high levels with Electronic Arts about access to the property [and]…a possible marketing and distribution relationships and things of this nature.”

Which is rather promising, presuming he’s not just making wild public declarations in the hope of changing minds. More below.
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Lord British, aka Richard Garriott, aka the creator of clasic RPG series Ultima: he’s been to space, which makes me instantly worry about him being some sort of replicant. It seems that since he’s been back on Earth he’s been pondering his next game. In a lenghty post on Facebook, he’s announced his intention to make the “Ultimate RPG”, distilling everything he’s learned in 36 years of game design into the new project, his New Britannia.
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You may remember that Richard “I Wish I Were Still Lord British” Garriott de Cayeux was suing NCSoft for fifty gajillion dollars. Well, he’s won.

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This is by far the most egomaniacal RPS post I’ve ever written (and that’s even though I’ve found plenty of vague excuses to run pictures of my cat and my girlfriend here previously). But I can’t pass this one up. I can’t. Massively’s investigation into what the long-cancelled (OR IS IT?) (It is. That version of it, anyway). Ultima Online 2 would have been like turns up a key fact. The game would have contained just three playable races at launch, a step down from UO1. However! These races were to be bog-standard humans, the warrior-like Juka and the magical Meer. Man! That would have done so much good for RPS’ Google rank.

Now, you must call me The Magical Meer. The Magical Meer demands it.
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You can take the Lord British out of Ultima, but you can’t take the Ultima out of Lord British. Does that make sense? Probably not, but it sounded good, which is essentially the story of my career.

EA still jealously guards the Ultima license, despite not doing a whole lot with it outside of an only tangentially related free to play strategy game. However, it appears Ultima creator Richard Garriot has managed to personally retain the rights to sometime alter-ago and in-game ruler Lord British, which he now intends to use as the cornerstone of a new online game. “Lord British’s New Britannia” awaits…
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Interviewed in the latest episode of Game Theory with Scott Steinberg (below), Lord Richard Garriott of Britain explains that as far as game narratives may have come, be believes they’re still falling far short of those in books and films. He says,

“I don’t think we’ve yet mastered the techniques of true interactive storytelling.”

You can see the full interview, along with contributions from Charles Cecil, Jane Jenson, Bob Bates and others, in the third episode of this new series, this time focusing on game narrative. Oh, and I have a little rant, too.

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It seems worth noting what Mr Richard Garriott has been up to since his trip to outsidespace. Back in January Alec noted that the deposed Lord British would still very much like to work within the Ultima license. Since then he’s announced his involvement with Portalarium – an online gaming doodah that intends to create social media type stuff. (Hard-hitting analysis.) Which is to say, he’s planning on making more games, this time for social networking sites like Facebook, mobile phones, browser-based affairs, and they say for the PC. So far Portalarium has launched the bizarrely named Sweet @$! Poker for Facebook. But yesterday, speaking to Kotaku, Garriott revealed his ambitions to create an “Ultima-esque” game for the service.

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Need your DNA in space? Yeah, we thought so. Thankfully Richard Garriott is here to help. Well, if you’re in the US anyway. (Apparently EU law prevents it taking place – any lawyers out there know why?) “What,” you ask incredulously, “are you on about?”

Well, it seems that in a deeply peculiar promotion for the middling NCSoft MMO, Tabula Rasa, players are being offered the chance to have their DNA sequenced, digitised, and fired off into space as part of the “Immortality Drive”, to accompany Lord “Richard Garriott” British’s expedition to the International Space Station in October 2008. You know, in case the human race gets wiped out and we needs spares.

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