Richard Garriott Interview

Voodoo Extreme had the opportunity to chat with Destination Games’ Richard “Lord British” Garriott about their upcoming sci-fi MMORPG, Tabula Rasa.

Q: How do you envision the “end game,” so to speak? When you’re pimped out and skilled up, what do you envision a player doing at that point?

A: The elder game features include a long list of things, but first let me explain what gets you there. In most MMOs, [your progression] will be through a series of missions that lead you through the leveling process. In Tabula Rasa, each of the worlds we visit has a problem that we’re dealing with. For example, the first world you’re on has a peaceful indigenous population. If you just nuke the enemies, you might make it uninhabitable for the indigenous population you are there to ostensibly save. When you finish that plotline, you effectively finish that part of the story we’re trying to tell; then when you’ve “graduated,” you move on to the next chapter in the story.

In our game, we often give you multiple missions that can’t be simultaneously completed, and you’ll have to make the difficult decision of “who am I going to help here.what are the ramifications of helping one group over another?”