Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar Preview

The CNN website has a preview/interview for BioWare Mythic’s upcoming free-to-play sort-of-remake of Ultima IV, Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar, with plenty of snippets from lead designer Kate Flack. Here’s an excerpt:

“Games are a cultural artifact. They are affected by all the things around them,” Flack said. The developers of “Ultima IV” “were saying games can be about being a good person. At the time, it was in reaction to a backlash against the violence and things in video games.

“I think the parallel nowadays is that we are almost frightened of high fantasy. If it’s not covered in blood, we don’t believe it. I’m going to be as subversive as ‘Ultima IV’ was at the time.”

…

“It’s about mastering yourself, not mastering the world,” she said. “When (a non-player character) asks you a question … you are forced to pause and ask yourself, ‘What do I think is the right thing to do? Do I want to be kind, or do I want to be fair? What kind of person am I?’ “

Rather than seeing how many creatures a player can kill or how much gold they can accumulate, Flack is more interested in getting inside the player’s head. She says the game is almost like a personality test, giving players choices in the attempt to be a good person. How they get there is up to them.