Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar 1985 Interview

Well, this is interesting. The fine folks over at Ultima Aiera have slapped up scans of an interview that Family Computing Magazine conducted with Richard Garriott at the Origin headquarters in Manchester, New Hampshire during the summer of 1985. The discussion mostly focuses on what was going to be Richard’s next Ultima installment, Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar, but we also hear a bit about Origin’s other projects:

K-POWER: How is Ultima IV different from Ultima III?

LORD B.: Ultima IV is an Involving game which is much more user-friendly than the other Ultimas. It’s easier to get into the game and your information choices can be seen on the screen, so you don’t have to use the fact sheet. Ultima III takes tv/o or three months of part-time play to finish. Ultima TV will take about four times longer to play, and the map is exactly 16 times the size of the others. It’s divided into eight quest groups, and each group is almost equal in size to an entire Ultima III game.

Ultima IV is also very different in feeling from the other Ultimas. I got a lot of mail after Ultima III became a hit. and 1 suddenly realized that I was having a real impact on the people who played my games. I didn’t want this to be a negative impact, making them think the bad guys always win. In the previous Ultimas. there was always one big bad guy lu defeat: in U/fima /V you aren’t up against an evil force it’s a personal conquest.

K-POWER: How many Ultimas do you see in your future?

LORD B.: That’s hard to say. I’m still striving for the “ultimate” Ultima. I learn more each time I write one. but I’m still in the “scrap it all and start over” phase. I won’t be happy until I’ve learned how to cram as much as possible into the system. (Lord British designs on an Apple computer.) I’d like to create an internal data structure which would let me change scenarios, instead of having to write a new Ultima each time.

K-POWER: Besides the Ultimas, do you plan to publish any other games?

LORD B.: Origin Systems is about to release three games which are completely different from Ultima. AUTODUEL is one of them. It’s an action/strategy game where you build your own battle car and take it out on different missions. There’s a lot of strategy in AUTODUEL because you have to choose the right combination of tires, body style, weapons, etc. in order to build a winning machine.

Moebius is another new game. It’s a fantasy/role-playing game that includes segments of martial-arts combat. We’ve used some unusual graphics to make the game seem more realistic. A Kung-Fu expert and a Japanese sword fighter were photodigitized in real combat positions. The images are so large that sometimes they fill up more than half the screen. We’re also doing a futuristic strategy game called Ogre.