Hilarious. The Ultima games were far from perfect, and it's not like they stood alone without any influences. They were heavily derivative of D&D, like any fantasy RPG.
Also, this idea that a person is infallible in any role (such as Game Designer) is absurd. He seems to believe that he posesses some special mojo or insight which means that any game he makes is a work of genius. This is obvious on the surface that it is not the case.
Just because a talented person is involved is no guarantee the work will turn out any good, games or otherwise. This is a simple truth. Creating something great is much more complicated than that.
Just because the setting was derivative does not necessarily imply that the game mechanics were. Ultima was one of the first RPGs available for the computer and set the standard for years to come - standards which it continually refined. Ultima IV, for instance, required the player not to defeat some looming, final evil but rather to ascend to the status of Avatar by doing good deeds, meditating at shrines, and adhering to a moral system. Revolutionary for 1985. Seven years later, Ultima VII is released and is one of the first games to feature full-fledged scheduling for NPCs and the ability to interact with almost every single item in the game world.
The Ultima series had that ability to transport you into these universes (or this universe) that Lord British (aka Richard Garriott) created.
When there are threads on forums about one game to pick if you had to choose only one (which is very hard to do, but that's the game: pick one and only), if you had to choose "the best game ever", well very often people will cite an Ultima.
I played III, IV and V like crazy. The Commodore Amiga port of Ultima V really sucked. I was so sad that I paid for that crap. So what did I do? I went back to the Commodore 64 to be able to play Ultima V.
Yes, you read correctly: dodging the Amiga which has a way superior machine than the C64 (they're not even comparable feature-wise, these are two different eras of computers) to go back to an old C64 to spend countless hours / days playing Ultima V.
The crappy graphics didn't matter: it was all about the experience.
The only game which did something similar to me is FTL's "Sundog: The Frozen Legacy". FTL then made Dungeon Master which is considered to be one of the most influencial game ever.
Lord British is full of it? Yes. Totally deserved. There are no two game designers like him on this planet.
I disagree - I regard Garriott much like Chris Roberts: incredibly influential, certainly talented, early pioneers of their field, but whose relevance in modern gaming is in doubt.
I for one have more faith in Roberts than Garriott, who reminds me a bit of Molyneux in his focus on personal branding and professional fame.
Before we fall all over ourselves painting Garriott as some kind of infallible game design ubermensch, let's look at his track record.
His career pre-2000 is dominated by Ultima games, which were doubtlessly groundbreaking, iconic, and by almost all accounts, great games.
His career post-2000 is limited. He produced Lineage II, City of Heroes, City of Villains, and Tabula Rasa. City of Heroes gained a cult, if small, following, and both Tabula Rasa and Lineage II were commercial failures. Lineage II in particular was savaged by both gamers and the gaming press - 6.7/10 by IGN, 6.0/10 by GameSpot, 62% on Metacritic.
But don't take my word for it, this is lifted from the Wikipedia article:
"Scott Stahl of the The Daily Orange praised the game's graphics and design, though he also mentioned that the game "quickly degrades into an incredibly tedious and monotonous process of killing the same monster a thousand different times", and that the character creation options are "incredibly shallow, with maybe two or three different faces and hair styles for each type of character." Andrew Park of Gamespot said that the game "offers either a repetitive grind or a stiff challenge""
By all accounts, Garriott's seemingly unquestionable sense of game design seems to fall apart when he left the Ultima series. I very gladly accept that he was/is one of the top game designers the industry has seen, but treating like "there's no one else like him on this planet" is unreasonable.
Secondly,
> "When there are threads on forums about one game to pick if you had to choose only one (which is very hard to do, but that's the game: pick one and only), if you had to choose "the best game ever", well very often people will cite an Ultima."
Citation sorely needed. If you went solely to a RPG forum, and specifically excluded JRPG aficionados, then you'd probably get a lot of answers to the tune of "Ultima". There have been many "top video games evar" lists made both by the gaming press and by vote participation, and I've yet to see Ultima top any of them.
There's a lot more to video gaming than "old school RPGs".
His post-2000 career is basically just Tabula Rasa. Lineage II is Korean made. City of * is all Cryptic (and later Paragon). Garriott is only attached to those products by way of being high up in NCsoft's US division at the time.
>His career pre-2000 is dominated by Ultima games, which were doubtlessly groundbreaking, iconic, and by almost all accounts, great games.
That is mainly a myth. Ultima was technically impressive for its time, but a terrible game. The series didn't become decent until ultima 4, and ultima 7 is the only one in the series that is really worthy of the praise that it gets. The other dozen games get painted with the same praise heaped on ultima 7, even though they range from ok to terrible.
Also, this idea that a person is infallible in any role (such as Game Designer) is absurd. He seems to believe that he posesses some special mojo or insight which means that any game he makes is a work of genius. This is obvious on the surface that it is not the case.
Just because a talented person is involved is no guarantee the work will turn out any good, games or otherwise. This is a simple truth. Creating something great is much more complicated than that.