Baldur's Gate 3 by Larian Games
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Borzak
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The last big patch BG3 got was for act 3, they were setill trying to tie it all together. Not sure if they ever got it all working correctly. Pretty clear they tried to shove more than one act into act 3 and left off the upper city and such. No idea if that was pressure from Hasbro and such or themselves.
Tuco
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That's funny, I didn't even know about Underworld Ascendant - Wikipedia
I also didn't know they considered Divinity a spiritual successor to Ultima. I wonder if Laurion could buy the IP off of EA. I still think they will make their own totally new IP though, it's just more fun.
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Daidraco
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To me, that was what I felt with both 3 and 4. Like a lot of random shit you could do to complete or skip fights and conversations just wasnt an option in 3 and 4. I just started bee lining to everything, too, to finish the game. Something like BG3 I feel is best as coop with a friend and you push each other to finish everything, together. Witcher 3, as long as that was, needed something like that too.
Caliane
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Larian CEO Swen Vincke says there were only two other RPG series he was interested in working on if he couldn't get Baldur's Gate: Fallout and Ultima
Vincke "felt like there was a glass ceiling" holding Larian back, and he wanted a big title to break through it.
RPGs may never top Ultima 7, but Divinity: Original Sin 2 comes close
Ultima 7 bears a heavy crown as the king of computer RPGs. Original Sin 2 proves Larian may have what it takes to usurp the throne.
heres an old steam post, by Raze_larian. dead links sadly.
you go back and look at svens interviews, or devs, Ultima is constantly coming up. even back to Divine divinity, where its very obvious. was making an ultima clone, and got pressured into converting it into a diablo clone by publishers.
Caliane
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as for underworld ascendant... yeah, I mean there was decent word of mouth on its existence. the problem was, it was just bad. otherwise the Ultima name itself just isn't enough these days.
There are other contenders for that spiritual successor.
gothic remake is in production.
kings field/shadowtower>eldenring
arx fatalis was intended as a direct sequel awhile back.
prey 2017
indie:
lunacid, monomyth, never looted dungeon.
There are other contenders for that spiritual successor.
gothic remake is in production.
kings field/shadowtower>eldenring
arx fatalis was intended as a direct sequel awhile back.
prey 2017
indie:
lunacid, monomyth, never looted dungeon.
Tuco
I got Tuco'd!
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Thinking about it more i don't know what a reimagining of Ultima (and specifically ultima 7) would look like. There are so many great sandbox RPGs since 1992. And the CRPG style Larion has is pretty saturated while being less sandboxy than ultima7.
An ultima7 remake with Laurions engine and style would be excellent though.
Bald Brah
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It's pretty strange how Ultima was the king of all RPGs up until Ultima Online, then it just stopped existing. I know Garriot tried to relaunch something but it got little traction.
Tuco
I got Tuco'd!
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I didn't play UO but it's kind of hard build a sandbox single player rpg after releasing an MMO that eclipses the single player game.
ESO is a good example of an MMO that doesn't castrate a future ES game, but mostly because player freedom and impact is so critical to ES games.
Caliane
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There was a massive collapse of western rpgs. ultima, wizardy, might and magic etc. microprose, origin, etc. all the companies died.
even fallout, etc.
the main thought is Consoles. PC market crashed, while the Console rpg market grew. Jrpgs, elder scrolls, etc. which is why bioware chased the console market, with kotor, etc
Ultima 9 was windows only. considered a huge failure. and the narrative certainly was bad. And while it was also buggy as shit. it is remarkable for its gameworld for 1999.
3 years before Morrowind. hell, Baldur's gate 2:shadow sof amn was 2000. (which sure pc game, but consider the tech behind ultima 9's open world 3d game.)
ps1 was 1995.
ps2 released in 2000.
xbox released in 2001.
neverwinter nights was 2002. still pc only. kotor was 2003. marked the full shift for bioware to consoles. jade empire and Mass effect were launched on consoles first, and ported.
Its possible the shift to 3d itself also was part of the death of pc rpgs. not as fluid of a transition, and cost of hardware limiting audience.
Origin was a who's who of gaming, that don't work their anymore either.
John romero, warren spector, chris roberts, pual neurath
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Burns
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It was a combination of things that did in the Ultima IP. First, before UO was Ultima 8, which was not received well but sales were propped up due to previous Ultima fans buying it on name alone.
Next, Ultima Online comes along and changes things back to be more like U7, but then makes it an MMO where a large portion of the population sat around and used it as a interactive chat room. The kids with 56k modems were PKing everyone else with 36.6 or worse, so people started quiting.
Then Ultima 9 did even worse because U8 already had people weary, much of the fan base that gave UO chance had moved on, and they went to 3D, which lead to them making so many changes to the formula in order to do that, that it hardly resembled an Ultima game.
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Burns
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I don't think the PC market "crashed" so much as the console market exploded. Then the suits at the publishing house pushed decisions to try to increase market share into that market.
Which fucked over a lot of studios that didn't bend the knee to dumbing their shit down to work on consoles. In some cases, there was no way to even make the game types work on console controllers of the time. So funding dried up.
That's not what (probably) killed Ultima or blobbers though. Just like Garriot's new ideas for Ultima 8/9 flopped, SirTech made bad decisions with it's company that didn't necessarily have anything to do with Wizardy. Might and Magic had a decrease in quality in its blobber series, while at the same time seeing huge growth in HOMM, so funding got moved, the company got too big and quality eventually floundered though all their products.
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Caliane
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its both. the pc rpg market crashed even without consoles. major quality issues as well. but then yes, consoles essentially finished the job, as producers all shifted focus, and the money for developing pc rpgs vanished.
like might and magic. 6-8 was 1998, 99, 2000. these three were 3d games.
3-5+xeen was 91,92,93,94. 2d.
9 was 2002. a colossal failure.
3do went bankrupt in 2003.
ubisoft bought them.
leading to dark messaih of might and magic. on the xbox 360 in 2006
might and magic x in 2014.
Even in the PC market.. well. Diablo happened. 1997.
anyone making an rpg got told by producers. no you are making a diablo clone. make it an action game. which brings us back to Divine divinity and Larian. ha.
im not sure if Dungeon seige was ALWAYS intended to be an action game. that one, I do think was always the intent.
we probably could argue RTS also had a major impact on pc Rpg gaming. heroes of might and magic, dune, majesty, warcraft, command and conquer, and age of.
so yeah, chasing trends prevented any revivals for a good long while.
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Burns
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When talking about Ultima, the market didn't crash in the mid 90s, per say, the companies ran themselves into the ground. Demand was still there, just that for one reason or the other, the changes that were made to increase market share, or just because the creatives wanted to try something new were bad. This is shown in that many of the best and most successful wRPGs were released between 1998 and 2003, long after Ultima peaked with U7.
Sure, after 2003, consoles were a major driver in killing off wRPG production, but that has nothing to do with Ultima.
Cybsled
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I have a few theories
1) PC Games started to need dedicated graphics cards to run and cost as much as a PlayStation 2. There was a lag in the PC market getting up to spec
2) Space in retail stores: PC boxes used to be huge - they didn’t shrink to the paperback sized boxes until 2002-2003 or so. Consoles became huge and ate up floor space, leaving less for PC. I remember PC games going from taking up 70% floor space to like 20%
3) Stale genres or genres done better on console
1) PC Games started to need dedicated graphics cards to run and cost as much as a PlayStation 2. There was a lag in the PC market getting up to spec
2) Space in retail stores: PC boxes used to be huge - they didn’t shrink to the paperback sized boxes until 2002-2003 or so. Consoles became huge and ate up floor space, leaving less for PC. I remember PC games going from taking up 70% floor space to like 20%
3) Stale genres or genres done better on console
reavor
I'm With HER ♀
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Baldurs Gate 1 was 1998 and heralded as a revival of the western RPG market, and a break from the Diablo dogma, which it was, with Bioware dominating that market until early 2000s.
As for Ultima, how the hell was it taken seriously with one of the most prominent NPCs literally called "Lord British". Jeez. I remember being pretty hyped for Ultima Online 2 tho... then they scrapped it to focus on the terribly outdated Ultima Online, just a lot of bad decisions
As for Ultima, how the hell was it taken seriously with one of the most prominent NPCs literally called "Lord British". Jeez. I remember being pretty hyped for Ultima Online 2 tho... then they scrapped it to focus on the terribly outdated Ultima Online, just a lot of bad decisions