GameSpy's Dave 'Fargo' Kosak posted an interview with Ultima X: Odyssey Senior Producer Rick Hall and Lead Designer John Hanna about this highly-anticipated title. Here's a taste:
Fargo: In the Personal Quests, will you scale the dungeon difficulty based on who goes in? It'll build an adventure for you?
Hanna: Right. Exactly... if you're a party of two, we're gonna have to go with different monsters and different numbers of monsters than if you were a full party of eight.
Hall: Actually, there is one other component to the quest system that we should talk about. ... Probably the biggest difference with us is the fact that the quests come to you. So, in most games, there's an NPC in town that is always there and he always gives the same quests. And you have to read a website and find out where he is and what quest he gives you. In our game, you'll go to a gypsy, like in the original Ultima games, you'll answer some questions, and you can pick basically the virtues that your character will want to follow. Once you do that, you go out into the world, and you'll start doing your own thing, and the game's gonna start giving you quests. So, an NPC will appear, run up to you, and let's say you care about compassion: he'll say "Help! My brother's been kidnapped. Can you go save him?" And that's gonna happen automatically.
Fargo: Wherever you are?
Hall: Wherever you are in the world. And I think that's a lot more in keeping with traditional heroic fantasy novels and movies, where the hero doesn't walk into a bar and says "Hey, does anyone need a ring delivered to Mount Doom?" It's like the ring drops in his lap and he's like, "Crap, I gotta do something about this!"
It's a lot more heroic, in a lot of ways, when the NPC comes up and says "I need your help!" ... I think that's gonna add a lot to it."
Read more - it's a very good interview, and be sure to check out the short movie.
Fargo: In the Personal Quests, will you scale the dungeon difficulty based on who goes in? It'll build an adventure for you?
Hanna: Right. Exactly... if you're a party of two, we're gonna have to go with different monsters and different numbers of monsters than if you were a full party of eight.
Hall: Actually, there is one other component to the quest system that we should talk about. ... Probably the biggest difference with us is the fact that the quests come to you. So, in most games, there's an NPC in town that is always there and he always gives the same quests. And you have to read a website and find out where he is and what quest he gives you. In our game, you'll go to a gypsy, like in the original Ultima games, you'll answer some questions, and you can pick basically the virtues that your character will want to follow. Once you do that, you go out into the world, and you'll start doing your own thing, and the game's gonna start giving you quests. So, an NPC will appear, run up to you, and let's say you care about compassion: he'll say "Help! My brother's been kidnapped. Can you go save him?" And that's gonna happen automatically.
Fargo: Wherever you are?
Hall: Wherever you are in the world. And I think that's a lot more in keeping with traditional heroic fantasy novels and movies, where the hero doesn't walk into a bar and says "Hey, does anyone need a ring delivered to Mount Doom?" It's like the ring drops in his lap and he's like, "Crap, I gotta do something about this!"
It's a lot more heroic, in a lot of ways, when the NPC comes up and says "I need your help!" ... I think that's gonna add a lot to it."
Read more - it's a very good interview, and be sure to check out the short movie.