Day at Origin
Part I
Let me start with an opportunity to thank Origin for making this trip possible. I would personally like to thank
Richard Garriott, Carly Staehlin-Taylor (LadyMOI), Amy Sage (Cynthe), Bill Randolph (CapnBill), Matt Crump, Seth Mendelson,
and all other members of the U:IX development team and Origin. This was a lot of fun! Thanks!
Arriving in Austin, Texas at about 10pm, I used the Super Shuttle, a service provided by the airport, to get to my
hotel from the airport. Texas looks completely different from Pittsburgh - flat in the eastern part, and with hills in the west, where the Origin building is. The driving is also quite different - very aggressive, hehe. The hotel room was very nice, complete with a kitchen, a TV, and everything else needed.
Anyway, at about 8:30am, Amy Sage and Matt Crump picked us up and drove us to the Origin building. When I say "we" - at the hotel were DurhamDragon, Jazar, Transcending Dragon, Jonric, and I. When we arrived at Origin, we were also joined by IronFury, Johnny Tips, and Dave Hernly (Auric), and later by Pariah. The Origin building is very nicely designed, with an awesome long glass hallway connecting the building itself and the parking area. Big brown doors with a large "Ultima IX: Ascension" sign nearby separate the U:IX section of the building from the rest. Opening them, was Lord British.
Richard Garriott, dressed in a U:IX development team shirt and black pants, personally shook our hands and started the tour. A long corridor is behind the doors. On one wall of this hallway, one would see all Ultima artwork and trinkets, starting with 5.25 inch disks of Akalabeth and finishing with Dennis Loubet's heart-stopping Tapestry of Ages. On the other wall, artwork from other Origin creations is hung. After the corridor where we drooled over the Ultima stuff, we were led to Richard's office. Our eyes bulged when we saw what was spread out on the table - Dragon Edition trinkets! Yep, there was everything.. Richard went over each item. There was the cloth map, the high quality tarrot cards (very nice, not some cheap reprints), the two leather-covered manuals, the small Ankh pendant, a large poster of Guardian's hand grabbing the ascending Avatar, the certificate from Lord British, and a miniature Tapestry of Ages with a keymap on the back. The only trinket not present was the Ultima I-VIII collection CD. What about the music CD, you ask? Aah, yes.. Opening his slick CD player with a wave of his hand, Lord British played us a sample, picking the track so familiar and so beautiful to our ears - Stones. Very high quality it was, indeed! The last two items on the table were the regular and the Dragon Edition boxes. The regular is very well put together - it features a cover that opens up to the picture of the ascending Avatar and a couple of pages describing the game! The Dragon Edition box, on the other hand, differs from its less expensive partner. It's.. huge! Although it looks the same as the regular one (ignoring the size and the "Dragon Edition" label), it doesn't have the book-like structure and, if I remember correctly, has a lift-off top.
After demonstrating the Dragon Edition stuff, Lord British went ahead to show us the game. To my question about his PC, he answered that it's a Pentium II 400 with 256 MB RAM and a Voodoo2 (I believe it was a Monster 3D II, for I saw a box for it in the room). The game ran very smoothly. Of course, during the loading of new textures, the framerate dropped a bit, but otherwise it was quite smooth. Helping to that was the clipping distance, which wasn't pushed out too far. Richard started with showing us the end of Stonegate, where the demo concludes. In the demo, you actually never get to the outside - and oh does it look grand! The high tower rises spectacularly into the sky. Hopping around a bit and destroying a Wyrmguard with one blow, hehe, Richard used a teleporter to get to LB's castle in Britain. The castle looks amazing from the inside (and from the outside too, of course, judging from the pics). Richard showed us the room that Avatar has on the top floor, where he can drop off his possessions.
Using Origin's own editor "Ankh," Lord British then showed us a few cities. He let us enjoy the views of Britain, the swamps and mills of Paws, the immense ruins of Scara Brae, the mysteriously beautiful Moonglow, the treehouses of Yew, the docks of Buccaneer's Den, and the underwater city of the gargoyles. To my request, he also showed us Raven's ship, the Silver Heart.
Floating at the docks, it is always in vertical and slant motion because of the waves. To my question about an internal compartment, Richard said that they were planning on having one to stack your possessions in, but then decided against it.
We even got to see Guardian's place! Yep, Richard gave us a short tour of the place, showing us the huge entrance in the form of a head. Speaking of the Guardian, Richard also mentioned that in this Ultima, the evil dudes - Guardian and Blackthorne will play a large role in the game. They won't just sit around and wait till the end while Avatar is kicking some evil booty.
Next, we got to speak to Bill Randolph, known to a lot of the fans as CapnBill. The Capn showed us a few things and answered a few questions. The funniest thing in the world, he showed us some AI bugs. He prepared for us a special area with NPC's who thought they were somebody else. Heh, this gave us a long laugh! There was Richard Garriott's character who thought he was a dog, walking around on arms and knees, sniffing around. Then, there was also Lord British, who thought he was a chicken!! Some people thought they were butterflies and birds, so they would fly around, beating their arms up and down very quickly! Amy Sage's character thought she was a dragon, a large crab-like monster thought he was a guard. My favorite, though, was a dog, who thought he was a guard! I almost died of laughter, when I saw this dog standing on his rear legs, walking around on two legs with a human posture, talking to the Avatar! Hehehe, too bad all those bugs are now fixed :)
Jonric asked a very important question - about RAM. Bill explained that RAM is probably most important in the game - it eats up a LOT of RAM! Throwing in another 128 stick can really boost your performance. Richard agreed, throwing in the phrase on what you should have to run the game: "Glide and RAM!" Hehe, although some D3D problems were fixed, there are plans to release a patch just as the game hits the shelves. This patch should fix some minor gameplay issues and more D3D bugs.
Overall, the game looks and runs great! My favorite perhaps is the realistic physics engine, where if you drop an item on the edge of a table, that item will flip over and fall on the floor. The numerous bugs plaguing the demo are gone. I noticed that the movement and fighting bugs are all gone - anyone else had a problem in the demo when you can't move or hit until you do a jump? :) The game is huge. As Richard said, there is no-one, who knows everything in the game. If you would try to play the game through just to win, taking all shortcuts and knowing what to do, it should take you about 18-24 hours. If you play the game to enjoy and explore, though, the gameplay time rises up to 100-400 hours! 400 hours is probably only for those hardcore Ultima fans who just have to pick up and move every rock, or to climb on a roof to see if there is a hidden teleporter there. Also, if I am not mistaken, Origin plans to release another demo. This one should be much smaller - around 150 MB's. The huge size of the first demo was because of the sound and video files. This new demo should have all bugs fixed and provide much better D3D support, and will hopefully appear on download sites just as the game hits the shelves.
Well, after this meeting, we all headed up to Tequila Texas for lunch! The whole team was there - we needed a couple of tables to fit everyone in! The lunch lasted for about an hour, more consisting of questions and conversations than food.
Although, I have to say - the food was good :) After lunch, we headed back to Origin, but hey... that's in Part 2!
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