Day at Origin
Part II
Well, after luch, everyone headed back to the Origin building, where we had a 40 minute meeting with Seth Mendelson, one of the U:IX designers. It was basically a Q&A session - we asked questions and received some answers. We have found that one hour in Ascension is equal to six minutes of real time, which seems like a pretty well balanced day. Another interesting fact is that this Ultima will contain over 140 thousand lines of recorded dialogue! That's way more than in any of the previous Ultima games. It was also mentioned that there are about 220 or so unique NPC's - that includes all the NPC's in the game, starting from a generic guard and ending with Lord British.
Seth also gave an interesting example on how long the game actually took to tune up. He said that after a bit of playing, they were unhappy with the grass texture. So, they took a new picture of some Austin grass and tossed it into the game. Apparently, it isn't as easy as it sounds! All the textures that transition from grass to something else, for example, to dirt or gravel, had to be redone also. Overall, Seth said, it took up a couple of weeks of extra work. Bah, and that's just for grass!
Free stuff! That's right, the Origin guys gave each one of us some things to take home, including an awesome U:IX poster signed by Lord British and everyone else from the Ascension crew! Cool eh? :)
After this interview, the dev team had a company meeting, so we decided to go out and just wait for an hour until they were done. Dave and Johnny left somewhere, but the rest of us stayed and discussed the Ultimas right outside Origin, in the beautiful sunny weather. The hour really went by pretty fast, and the meeting was over.
We split into two teams (to fit in cars), stopped by the hotel for Pariah to check in and for others to drop off some stuff, and then headed on to downtown Austin to a small Irish pub Fado's for a huge Ultima Ascension release party! Oh, everyone was there... It was great to hang out and talk to the guys who designed and created U:IX, along with others. I, for example, spent a lot of time talking to the great dudes who created and update the official U:IX site and the discussion boards. The party started at 3:30pm and lasted till about 8:00pm. Me and Pariah actually left a little earlier - Pariah hasn't slept since 3:30am, and I was a bit tired too, so we got ourselves a cab and headed on home. Somehow I didn't believe that the same cab stories could happen to us as they did to Jazar and TD, but apparently, they could. :) The cab driver couldn't find our hotel for a while, hehe. But, at last, we were there.
Saturday was spent in bed, watching TV and sleeping. I even managed to lock myself out of my room!! Yep, I ordered a pizza from Domino's. After about half an hour, I opened the door from my room and walked out, holding the money for my pizza in my hand. It was too late when the click of the shutting door produced an impulse in my brain, telling me that I was locked out. In about twenty minutes, I was back in, with my cold pizza. Hey.. but it was fun :) Early Sunday morning was my plane back to Pittsburgh (through Chicago).
Hmm, I actually forgot to mention something from Richard's presentation of the game. When inside the house, he showed us a couple of "easter eggs." One of them, for example... Try standing near the fridge, and opening and closing the freezer door (the left one) a lot.. maybe like ten times or so. Guess what you will see inside the freezer soon? Hehe, take a look for yourself. Richard also explained why the dev team guys put it in :) At first, the fridge was actually just sort of a box with a texture - the doors didn't open or close. Richard really wanted them to open/close, so he bugged the dev team for a while until they finally did it. I guess they were a little pissed off, so they put in this tiny "easter egg."
Another one Richard showed us revolves around the breadmaker. Remember that can of poison on the top of the fridge? Hmm.. try dragging it into the breadmaker and then make some bread. Gee, I wonder what's that greenish cloud? :)
Many of you also probably want to know if Lord British can be killed in the game... Jazar was very interested in the subject, hehe, so he asked about it. Although Richard didn't tell us how, he confirmed that Lord British can be killed. So, looks like people will be spending their long winter nights trying to figure our how!
Overall, it seems that the whole Ascension crew is very happy and proud of their creation, which looks better than ever! The game is truly huge, and I can't wait till I can get to play the whole thing on my machine. Thank you Origin! This was a great weekend!
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