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In our second exclusive article, we speak to Team Lazarus in a huge interview about the trials and tribulations of bringing Ultima V to life using the Dungeon Siege engine. This massive article delves deep into the development and provides new insight into the project:
More informationRPGWatch: Certain aspects of the game were quite noticeably changed from the original game. One example of this was Captain Johne's underworld abode. In the original game he lived in a keep whereas in Lazarus, he dwelled in a meager tent. These changes add a lot more realism into the game, however, some purists may contend this, and other changes made, may change the game too much from its original concept. How difficult was it for the team to determine when changes such as this were needed vs. changing too much of the game itself?
Team Lazarus: For the most part, I don’t feel that we particularly changed anything that was intentional in the original game, but rather rebuilt the game “as they would have if they could have.” Take your Captain Johne example: in the original game, his abode (the wreck of his ship, The Ararat) looked like a keep when viewed on the underworld map, but when you entered into it, it looked like a ship (which is also backed up by Johne’s dialogue). Clearly this wasn’t supposed to be a boat hiding inside a small building, but was simply a case of not having enough graphics to convey a shipwreck on the main map.
In the end, most important decisions in terms of purism vs. new content were effectively determined by committee—there were certain members of our team who I considered to be the most rabid of purists, and by gauging their response to specific proposed design elements, I could generally determine what was safe to toy with and what wasn’t.
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