Where Project Britannia's U6P failed

First a disclaimer: U6P is a fun game. Go out and buy Dungeon Siege and download/play it now! It feels just like an Ultima and it is extremely faithful to the original.

Now my gripe:

In fact, it's too faithful. Outside of fleshing out some of the characters and adding more quests, the developers must have been scared to death to add anything that wasn't "in the original." This is sad because a remake of a game should always take advantage of new technology AND advances made since the time of the originals.

Dungeon Siege has many, many weapon and armor types. You probably have hundreds of variations to choose from. U6P has the same limited weapons and armor from the original. The only area they strayed from this was in throw away stuff. Instead of magical maces, axes, daggers, etc. You have ruined items that sell for a few coins. I would have given up all 30 pieces of gold I earned from selling that stuff, to have some more high-end treasure.

It's disheartening to enter a new dungeon in a new area and find the same 6 magical items you've had since 2 hours into the game. I guess the team will blame it on not having a dedicated artist for most of their development time, but it's a shame. The game could really be a lot more fun if the loot tables were expanded by 3-4 times their current size. Weapons with fire/poison/lightning effects, armor with small bonuses to stats, mage robes with bonuses to mana or with mana regeneration. All of these should be in the game, but they missed the boat because it wasn't "in the original" or they didn't have an artist.

That stuff doesn't bother me (I get annoyed in games like NWN2 where there are millions of different choices). I think that one area where this, and most other mods, have issues, though is in trying to be too realistic.

I noticed this in many quest mods for BG and BG2 and in U5:Lazarus. My prime example was in U5:lazarus where if you talked to the mayor of Yew before trying to infilitrate the oppression (or if you didn't just want to join the oppression), you got tossed in jail and that part of the game was permanently closed off from there on out. That is realistic, but it isn't fun, it's frustrating. Thankfully, someone made a mod to fix this.

I've seen a few examples similar in U6P. The main one concerns the maps of dungeons. IF you can find one of a level, it is almost always at the exit of the level or even the level down. In reality, that probably would be right, unless less someone dropped it on their way out. However, it's pretty useless to the player unless they just want to make sure they cleared every area (which there isn't much need to do in most cases). Again, that may be realistic, but it isn't much fun. Now sure, you could make your own maps as you go, but that's pretty difficult to do in most modern games with any real accuracy. I've taken to using the debug function to drop in the maps at the beginning of each dungeon. It may be 'cheating' or not what they intended, but it allows the game to stay fun for me.

Additionally, I had a problem with getting the Level 8 spells.


My conclusion is that the people that make these mods are the really hard-core players for the most part and they must thrive on these types of 'challenges.' That's fine for them, but if they want a broad audience for their work, they really have to make it appeal to the more general gamers.

Now, all that said, I've been having a blast on U6P, and I certainly, as with all the other mods, appreciate all the work that has gone into it.

Nut, the aim of the game WAS to faithfully re-create the original. If that hadn't been done, the team would have been castigated by all the Ultima fanatics out there. Second, the siege of Trinsic is an example of where the game does go beyond the original. You might also note that we resolved the Skara Brae murder, something not done in the original.

Same caveat folks: The game is great, these are nitpicks. Go buy DS and play U6P!

@Corwin, I'm aware of the intentions. I just think they were ill-conceived. It would have been best to blend what made Ultima VI great with the more modern conveniences and power of a more current game. Catering to any one particular group is always a failure too. Make what YOU want to make especially if nobody is paying the bills but you. I've spent weeks talking to the people who actually made the game and they constantly made concessions to the Ultima purists, at the cost of a better game.

As all forum postings, this is just my opinion. I didn't see any funding for this game coming from the Ultima Dragons, so I would have told them to stuff it. Is there not even one good artist in the Dragons or other Ultima purists? Why didn't they help with the portraits if Team Archon was so willing to bend over backwards to keep the game "pure"? I didn't see anything but criticism coming from the purists and I read a long ways back in the forums. Where was the help?

You can't tell me those dungeons were even slightly inspired by the original. None of them are ANYTHING like the original games' dungeons. I would have been happy to see more creativity in weapons and armor, along with the massive dungeon changes. Some change is good. I'd also love to see some better artwork on the maps. Zephyr helped Lazarus with the ship movement. I'd love to see the Lazarus team pay that help back in some portraits and better maps.

I strongly believe that if you want to recreate Ultima 6, you have to recreate Ultima 6. That is, stay as close to the original as possible. By all means, change it if you want, but then you don't call it Ultima 6 (or the Ultima 6 project), but the-game-that-was-inspired-by-Ultima-6 or something like that.

I find it kind of meaningless to say that they failed by staying close to U6.

If that's the case, they failed abysmally. The graphics are 3d, not 2d. There are tons of people that didn't exist in the original game. There is an evil path and ending. The dungeons are only 4 levels deep. One dungeon in U6P is bigger than all the dungeons in Ultima VI combined. Nightshade grows all over the place in this game. Same with all other reagents. The economy is much more robust in U6P. In fact, there are more differences, outside of the main plot, than similarities. Nobody should play this game if they're expecting a TRUE Ultima VI remake.

You're just picking and choosing which things YOU think should be okay to replace versus which things I think should be okay to supplement, and that's fine. Just be aware that's what you're doing. It's the same things the developers did.

I haven't played the game. I argued out of principle, that a remake should be as close to the original as possible, at least when it comes to content. I assumed that the project was strictly kosher.

Based on what you say it seems that the project does deviate from the original, and therefore my arguments don't hold water. And yours IS meaningful and relevant.

*sighs* Yet another case where pibbur doesn't know what he's talking about.

Corwin is right though. The U6P team was damned if they did and damned if they didn't. Don't add new stuff? People complain that it isn't modern. Add new stuff? People complain that it isn't true to the original.

Remember the old saying:

You can please some of the people all the time.
You can please all of the people some of the time.
But you can't please all of the people, all of the time.

In the end, they've put together, IMO, a game that is true in spirit and mostly in content to the original, presented in a modern framework that doesn't over do it. Perfect? No, but still one of the best ever done.

I don't disagree. My post would have said "Project Britannia's U6P is a failure" if I thought that. As you can tell from reading my various posts about the game, I'm enjoying the game overall. This is just an area where it failed for my gameplay style. Of all the RPGWatchers, I've spent the most time posting about the game recently, both here and there. I hang around in their chatroom every day. I'm into it and have played for over 200 hours and counting. This is just my observation from all that time.

I'm definitely going to play it. Maybe after I've finished FO3. But I can't make up my mind whether I should finish the original (I never got far in that game) first, or go straight to U6P. Some advice would be welcome.

So little time, so many games.

I'd skip the original. I can't see a feasible reason to play it now that U6P is out. I would probably wait for 1.1 if you've got games in front of you waiting to be played. U6P is quite completable and fun now, but they are going to rebalance some of the dungeons to improve the experience even more. If you don't have anything after FO3 though, feel free to jump in now. The 1.0.1 patch will be out very soon and that'll fix the rest of the bugs. I've had 200 hours of fun with it and I should get quite a bit more too, before I'm done.

blatantninja said:

Corwin is right though. The U6P team was damned if they did and damned if they didn't. Don't add new stuff? People complain that it is modern. Add new stuff? People complain that it isn't true to the original.

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Agreed.

Remember the old saying:

You can please some of the people all the time.
You can please all of the people some of the time.
But you can't please all of the people, all of the time.

Click to expand...

Unless you're Chuck Norris, obviously.

In the end, they've put together, IMO, a game that is true in spirit and mostly in content to the original, presented in a modern framework that doesn't over do it. Perfect? No, but still one of the best ever done.

Click to expand...

Which probably is the main issue. Looking forward to play it.

It can still be fun. I played it for a while (got almost all of the pirate map) earlier this year before I got busy and put it aside. I may still go back and finish it. Once done with U6P, I'm considering playing through to Ultima VIII (including the Worlds of Ultima spin-offs and possibly the Underworld games).

I have no desire to experience Ultima IX again, but I never played Ultima VIII (my pc couldn't run it when I bought it, then when I tried it years later, it didn't hold my attention). I also haven't play Ultima VII since '94-'95, except to dabble a bit with Exult. Not sure if I will use Exult or not though. Love the idea, love the keyring, but they made a bunch of extra changes I'm not so sure about.

This is about as stupid a complain as you can get concerning U6P, but there is one thing that I really missed from the original. I LOVED seeing that panoramic view of the lake with the image of the Avatar in the sky above it as you enter Britania. I don't know what it is, but I smile every time I see it. Wish they'd added that!

pibbur said:

Unless you're Chuck Norris, obviously.

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Well, obviously, but that's mainly because people are too afraid NOT to be pleased by Chuck Norris.

crpgnut said:

I've had 200 hours of fun with it and I should get quite a bit more too, before I'm done.

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Wow. When did this come out? Not long ago, right? I doubt I play this many hours in an entire year... Carry on, carry on, it just stuck me how non-hardcore I am

blatantninja said:

Remember the old saying:

You can please some of the people all the time.
You can please all of the people some of the time.
But you can't please all of the people, all of the time.

Click to expand...

Taled today with dtp Betty and a Drakensang community member about current games.

In fact we're too old. We all three decided that the majority of games out there is just not for us more mature players.

Point is, why I want to say it here, that there will always be a fraction of players feel like being left out. You CAN'T please everyone.

And sometimes it's just the wrong game.


Besides : the gap of mature players vs. younger players is increasing year by year. No-one actually does games for older players, who, because of that, become more & more angered about that fact.

The community member I talked to is - roughly estimated - around 50+ years old, and he DID NOT like Dragon Age at all !

He just wants a party game like Drakensang. And I'll give him the link to that Ultima game.

I played through Ultima 3-Ultima 7 The Black Gate last year. In my opinion, Ultima 6 is, by far, the best of the bunch. I wouldn't be so quick to discount the original game. I bought Dungeon Siege just to play Lazarus and U6P, but Ultima 6 is still a lot of fun.

I can't disagree, gozioso. It's just that if you're going to play U6P anyway, there's no reason to play Ultima VI first. They're basically the same game.