Ultima Forever - Interview @ RPS

There's an Ultima Forever interview at Rock, Paper, Shotgun featuring lead designer Kate Flack. There are also two screenshots that I don't I've seen before. Here's a snip on modernising Ultima:

RPS: So to reboot it, what do you think has to be changed for a modern audience? Admittedly, as someone who bangs the drum for the series all the time, I do appreciate that it can be difficult to show them to one of these youths I hear about and try to get them interested, particularly with the early ones.
Flack: There’s some basic stuff to do, like core controls, which have to fit the platform you’re on. Having it so you don’t need 27 differnet function keys to remember. Nice menus, quest logs, maps. Things we take for granted now.
We’ve also focused gameplay into segments. The shortest loop you can play the game for is fifteen minutes, so it’s built into these fifteen minute chunks. This isn’t sit down for six hours like with something along the lines of Skyrim. You can get in and get out fairly quickly. So, short dungeons, get in, get to the end, get out. That’s both to facilitate play on the iPad but also to accomodate groups coming in and coming out. Not everyone has hours to sit down and raid anymore. I squeeze my gaming in around a whole bunch of stuff I’m doing in my life.
You can play for fifteen minutes and have a viable and productive session, but if you do have two hours you can do multiple game loops, dungeon runs, quests, advance your virtues some more.
Do you play a lot of MMOs?

More information.

Too many compromises, too many corners cut, too generic a platform for too generic a populace. Look elsewhere RPG fans, this isnt an RPG.

"You can play for fifteen minutes and have a viable and productive session, but if you do have two hours you can do multiple game loops, dungeon runs, quests, advance your virtues some more."

This is exactly the experience I'm looking for. When I turn off my computer, I want to say, "Now, that was a viable and productive session. I can hardly wait for another game loop."

It's too perfect the lead designer's name is Flack. Only at Bioware. For those who don't know, as I believe it's a word that isn't used a lot anymore, a flack is a PR person. When I was a reporter, we usually saved the term as derogatory for the obstructionist ones who were truly full of shit.

And they did this to Ultima? For those of you who say you don't understand the Bioware hate — well, I don't understand you. This, right here, is why.

You stole my post about her name being Flack. I was thinking this was going to be crap and her name being Flack just confirmed it for me.

The really interesting thing is not the interview itself, it's the NDA Leak mentioned in the discussion under the interview.
It sheds quite another light on the game than the interview does, it seems to be legit and at least for me seems far more realistic what the game really is like, than the marketing blah in the interview.
Read it and you know what you can expect from the game.

Originally Posted by Cyrion
The really interesting thing is not the interview itself, it's the NDA Leak mentioned in the discussion under the interview.

The rant is hypocritical. As much as the ranter is disgusted by the game I can't help but be equally disgusted that he broke his NDA. It's not about how you 'feel' when you sign a legal contract, it is about the contract.

Gamers as a group already look like spoiled never-happy-about-anything misfits. This kind of thing just adds to that bias.

Originally Posted by TheMadGamer
The rant is hypocritical. As much as the ranter is disgusted by the game I can't help but be equally disgusted that he broke his NDA. It's not about how you 'feel' when you sign a legal contract, it is about the contract.

Gamers as a group already look like spoiled never-happy-about-anything misfits. This kind of thing just adds to that bias.

I'm not that old, but I've already lived too long to.get morally outraged by the.weaknesses.of others.

So, the game is a.click fest hack 'n' slasher with…maybe…three classes and a very superficial and.poorly implemented attempt.at.a morality system. Surprise. Not interested. Pass.

Originally Posted by TheMadGamer
Gamers as a group already look like spoiled never-happy-about-anything misfits. This kind of thing just adds to that bias.

No doubt, just look at all the crying on the threads here and elsewhere about BG:EE

Well we have right to voice disappointment, don't we? Even if you don't happen to agree. I blame the fault on devs that overhype their product and set us up for disappointment.

I don't mind people saying that they are disappointed or won't buy it, but the way some of them are posting, its like overhaul committed a crime against humanity.

Yeah, the drama quotient is running high.