Good Old Games - EA Games Added - Including Ultima Underworld 1/2

UU is pretty much the ultimate evolution of the old "step-by-step" Dungeon Master games.

So, if you enjoyed those games - consider UU the peak of the genre.

Unfortunately, early 3D graphics and primitive textures haven't aged well, and I find that games like Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder look much better today.

Still, apart from the interface/controls - I think UU can still immerse people today, given its rather amazing depth and level-design.

We ARE talking about Looking Glass

JDR13 said:

Not sure if I could get into UU at this point. I never played it back in the day, so I wouldn't have the nostalgia factor going for me.

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I first got UU and UU2 in 97 or 98 as a combo cd while eagerly awaiting Ultima IX to finally come out. I was never able to get into them. Don't know if it was the mechanics, the perspective or just not really feeling like an Ultima (at the beginning at least I guess), just didn't work for me. BUT given everything I hear about them, and my love of old games, I kind of feel like I should give them a shot.

Lord_Brownie said:

I got UW to play #2 since I never played it. I hope all the Wing Commander games make it out, I would love to play those again. I like Magic Carpet on the PS, never played the PC version, not an RP but a good game.
LB

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Been playing the original WC lately. Still loads of fun! Can't wait to play through them all then head to Privateer.

JDR13 said:

It would be great if someone could make a patch that allowed for higher resolutions in the UU games, similar to what was done for System Shock. In fact, I'm sort of surprised it hasn't been done yet, given the popularity of the game.

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I always thought it was strange that someone did not do at least an improved texture pack or something for the same reason. Must be some limitation.

I have to say, despite my dislike of EA for many of the worlds they have destroyed, I will gladly pay for these titles. Even if you dislike EA, please realize that this supports GOG! And they definitely deserve it.

While it is true that you can run most of these titles through dosbox using abandonware downloads (or the original 3/5" or 5.25" diskettes!), you still need to find the manuals often, plus you need to get dosbox set up properly for the game, plus set up a launcher if you don't want to have to do it each time.

It's worth it to me to just buy it from GOG and have everything digital and have a single icon to launch that I don't have to tweak.

I'm afraid my distaste for EA outranks my like for GoG.

"All that hate's going to burn you up, son"

DArtagnan said:

I'm afraid my distaste for EA outranks my like for GoG.

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You don't think sales of good old RPGs would cause the business guys to look at making that kind of game again?

Oh and I've just seen EA are going to reinvent their own digital distribution service, calling it Origin:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-06-03-ea-reveals-steam-rival-origin

DArtagnan said:

the worst part of the UI - to me - is that you have to mouse-click on specific buttons for "pick-up/look/interact" and some such. It's not context-sensitive like modern games, so there's a lot of fiddling with extra clicks.

It's the kind of thing that drives me crazy.

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Well, it's not really that bad!
I played UUW 2 through without using those buttons once, because you can "use" and "pickup" things just by using drag&drop (mouse gesture like). "Look" is just a single click.
Things where the "use" button comes in handy is when you want to open a pickable bag on the floor, but that doesn't happen too often.

In the manual, there even is a section titled "Playing without the icons" (I translated it from my German version).

More classics. Cool, always a good thing.

kalniel said:

You don't think sales of good old RPGs would cause the business guys to look at making that kind of game again?

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Sales of ancient games to a select few enthusiasts will make EA fund modern games with old-school paradigms?

Good joke

In any case, whatever EA does or doesn't do in the future will have to be without my support.

Maybe if they turn around completely and stop contributing to the destruction of so many established development houses - I'll consider rethinking that position.

DArtagnan said:

They're not only not deserving of any support, but they also managed to rid themselves of some of the absolute top-talent in the entire industry. We're talking Looking Glass and Origin here.

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See, this is a perfect example of how unreasonable hate clouds judgment and distorts the facts .
EA certainly had absolutely nothing to do with the demise of Looking Glass. Looking Glass "simply" went out of business when they ran out of money and could not secure funding for their then current projects. Quote:

Even with the sales of Thief II, the company could not afford to pay its employees any more, so the board of directors decided that it was time to close the doors. The company had been pretty certain that Eidos would be able to pick up the financing of their newest projects, but apparently the bank wouldn't finance the expenditure, so they were forced to decline publishing the project.

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...

So if you absolutely had to blame a publisher at all then it'd be Eidos but even that wouldn't be the whole story as co-founder Paul Neurath talked about some of LG's own errors in this interview:

Over the years people usually realize and accept both errors and successes committed in the past. Looking Glass main successes are evident, but what about errors?
We surely made many errors over the 10 years we were in business. All companies do; more so if they do anything interesting. We did try to learn from our errors.
Some of the errors we made…
- We should have dialed back somewhat the level of depth and complexity we put in some of our games, and put more emphasis on accessibility. We did learn from this, and Thief was the result.
- We did not put sufficient emphasis on pure visual pizzazz for many of our games. Fight Unlimited was an exception; but for our other titles the level visual eye candy, and providing fast and smooth frame rates, was not on par with the blockbusters of the time. This hurt our sales.
- We spread ourselves too thin in terms of genres. Nearly every blockbuster studio of that time had a tight focus, such as only doing PC first-person shooters, as often as not just a single franchise. We did 3D fantasy games, 3D science fiction games, flight simulators, sports games, and others genres. In hindsight, we were slightly crazed to try to tackle such a wide palette as a small company, and it meant that we could not build the level of expertise in any single genre as we otherwise could.
- We were undercapitalized for what we were trying to do. As an small but ambitious studio we tried to push ourselves and do a lot; but often with not quite enough capital. It was a risky strategy that ultimately contributed to our demise.
I could go on, but that’s probably enough to mention for now.

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And naturally there is much, much, much more on the whole Looking Glass affair at the still existent Through The Looking Glass fan site.

Hindukönig said:

I played UUW 2 through without using those buttons once, because you can "use" and "pickup" things just by using drag&drop (mouse gesture like). "Look" is just a single click.

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Yes, but there are some oddities with this where the mouse clicks suddenly change to other commands. IIRC, it was really easy to accidentally quaff potions or eat stuff from your inventory as the default command changed from LOOK or TAKE to USE all of sudden (or something like that). It's not a biggie as such, but still even after years I remember this little annoyance.

BTW, hopefully the GoG version of UU1 has that infamous inventory bug fixed. Not sure if it was ever completely squashed in the original versions. I was one of the "lucky" ones to experience this bug back when I was playing through UU1 for the first time.

Whatevr, Dart. lol

GOG are my homies, so I got UU as well. I can appreciate old school RPG, and am fairly curious about the title. when it's at least this graphical quality, it's playable. BAK surprised me w/ how fun it was.

Moriendor said:

See, this is a perfect example of how unreasonable hate clouds judgment and distorts the facts .
EA certainly had absolutely nothing to do with the demise of Looking Glass. Looking Glass "simply" went out of business when they ran out of money and could not secure funding for their then current projects. Quote:

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I didn't say they were responsible for their demise. I said they managed to rid themselves of them as a developer (IIRC they were under Origin), but they kept the rights to System Shock and Underworld - with which they've done absolutely nothing.

In my world, if you have someone like Looking Glass available - you don't create conditions that would motivate or force them to leave. Also, if you hold the rights to masterpieces like UU and SS - you DO something with them.

If I really need to convince people here that EA has been pretty bad for the industry, I might as well have to tell you the sky is blue. Which is pretty apt, considering what Looking Glass used to be called

Yes! especially pumped for Privateer. Wasn't there a Privateer 2 as well?
I am happy to see a lot of these titles coming and I guess there will be more later this summer.

I don't know if its possible to recapture the sense of awe I had when I first played UU2. I first saw it on a friends PC, and I was thunderstruck by the 3d environment. I had never seen that before. I was also shocked that a crummy PC could do this, being an Amiga fanboy at the time.
I would say there is still some fun to be had with it, if you can get over the Gfx and controls. UU2 had some pretty unique worlds to visit. Though I remember some parts were pretty hard. If you are interested in one of the ancestors of all modern FP CRPG's,
give it a try.

redman5427 said:

Yes! especially pumped for Privateer. Wasn't there a Privateer 2 as well?
I am happy to see a lot of these titles coming and I guess there will be more later this summer.

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Yep, but it seems like a completely different game. Very unusual feel to it, Clive Owen and all. Doesn't feel like a Wing Commander game, while Privateer most definitely did (and was probably my favourite).

I loved Privateer 2. The feel of the worlds and cut scenes was very different than WC, but I though the space flight was pretty similar. All in all, I think I just loved how huge the universe was to explore. I remember spreading that huge map out and trying to figure out how to get to different places. Fun times!

DArtagnan said:

I didn't say they were responsible for their demise. I said they managed to rid themselves of them as a developer (IIRC they were under Origin), but they kept the rights to System Shock and Underworld - with which they've done absolutely nothing.

In my world, if you have someone like Looking Glass available - you don't create conditions that would motivate or force them to leave. Also, if you hold the rights to masterpieces like UU and SS - you DO something with them.

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It is strange that this kind of criticism is coming from an anti-EA crusader .
Going by the general conception that anti-EA crusaders have of EA as the devil incarnate you know what EA would have done with System Shock and UU? Right. They would have "forced" (gun to the head style - seriouzly!!1 ) the poor puppies of Looking Glass Studios to chain-produce System Shock 1995, SS 1996, SS 1997, SS 1998 and so on... look on the bright side... that did not happen!

What happened instead is that Looking Glass went completely indie. They were an independent developer all along but when they ended the collaboration/publishing through EA/Origin they became an independent publisher as well and started to self-publish their titles for a couple of years.
That's right. They rid themselves off any "evil" outside interference and did exactly what people like you propagate all the time. Freedom!
It is outright ironic that you are now blaming EA for creating conditions that would motivate LG to leave (which I'm not sure of at all... I don't know what the reasons for the end of the collaboration between EA/Origin and LG were) when leaving EA/Origin actually created a situation for LG that people like you always dream of. An indie developer and indie publisher in one who can do whatever they like... does it get more awesome? Hardly.

And what did they do with their all new awesome indie situation? Welp. Not so much huh? Flight Unlimited, Terra Nova and British Championship Golf. Not exactly games in the spiritual succession of System Shock or UU wouldn't you agree? Not even a single RPG at all in fact.
So was EA sending out a psychic signal to block LG's creativity? Did LG employees forget to wear their tinfoil hats? What? You tell me...

And now back with an evil publisher (Eidos) they created such comparatively sucky games like Thief, Thief 2 and System Shock 2. Yep. The publisher relationships clearly had a veeeerrrryyy bad influence on LG.

Sorry but as far as any bad influence of EA on LG is concerned, you're way off the track.

Moriendor said:

It is strange that this kind of criticism is coming from an anti-EA crusader .
Going by the general conception that anti-EA crusaders have of EA as the devil incarnate you know what EA would have done with System Shock and UU? Right. They would have "forced" (gun to the head style - seriouzly!!1 ) the poor puppies of Looking Glass Studios to chain-produce System Shock 1995, SS 1996, SS 1997, SS 1998 and so on… look on the bright side… that did not happen!

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I think you might have a chance of getting at the truth if you don't put people in tiny little boxes, to fit your rigid understanding of people who don't agree with you.

I'm not an "anti-EA" crusader - I'm an anti-greed crusader. Greed as in the obsession with money above anything else. EA is pretty bad in that way, judging from games released under them through ~20 years or so.

What happened instead is that Looking Glass went completely indie. They were an independent developer all along but when they ended the collaboration/publishing through EA/Origin they became an independent publisher as well and started to self-publish their titles for a couple of years.
That's right. They rid themselves off any "evil" outside interference and did exactly what people like you propagate all the time. Freedom!
It is outright ironic that you are now blaming EA for creating conditions that would motivate LG to leave (which I'm not sure of at all… I don't know what the reasons for the end of the collaboration between EA/Origin and LG were) when leaving EA/Origin actually created a situation for LG that people like you always dream of. An indie developer and indie publisher in one who can do whatever they like… does it get more awesome? Hardly.

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So, you're trying to teach me something about what happened between the involved parties, but you don't actually know shit about it - AND you're acknowledging it. Impressive stuff.

We can all speculate until we're blue in the face. MY "speculation" is that it doesn't take a genius to figure out why they wanted to self-publish. To make it simple for you: Why go into self-publishing if you're happy where you are? Pretty simple, isn't it. There's a reason the VAST majority of established developers never self-publish.

So, either LG were exceptionally brave/stupid - or they had a damn good reason to step away from EA/Origin.

Apparently, you don't think EA had anything to do with their decision to go into business for themselves. That's amusing to me - considering EA and their history with developers under them.

And what did they do with their all new awesome indie situation? Welp. Not so much huh? Flight Unlimited, Terra Nova and British Championship Golf. Not exactly games in the spiritual succession of System Shock or UU wouldn't you agree? Not even a single RPG at all in fact.

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What?

Flight Unlimited and Terra Nova were both great games. Why are you talking about RPGs and spiritual succession?

So was EA sending out a psychic signal to block LG's creativity? Did LG employees forget to wear their tinfoil hats? What? You tell me…

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You're confused. If you think LG didn't have talent, then that's your opinion. If you're naive enough to think that EA didn't negatively influence Looking Glass in terms of creative control - then that's your opinion. You have nothing to back it up, though, except a pro-EA theory, which is most likely based on some kind of academic resistance to the obvious truth of what EA is all about.

So, you're either incredibly blind to the history of EA - or you have some affiliation with them.

And now back with an evil publisher (Eidos) they created such comparatively sucky games like Thief, Thief 2 and System Shock 2. Yep. The publisher relationships clearly had a veeeerrrryyy bad influence on LG.

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Are you drunk? I mean… Are you?

I'm talking about EA - not Eidos. You don't see the obviousness of the truth here. They moved away from EA - because they were fed up with the limited control, creatively - though Origin was a part of that as well, given their interference with the SS CD version.

They didn't go self-publishing as some kind of creative ascension to godhood, but because they wanted more creative control - as per their own words. Check out some of the old interviews for this - as my memory is fuzzy on the details.

More than likely, Eidos gave them enough creative control and they needed funds for development.

If you think I'm some kind of deluded fanboy and EA hater, then I understand. It makes everything easier to deal with. But I just happen to admire what LG accomplished with their designs, and I REALLY despise what EA has been doing since I can remember.

Sorry but as far as any bad influence of EA on LG is concerned, you're way off the track.

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Do you honestly expect me to take you seriously?

You have nothing to back any of your claims - except speculation that's counter to what even the most reasonable of gamers accept about EA.

LG was not perfect, and their games weren't particularly marketable. But they were fantastic game designers.

LG is not the whole story though, it's just one more developer affected by EA and their ways.

Do you know the history of EA and Origin - including what happened to Ultima and why?

In any case, what the hell is this really about. Yet another thread-hijacking. I'm sorry.

I never thought there would be so much conflict debating whether EA is good or bad for the industry, considering the employee debacle, the EA sports franchises and so on.

But it's pointless trying to "prove" this kind of thing - as it's not written in stone. You either see what's there or you don't. Maybe I'm imagining everything

Anyway, I don't really have the surplus of energy to go through this here.

So, you can win - and EA is a sweet grandma-like company.