And, yet, no one ever mentions the unsung gem of Westwood that was NoX.
Also, just watch this and Spoony will tell you, at least partially, just how EA fucked Origin.
I have to figure his Ultima 9 rant, and let's face it that's what this is gonna become, is gonna be in quite lengthy and meaty. I mean this is the game that offically squashed his childhood and made him the man he is today. This game...this game...this game is un-fucking-believable.
Ironbite-and yes...you know what voice you read that last line.
Spoony's and mine. You gotta remember, homes, I grew up with Ultima, too. I was playing Quest of the Avatar before I even went into kindergarten, in fact, Quest of the Avatar for the NES was the first video game I ever played.
While Ultima VIII
was a rather glaring example of executive meddling, many of its issues were technical. In fact, Origin had an expansion (The Lost Vale) ready for duplication before EA pulled the plug on it when they saw that Pagan didn't sell well. I, personally, enjoyed Pagan for all its flaws. It was different, yes, drastically different from any previous Ultima game, but it was supposed to be shockingly different, you were supposed to feel isolated, and Pagan achieved that.
Ascension, on the other hand, was so badly contrived thanks to EA's creative fuckery, that we ended up with an abomination. Fuck, most of the cutscenes weren't even
made for the Ultima IX we got, but for a totally fucking
different one. You weren't supposed to go to Britannia, but the Guardian's home world, that's what you saw at the end of Pagan. Let's not even get into the fact that the person narrating the whole intro area, telling you to not forget your clothes, wasn't the Time Lord, but Hawkwind, the seer from Ultima IV...
who is long since dead.So, yeah...for Ascension alone, EA can go fuck itself with a live grenade.