OT: Was U9 really THAT bad?

[Iggy]

I think there's been topics already on this.. but I just wanted to assure people that there really are people out there who fully enjoyed the game.

Sure, the combat system had horrible flaws.. sure, I ended up frying my 350mhz computer by overclocking it just to run it..

But it was really fun and that was all that mattered. It was one of the first computer games that was fully 3d in a fully interactive world and didn't look like crap.

Let's not forget the great music and the coolness of the columns. And running around cliffs searching for stuff.

I remember getting huge stashes going on the docks of britain. I would never sell any gems and I would hunt for gems religiously. My computer would slow down just to load all the items of my stash, all the swords, shields, everything.. I would refuse to sell it all, I would just stash it on the ground. Potions, everything. Almost no other game lets you do that the way you can do it in U9. Elder scrolls comes close but it just isn't the same.

I remember feeling so spooked upon discovering the destroyed village (only 2 houses lol) outside dungeon destard (the one where you have to defeat the dragon). Then I was excited to collect all the dragon eggs just for fun in my backpack in that dungeon so I could add them to my stash. Yes, the eggs that are 4X as big as you are, I put those in my stash area too.

Good times. Anyone else have similar experiences with that great game?

[Dominus]

As people say, u8 was a good game, just an horrible Ultima. U9 was a good game, but even worse an Ultima than U8. It's like certain action/sci-fi movies. The visuals, the actors, the music, the sounds might all be great but if the story and storytelling suck then it can never get the full prize.
In that respect 1999 was a very disappointing year, first the long awaited prequel turns out to be something else, than the long awaited sequel turns out just as bad. And both were similar bad...
Oh, the tragedy!

[WWWWolf]

Yep, would say the same. I enjoyed U8, I enjoyed U9, but I enjoyed both for much different reasons than I enjoyed U7. U7 and SI were Ultima games: fascinating unique worlds with deep history. U8 was an action RPG (not stellar one at the "action" part though) with just plain amazing mood - not much to do with the rest of the series though, just that, umm, it had Avatar and the Guardian.

U9 had nominally the same characters and same world as the rest of the games, but the execution of either was just horrible compared to, say, U7. It did get many other things right: Innovating on the 3D side, great music, and pretty good graphics; the only thing that really bugged me aboit it technically was that the world was a bit small. (Heck, it annoyed me greatly that Britannia of U7 is much smaller than Britannia of U4... and they went and shrunk it even more. =)

I didn't think the U9 plot *on general terms* was that bad, actually (never played it through, but I've read summaries and stuff). Just that it probably needed a lot more refinement. Previous Ultimas usually tell a story. U9 kind of felt like you'd have a storyteller who's telling a great epic story to 9-year-olds, pausing every few words to make sure they understand everything, and dumbing down and overexplaining things while doing so... also while missing some details entirely.

[TdI]

I agree with Dominus on the U9-not-being-a-good-Ultima -thing. But at least U9 had eyecandy and there was something fascinating about exploring Britannia in 3D. I remember quite enjoying some parts of the game, like some of the dungeons. Even though Bucs Den impressed me somewhat, I was mostly disaponted with the ridiculously small cities and the fact that Britain had a population of about 5. And then there was all this wackyness, like the incredibly useless superhigh ceiling of castle Britania and Rats carrying gold and stuff...

Still, I finished the game in a rather short amount of time, so it couldn't have been that bad. Either that or I'm obsessive about finishing games...

Maybe I should install it again and have another look at it after such a long time. Then again, after playing Oblivion, U9 might look like Britannenstein 3D.

[Paladin]

I agree that U9 had some stuff going for it, but as they say, as a part of a 18 year old series, the game was a very poor end and poor part. If you were to treat it as a seperate game on its own, it's actually OK (it isn't award-winning by any stretch, but it's not junk, either). The only problem I would have with it being 'stand-alone' is the bizaare story with Samhayne and the whole reason why he and Raven got into attempting to capture the Avatar. It just didn't make much sense, I'm afraid.

I finished Ultima 9 a while back (second and last time) and I won't be playing it anymore. It just doesn't seem to have much replay value (at least, to me). I treat it like the Scorpion King -- it's supposed to be a prequal to the Mummy 2, but is so incoherant, that's best to treat it as a seperate movie to make it an enjoyable (if medicore) movie.

[Andy]

I was hoping that someone would have cracked the speech file by now. I remain convinced that there is unheard dialog in it. I haven't been able to figure it out though.

[MeddlingMonk]

Don't know if anyone has cracked the speech file, but some years ago some people figured out that there are a lot of files for terrain, items, etc. that aren't a part of the final game. In some cases they're test maps. Some are early, incomplete versions of the final surface map. Others are what would have been the final game world if the project hadn't been scaled back so much. For example, the terrain file for Cove/Minoc is about half the size (in bytes) as the final surface map. I'm not kidding. The final surface map is only a little more than twice the size of one of the smallest parts of Britannia. In the final game there aren't many places you can be in Buc's Den and be out of sight of the sea. The earlier map is immense. Of course, a big area to play in doesn't necessarily make for a good game, but then again the bigger the canvas the more you can do with it. Ascension has it's points but it's such a wasted opportunity.

On the other hand, it's fun to poke around, try things to exploit or bugs to work around. I've found all sorts of interesting things, like how to keep Dermot in the cemetary or double the karma hit from depositing ghost bracelets in the crypt in Cove. You can be quite the archmage with over a thousand karma points. Can't do that kind of thing with a bug-free game.

[Andy]

I'm pretty sure no one has cracked the speech file. I'm not sure if anyone with any knowledge has cared to try. The music was also decoded a long time ago, and I heard about a lot of the unused objects that were still left in the code.

The reason why I'm so sure that there is some unused speech is that every once in a while I could hear the canceled female Avatar "hmmm" on my old system when the Avatar got borred. It was definately a female voice different from the male Avatar. Is there any good audio decoding programs out there? I've looked, and nothing seems to work.

[Iggy]

Well I suppose you guys are right. Ultima 9 was a good game if compared to other 1999 games, but it was nothing compared to Ultima 7... now that's a game.

[Petrell]

There is a project known as Forgotten World for U9A that aims integrate/add the unused Cove map into the world of Britannia in Ascension. The team is also currently in process of decoding some of the remaining U9A files so you could ask them wether or not they've tried or are planning to try to decode the speech files.

They're also looking to recruit tallented coders if anyone is interested...

[MeddlingMonk]

Thanks for pointing that out. The Cove map is easily my favorite (even though that's probably only because it has the most complete terrain).

[Andy]

Thanks Petrell. I'll look into that. It definately looks like an interesting project.

[RavynousHunter]

This is kind of like the similar discussion "Was Thief DS really THAT bad?"

I believe, as stand alone games, U8 + U9 werent bad at all, they were masterworks. But as additions to the ever-expanding Ultima universe, they werent that great. I believe that a few re-writes are in order, but not under any specific game engines. I think that if a group of dedicated Ultima fans got together, they could re-write U8+U9 under a custom engine, but still preserving their original plots, but expanding where need be.

Theyre doing a similar thing with Thief, theyre deconstructing it and making an original version in a custom-built engine. Its called "openDarkEngine" (which i am a minor part of), and it looks as though it could be the basis of a similar happening with Ultima.