Greetings everyone,
As you are well aware, the release of the Bob White plot document obviously has some impacts on a remake of Ultima IX.
I will not discuss it much, for a couple of reasons:
-The document you have is date 1997. We know this particular story has been worked on since at least 1995 from the dungeon documents. Therefore, the plot has evolved a lot. A whole lot. Which means than in this 1997 design doc, there are things that contradict each others. It is unsure if Yew is a city. It's still not clear if there is an airship. Ambrosia is a complete mystery. There is a severe inconsistency in Hawkwind's behaviour as it is explained in the game. I am not saying this is a bad draft or anything, but it is things that are to be expected from a work in progress.
This leaves us choices : what to keep? What to change ? No doubt, this will be thought upon within the next couple of weeks.
Unless it doesn't happen.
Well, yes, there is no need to be lengthy about it. Eriadain is currently at a stalemate, and it's been a while since I lastly touched the thing. A bad situation, and I think I'm kind of stuck.
When I said I would like the Eriadain project to be picked up again, I didn't say I'd like to do it myself, alone. I wasn't even expecting to lead the project. I was merely saying it would be nice if someone picked it up. And much to my surprise, I had positive reactions. A lot of them. I had explicitly stated that I couldn't do this alone, because my life has been busy with a lot of projects lately (mainly a civil union, and the writing of a book). I picked up the project expecting people to join, maybe lead, and that I could have some part on it. After all, does that game actually need a game designer when IN FACT, the game is pretty much game designed already with the plot docs that are already available? What it needs is building and writing, and it is something that can't be done alone.
Especially, if I may say, with the NWN2 engine. I have started to get more used to it. It is indeed MUCH MUCH more powerful than the NWN1 one in terms of what you can do with it and the freedom to tweak around. However, it is also painstakingly more complex to use. What took seconds to do in NWN1 can take minutes in NWN2. What takes minutes can take hours. It is not that big of a problem for a team with a direction, but for a man who already has lots on his hands, it is absolutely impossible to make an Ultima game in such conditions.
So what else is there to say? Not much, besides : Eriadain will, or will not happen, and that depends about as much on me than on you.
