Development History of Ultima IX

The Development History of Ultima IX is actually a long and complicated story. That it ended in the buggy and in many opinions unsatisfying game is the result of many events that changed the creation of the game, leading to the end result that is Ascension. The stages of the development are as follows:

The First Draft
The original plans for Ultima IX are mostly unknown. Richard Garriott had said that he'd planned to ship Ascension in a sky blue box, like Ultima VII's box was black and that of Ultima VIII mostly red. The plans called for the game being set on the Guardian's homeworld and even more jump puzzles. The game being set on the Guardian's home world was also hinted at in the Ultima VIII Clue Book. Reportedly the game was meant to use an enhanced S-VGA version of the Crusader engine (which in turn was modified version of Ultima VIII's engine).

Little is known about the plot content of this first version of the game altough some early interview fro Richard Garriott prior to Ultima VIII's release suggested that the game would focus on the Ascension of the Avatar (an aspect that felt like an afterthought in all the Britannian version of the game) and that the focus of the game would be about the Avatar having to gain enough power to fight the Guardian on his own ground, without becoming himself a second Guardian. This version also fits with the desription Garriott gave at the time of this third trilogy which was supposed to be about the Avatar "returning to the Dark Side."

However, feedback was very bad on Ultima VIII, so Origin decided to make a sharp turn. Included in the last patch for Ultima VIII was the fans.txt, in which Richard Garriott wrote, that "Ultima IX would be based heavily on the feedback Origin had received from customers, and that this feedback had resulted in a "dramatic turnaround" to being a "classic Britannian Ultima." This was obviously the result of the bad feedback, but Garriott himself was reportedly very unhappy with this first iterration of Ultima IX which is why they restarted the whole thing from scratch.

The Isometric Game
The version that most people see as the original Ultima IX.

In the wake of the bad feedback, numerous changes were made to the plans for Ultima IX. The game was re-located to Britannia, a Britannia mostly conquered by the Guardian during the Avatar's absence, and a completely new plot was written during development, the famous Bob White Plot. The game had an isometric perspective which nonetheless could be rotated.

The game was planned to have a party and pre-rendered cutscenes. Screenshots started to appear in early 1996. These previews of the game demonstrated the software-rendered 3D engine that now powered Ultima IX. The camera appeared locked into an overhead view that approximated the isometric point of view of Ultima VIII, but could be rotated about its vertical axis and zoomed in or out.

It was also considered for a while to port the game on the Sony Playstation console, several Sony related magazines even carrying previews of the game.

The game looked really promising until Ultima Online became a surprise hit in its pre-alpha and beta-tests.

Electronic Arts ordered Origin to concentrate all its efforts on Ultima Online, to get it shipped as soon as possible. While this shift was supposed to last only for a few month, the development of UO took longer than expected and effectively put the project on hold for a whole year. By late 1997, the graphics engine was starting to look outdated, with many members of the Ultima IX development team reportedly losing their motivation. According to Ultima VIII Project Director Mike McShaffry, it was actually the appearence of the new 3D-accelerators cards that rejuvenated the interest in the project and thus lead Origin to scrap the whole game an begin anew with a hardware-accelerated engine.

3D Version 1
The now known 3D perspective engine was created. In 1997, there was only one major manufacturer of 3D chipsets: 3Dfx with its Voodoo technology. So Ultima IX was streamlined to exactly that hardware. Previews slowly appeared and fans met them with skepticism, especially once more of the drastic changes to gameplay started to make news.

The game would no longer have a party of companions for the Avatar and would once again be a single-character game. To compensate for the lack of party, the plan was to give the player the opportunity to play other characters such as Shamino, Raven, and even Lord British - but this idea was ultimately scrapped due to the poor reaction it got from players.

In the now hardware-accelerated 3D engine it was decided that a third-person over-the-shoulder perspective made for a more immersive gaming experience- something that hit mixed reactions. The amount of art and voice recording work required meant that there would not be a female Avatar option. The story of the game was mostly still the same, although the plot was tweaked to make Britannia firmer under the Guardian's control.

Again numerous screenshots appeared over time in 1998 from the game engine itself and from the pre-rendered cutscenes. Reactions this time were mixed.

However, the game suffered this time under an enormous personnel fluctuation. Dan Rubenfield and Marshall Andrews, two of the designers for Ultima IX left Origin in May 1998. The departure was not a peaceful one. The two ex-employees blamed Origin for sacrificing gameplay for the sake of a fast buck. Only one month later, lead designer Bob White followed the two to Ion Storm, although this time there was no bad blood. Project leader Ed del Castillo resigned in July, being blamed for many of the changes in gameplay. So after arguments with Garriott, he left Origin for "philosophical difference."

Richard Garriott decided to take over development personally, marking his first return in a Director's role since Ultima VII, and a new plot was written with new Lead Designer Seth Mendelson with a tighter focus on the Virtues and less about the war against the Guardian.

3D Version 2
The end result of the development, the game that was shipped.

Shortly after the beginning of 1999, Electronic Arts set Origin a deadline so that the game HAD to be shipped for Christmas business. However, the game was still notoriously bug-ridden and it was impossible to implement the scale of the world and the big story in the given time. Trying to rescue what they could, they shrunk Britannia considerably, rewrote the plot to make it much more simplistic and they used every means to fit it with the stuff they already had, meaning maps and cutscenes were used out-of-place.

Even worse, by 1999, the situation on the market for 3D accelerator boards had changed considerably. 3Dfx had lost its supremacy, the Nvidia Riva TNT chip with Direct3D was now the top dog. Ultima IX was not prepared for this situation. The game ran perfectly well on a Voodoo board under Glide, but was hardly playable under Direct3D. But there was no time left to fix that problem, and the game hit the shelves.

The result was a disaster.

The game was almost unplayable under Direct3D, full of bugs, the game world was tiny, the world also hardly interactive at all and the plot appeared hastily thrown together with countless inconsistencies and ignorance of the predecessors. While Origin did later address the D3D problem and the worst bugs by issuing patches, all other grievances were soundly ignored and caused much backdraft on the Internet.

Due to the hasty re-tailoring of the game, Ultima IX Plot Remnants can be found in numerous places in the game.