Re: TIL: Ultima 6 NuVIe

Spalls Hurgenson  <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

Ultima VI NuVIe not only allows the ancient DOS game to run on modern
hardware (not that was so difficult with DOSBox, but still) and fixes
its two most egregious issues. First, it greatly expands the scale of
the view window**, allowing you to see more than five tiles in any
direction (I find double that satisfactory).

The problem with that is the more you expand the view the more obvious
it becomes that you're playing in a theme park version of Britannia
as compared to the previous games.  The city of Britain and Castle
Britannia used to be on the southern end a large plain in Ultima IV & V.
In Ultima VI they fill that entire plain right up to the mountains.

Ultima VII had the same problem if you played it with an engine that
expanded the view, made worse by how cramped the map had become.  Paws,
which used to be a small town on the other side of a large bay from
Britain had to be merged into it.

This is why I never really liked the one-scale-fits-all approach to
RPG design.  Most people seem to find it more immersive, but to me it
has the opposite effect.

--
 l/  //   Ross Ridge -- The Great HTMU
[oo][oo]  rridge@csclub.uwaterloo.ca
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