当我发行《创世纪 3》后,突然有大量的人给公司写信,我开始确切地看到人们对这款游戏的看法。他们经常会描述他们会如何玩这个游戏。我很快就意识到,人们的游戏方式和我想象的完全不同——他们是为了追求力量的最大化,而不是作为英雄的角色扮演。这真的让我大开眼界。
Once I published Ultima III suddenly a large number of people wrote to the company, and I began to see exactly what people thought of the game. They would often describe how they would play the game. As I quickly realised, people were playing completely differently than I thought – they were minmaxing for power, versus roleplaying as the hero. It was really eye-opening.
理查德・加里奥特,
《创世纪 3》的创作者Richard Garriott,
Ultima III's creator
幸运的是,他的辛勤工作和全新的代码取得了足够的成功,《创世纪 3》卖出了超过 10 万份,这使得 Origin 得以继续生存下去。同时,这款游戏还获得了软件发行协会颁发的金奖。
作为一个过渡作品,《创世纪 3》的游戏设计感觉更接近下一代——《创世纪 4(Ultima IV)》,而不是《创世纪 2》,但游戏在叙事上与前几部作品息息相关。这是我们最后一次看到索萨利亚,也是我们最后一次能玩到在以前的游戏中能够玩的一些角色职业和种族。游戏以一场灾难性的事件结束,这个事件将把世界重塑为不列颠尼亚,并摧毁那些幸存者的社会秩序。
我们还会在未来的游戏中看到一些熟悉的地方,比如不列颠(Britain)和紫杉(Yew),但这是对灰色地带(Grey)和监视地带(Monitor)这些地方的告别。索萨利亚的遗迹将在未来的游戏中被提起,但我不禁想知道,如果加里奥特在他未来的游戏中保留他们,续作将会是什么样子。
Luckily, his hard work and brand-new code was successful enough to sell over a hundred thousand copies of Exodus, resulting in Origin's continued survival and the game receiving a Gold Award from the Software Publisher's Association.
A transition piece, Exodus' game design feels much closer to Ultima IV than Ultima II, but the game is narratively tied to its predecessors. This is the last we'll see of Sosaria, and the last we'll see of some of the character classes and races we were able to play in the previous games. Exodus ends with a cataclysmic event that will reshape the world into Britannia and destroy the social order of those that survive.
We'll still see some familiar locations in future games, such as Britain and Yew, but this is goodbye to places like Grey and Monitor. Remnants of Sosaria will be brought up in future games, but I can't help but wonder what the series would have been like if Garriott had kept them in his future games.
《创世纪 3》将产生深远而持久的影响,在西方游戏开发商中普及了战术性的队伍和回合制战斗——后来又由《巫师皇冠(Wizard's Crown, 1985)》,《光芒之池(Pool of Radiance, 1988)》和其他许多作品都对其进行了扩展。
它在日本也很受欢迎。之前的《创世纪》游戏都被移植到了日本的电脑上,激发了诸如《梦幻の心臓(幻想之心,Heart of Fantasy, 1984)》之类的游戏,但《创世纪 3》是该系列中第一款移植到任天堂的 NES / Famicom 游戏机上的游戏。这个移植是在《勇者斗恶龙(Dragon Quest, 1986)》重新定义了 JRPG 的几个月后发布的,它对于许多日本开发人员以及全球不少游戏机游戏玩家来说,是他们玩的第一个来自西方 RPG 游戏。
虽然没有之后的一些游戏好玩,但这才是这个系列真正的开始。直到现在,我仍然向老 PC 游戏迷以及喜欢体验重要 RPG 系列游戏起源的玩家推荐《创世纪 3》。
Ultima III would have a deep, lasting influence, popularising tactical party- and turn-based combat among Western developers – which would later be expanded by Wizard's Crown (1985), Pool of Radiance (1988) and many others.
And it would also be a hit in Japan. The previous Ultima games were ported to Japanese computers, inspiring games like 夢幻の心臓 (Heart of Fantasy, 1984), but Exodus was the first game of the series to be ported to Nintendo's NES/Famicom consoles. This port, released a few months after Dragon Quest (1986) had redefined JRPGs, was the first Western RPG of many Japanese developers, as well as many console gamers across the world.
While not as fun as some of the games that would come after, this is where the series really begins to kick off, and I would still recommend Ultima III to fans of old PC games and those that enjoy experiencing the origins of an important RPG series.