Interviews// Richard Garriott - Tabula Rasa Interview

SPOnG: And how do the instances in Tabula Rasa differ from more traditional MMOs?

Richard Garriott: The finale of the entire first continent is an instance space called Elo Vale – where you can see how we use instance spaces in our game in quite a different way to most MMOs, most of which use instance spaces to allow you to your private chance to kill a boss monster. We think that underutilises what is available to you during in this time – so we use instance spaces to make the game feel much more like a solo-player game. So, we do very detailed storytelling, very detailed puzzle-solving… and usually the mission in the game ends in some very climactic event such as the destruction of a big power generator or some other worthy goal to make me feel like a special person.

The idea is that I don’t just feel like one of the throngs or one of the masses of characters, which is what you usually feel like in most MMOs. The storyline in this particular case is that the ‘Elo’, the friendly aliens that have been helping us out along the way, well it turns out that we have never actually met one of the Elo. Until this point, we assumed that the Bane had wiped them out and we are just following a trail of information and artefacts they had left behind. But now we have heard a rumour that their may be a living Elo here at the end of this Elo Vale map. Unfortunately, of course, the Bane are also on this trail – and if it turns out to be true that there is an Elo alive, then they are going to want to do something about it.


SPOnG: What about weapons? And what are these strange obelisks in the game with the funny pictures and symbols on them?

Richard Garriott: As we are at a fairly advanced stage in the game here you will notice that we a using some advanced, more unusual weaponry – in this case here, for example, we are using a ‘net gun’. You can see here that we just froze that enemy with a critical hit, enabling us to go over and shatter it into a million pieces, thus gaining a bunch of extra XP.

And you can also see here there are these obelisks with this pictographic language on that you may have seen in some of our marketing materials already. We’ve developed a full language that the Elo use in order to try to leave artefacts behind on the worlds they visit, so that these obelisks can be easily read and understood by the indigenous populations there. (It also has the added bonus of being fairly easy to read in English, French, German, Spanish, Japanese and Korean – being pictographic!). So, this whole language is easily readable.


SPOnG: How do players learn this basic pictorial language?

Richard Garriott: There is also a collecting game built into the game, where you find these symbols one at a time as you play – so most players, because they are finding these things one at a time, and because the images are pictographic and very easy to remember, actually very quickly learn to understand the Elo language. Plus it is written on a lot of art, architecture and portals in the game. Plus you have to learn the language in order to unlock your superpowers, to summon reinforcements in the game and so on.


SPOnG: What are these shields and forcefields that we can see in the game?

Richard Garriott: The orange or yellow bubbles that you see on the playmap are being protected by what we call ‘shield drones’ – so the only way to take down that unit or group is to get inside the shield and take down the shield drone. Here also, you can see that as we pass over this bridge and (hopefully) fight our way through the horde of the Bane trying to stop us getting across, there is a blue force field – these generally mean that they are passable to the friendly faction in the game (if they were red then they would be impassable to us).


SPOnG: You have made a big deal about the various ‘ethical parables’ in Tabula Rasa – can you give us an example of one of these?

Richard Garriott: Sure, inside here we find one of the moral dilemma issues that we commonly try to put in front of the player. In this case, this forcefield which is protecting both the doorway in and the chamber which we are going to go into, is basically being protected by a person who is basically sacrificing their life in order to keep the forcefield shield generator powered. So, you as a player get involved in having to decide who you will sacrifice and leave behind here in order to be able to progress through the game – and you have to live within the game with the ramifications of the choices you make and the side effects of, in this case, which NPC you have chosen to sacrifice for the greater good.

Once you have passed through there, you pass into this Elo sanctuary – where its rumoured that this Elo might still be living. Once you come into this space you will see a number of big Elo constructions and artefacts. You can see this tower here with a big energy beam coming up from inside of it, you also see that the forces of physics are being bent in some rather interesting ways. The waterfalls that are falling down inside never actually make it to the ground, they are swept up into this vortex, converted to energy and beamed up through this structure.


SPOnG: So, to recap and round up, what is it that makes Tabula Rasa stand apart from all other MMOs out there?

Richard Garriott: Tabula Rasa is basically very different in terms of combat, dynamic battlefields and the way we utilise story. I would argue that for the last ten years almost all MMOs have been built as refinements of the Ultima Online and Everquest models. I’m a big believer that once Tabula Rasa comes out that people will use this more fast-paced type of combat, the dynamic battlefields and the in-depth storytelling – even in an MMO space – and I would argue that a lot of MMO developers will probably follow this model for the next ten years.

SPOnG: Thanks for your time, Richard.