Richard Garriott has announced that he is launching a new game called Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues. The game will be made by Portalarium, Garriott’s Austin-based game studio, and marks the Ultima creator’s return to fantasy role playing games.
Shroud of the Avatar will be backed up at Kickstarter. One of the most important levels of pledges allows for housing, where players can buy their own virtual property, outfit them as they like and potentially run their own business
“Shroud of the Avatar will include what I think are the keys to an ultimate role-playing experience,” says Garriott. “These important tenets include things like a fully interactive virtual world, deep original fiction with ethical parables such that players’ choices are relevant, cultural histories and fully developed alternative languages and text. Also we want our players to have physical game components like cloth maps, fictional manuals and trinkets. These are all things that people came to expect in my earlier works and we plan on bringing them all back to create Shroud of the Avatar.”
Shroud of the Avatar will have an overarching story for players to experience, but users may instead decide to work a more humble craft both in settled lands or the frontier. Player choice is said to be an important component, from the psychological profiling at the start to consequences of their actions later.
Shroud of the Avatar will be a PC game available via digital download with episodic content available later at a fee. While the game is being built to be enjoyed as a solo experience, it will also contain a persistent world where you can meet and share your experiences with friends.
“This will not be a Facebook or casual game,” said Garriott. “We think it will appeal to a multitude of audiences, but we are planning on making a game that will harken back to the same design principles that you can find in my earlier games.”
“And we couldn’t be happier to be introducing the game on Kickstarter, which has really changed the landscape for game developers. It allows us to connect directly with our fan base and it keeps us from being so dependent on the traditional publishing model. There’s now a direct feedback loop with people who like our game and have decided to back it. With Kickstarter we can listen to what our fans are saying about how we are developing the game and make changes and additions based on that feedback, before the game launches. We hope people will like what they are seeing and hearing about Shroud of the Avatar and back the project on Kickstarter,” Garriott concluded.
Source: Kickstarter.com
