Probably one of the most influential game developers of all time is Richard Garriot, an early pioneer of the role playing game genre, whose groundwork continues to inspire games to this day. While Garriot’s later works didn’t match up to his early legacy, he is going to be trying again with a brand new game.

Shroud of the Avatar is his newest project, a multiplayer fantasy RPG that was originally Kickstarted, and has been in Early Access on Steam for three and a half years- the game, at last, launches today.

“It’s exciting to have reached this major milestone,” Garriot said. “Our fans and backers have been extremely patient and incredibly helpful with us every step of the way of our journey. With Shroud, I wanted to go back to my roots of game design. We wanted to create a rich story and also bring back a sandbox style of play… a style that’s immersive and interactive.”

Early indications are that Garriot has achieved what he set out to do with Shroud of the Avatar—hopefully, the game ends up living to those impressions, because when Garriot is at his best, he is basically all but unmatched. Check out the launch trailer for the game for yourself below.

Being regarded as the spiritual successor to the Ultima series, thanks to the involvement of Richard Garriot, the game’s potential to be something of greatness is there. Recently, we got the chance to go hands on with the early access version of the game and as expected the content is rough but there is definitely some enjoyment to be found here.

After creating an avatar to roam the game’s world, the player is introduced to a lonely old man who is too frightened to leave a burning courtyard. How or why the player made his way into this courtyard is fairly unknown at this point, and as the old man clearly points out, the character isn’t from these lands.

NPCs in the world don’t possess any form of audio dialogues as they gracefully move their lips. The game uses a chat window in which the player can talk directly to them, and hold conversations based on a set of topics given by the game. These topics come in fairly basic such as “What is your name? How are you feeling?”

"The good thing about the combat system is that it’s nothing in the way of being convoluted or complex."

Hopefully as the game develops this will become more advanced and feel more natural to the player. Interacting with these NPCs for the most part is simply down to making the player’s quests appear more interesting. The game’s hints and tips system that guides the player as they go along and encounter new people and forms of interactions, is something of particular interest that stood out to me.

Occasionally, NPCs will ask you to do things. This is similar to “quests” in other games you might have experience with. Unfortunately, I am not excited about them just yet. It features repetitive missions that have you searching for medicine ingredients, scavenging for tools to craft a weapon, or killing others you know nothing about.

The game’s combat system is fairly standard; attacks and abilities are hot-keyed to the player’s number keys, a status indicator is in place to know when the character is armed or unarmed, and attacking is achieved by double-clicking on the target sight. The good thing about the combat system is that it’s nothing in the way of being convoluted or complex.

"Since the game is in early access, I was expecting the game to have performance issues. Surprisingly, the game runs well, performance seems solid and I experienced no bugs, crashes, or freezing during my time with the game."

As the player progresses through the game, making friends online or going lone wolf, you should take note of four important tabs which are inventory, the character sheet, help, and the store. Each one is fairly simple and self-explanatory. Health potions, maps, weapons, loot, and guides are all stored within the inventory, which are further divided amongst their own categories with brief descriptions of their intended use case. Weapons make use of a durability system which indicates how long it will last and how powerful it will be. Along with this comes a player stats table highlighting its damage, weight, value, and bonuses.

Moving onto the visual aesthetics of the game, there’s really not much to speak of outside the basics of the game’s theme. Expect a lot of grassy hills, taverns, barns, brick homes and caves. The small attention to detail that comes in the way of wild bears and clucking hens that make up the scenery of the game are the things that I personally pay attention to. Hopefully the game will make more use of these upon its final release.

Since the game is in early access, I was expecting the game to have performance issues. Surprisingly, the game runs well, performance seems solid and I experienced no bugs, crashes, or freezing during my time with the game. The game is by no means demanding and even at “Very High” settings it should run steady across a variety of hardware configurations.

Shroud of the Avatar needs a lot of work but given that it’s still in early access, the potential of becoming something unique is definitely there. I am hopeful that the final version will see more engaging NPCs, better visuals and improved combat mechanics. It will be interesting to see how Portalarium Studios will advance and further develop the gameplay mechanics of Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues before launch.

Shroud of the Avatar, the spiritual successor to the pioneering Ultima Online, in development by Portalarium, will be launching on Steam Early Access next month, the game’s Kickstarter page announced today.

“We were nervous at first about moving to Steam, but are feeling great now based on the overwhelmingly positive and speedy results of our Steam Greenlight campaign, and the incredible support Steam has been giving us,” the game’s developers wrote in their latest update.

“With that said, we need this launch to be super smooth.”

Therefore, Portalarium has requested all players to play the latest build of the game through Steam if possible, so they can troubleshoot and address any issues with the game ahead of its Early Access launch.

The Early Access launch itself is scheduled for November 24. The final product should be launching some time next year, with a projected release dare for January 22. Stay tuned to GamingBolt for more news and coverage.

Hey, do you know who Richard Garriott is?

If you answered with ‘I don’t know,’ then you should be ashamed to call yourself a gamer, and you need to stand in the corner till you realize you have no sense of history for your hobby.

Everyone else, of course, knows who he is: one of gaming’s most influential designers and developers ever (possibly the most influential one), who was behind the much acclaimed and revered Ultima series of role playing games for various computer standards back in the day.

Anyway, he has been working on a brand new game for a while- it’s called Shroud of the Avatar, and it is, as would be expected, a new RPG. It is crowdfunded over Kickstarter (at least in part; it appears its budget now far exceeds the original Kickstarter target), and it is now on Steam Greenlight, with a targeted release some time in the first half of 2015.

We’ll keep you posted.

Richard Garriott’s Shroud of the Avatar will see a second open period on January 22nd and will open up permanently in March. In the meantime, it’s crossed another Kickstarter milestone with $3 million in crowd-funding.

Writing in the latest update, Garriott stated that, “Shroud of the Avatar has crossed the $3M milestone thanks to your generous support. The team and I would like to express our deepest gratitude to all of our Backers for your belief in both our team and our vision for New Britannia.”

As of now, Shroud of the Avatar will be exclusive to the PC and will incorporate a shared worlds approach as opposed to being a massively multiplayer online RPG. More importantly, it will be the spiritual successor to the Ultima series and hopefully wiping away the horrible mess that was Ultima IX: Ascension.

Will you be participating in the open release period on January 22nd? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

You guys remember Richard Garriot? You know, the guy who created the Ultima series of video games. The guy who created role playing games as a video game genre, the guy who went on to inspire future RPG franchises like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and Baldur’s Gate? You remember him? Well, the grand daddy of role playing games is returning. Bye bye Bioware, Bethesda, Blizzard.

Check out the newest trailer for his upcoming project Shroud of the Avatar if you don’t believe me. The game, due for release in Q4 2014 on Microsoft Windows, OS X, and Linux, looks awesome. Somehow, Garriot seems to be taking a rather tired and generic, cliched setting, especially in context of the genre, and he seems to be making it interesting.

Shroud of the Avatar is due late next year. Stay tuned to GamingBolt, because you bet we’ll have more coverage for you on this game as and when it’s made available.

So far, 15,188 backers has pledged more than $1,055,400 to the Kickstarter campaign and so the game will be receiving stretch goals to accomodate them. The next goal is $1.1 million which will add pets to the mix for players. $1.2 million means a seasonal weather system will also make its way into the game.

The game itself will be releasing first for PC but will arrive on Mac, Linux and tablets later as well. Though not necessarily a follow-up to Ultima, Shroud of the Avatar will be in the same vein. It will feature a single player campaign but also have online features within a persistent world.

Garriott for his part described it as “the antithesis of what people have been doing with MMOs these last few years”, of which it is the first part. Look out for the game next year in Spring.

Source: GIBiz

The famed Lord British’s next venture will feature a full interactive world with its own original lore (with cultural histories and language) along with physical components such as a cloth map and trinkets. Shroud of the Avatar is being billed as a multiplayer online game, but can be played offline in single player.

So far the project has 8,370 Backers with $490,587 pledged of the $1,000,000 goal with only 28 days to go. Considering the sheer amount of fame and repute that Garriott’s name carries, it won’t be long before the goal is met and crossed.