14 DAY TRIAL // Richard Garriot, the designer of the recently announced Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues, says that he is keen to create a video game experience that mixes elements taken from the single-player space with aspects of an MMO.
The developer clarifies that gamers will never be asked to be always online to play the new title.
He tells Rock, Paper, Shotgun that, “Shroud of the Avatar is a game that first and foremost can be played both offline and online, so it’s a very high-quality story-driven single-player game.”
He adds, “That being said, if you are online, it will also search for people you know, by whatever means it can, whether you give us access to your contacts list or your social media connections. We’ll search for people you know and automatically bring them into the purview of your game.”
Gamers will not have to deal with the hassle of forming their own group to explore Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues because all their friends will automatically be added to their party and they will move as a group through the game world.
Ownership of areas in Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues is universal, which means that the entire world will be shared between all those who buy the game and the development team does not plan to create separate realities for any of the players.
Richard Garriot plans to implement a classless character system for his new game and the entire world is designed to encourage interaction, with almost all items able to perform an action or affect a player in certain ways.
The game will explore the deep lore that was created for the Ultima titles, although it will not use the same names or locations.
Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues will also offer a lot of player choice and interesting player versus player mechanics.
The game is already half way to its Kickstarter funding goal with 27 days to go.