In the world of old-school PC RPGs, the names Richard Garriott and Brian Fargo carry an awful lot of weight.
Garriott – also known as Lord British – created the massively influential Ultima series and founded Origin Systems, the company which also gave us Wing Commander, BioForge, System Shock and Crusader: Negative Remorse.
Fargo founded Interplay Productions in 1983, releasing titles like Tales of the Unknown: Volume I – The Bard’s Tale, Battle Chess, Wasteland and Stonekeep before leaving the company and founding inXile Entertainment in 2002, where he would work on games such as 2004’s The Bard’s Tale reboot, Torment: Tides of Numenera and two Wasteland sequels.
As you can catch, between them the pair have decades of experience in game design, and the idea of them pooling their talents to create the ultimate RPG is mouth-watering – and it almost happened.
“Started reading my journals from 1983,” says Fargo on social media. “Alternate universes had some deals happened. “10/15/87: Tried to get Robert Garriott (@RichardGarriott ‘s brother) and Interplay to make an RPG alongside. He suggested a company merger in the next day’s talk.”
When asked if a merger alongside Origin Systems at that time interested him, Fargo replies: “I was too afraid of giving up control but I really wanted to make a game together Richard / Lord British.”
Naturally, these kind words quickly found their way to Garriott, who posted the following tweet:
Garriott’s career post-Origin has been pretty exciting; he’s actually been into space!
He continues to work in the games industry, too, having released Ultima spiritual successor Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues in 2018. He was also reportedly working on an NFT-based MMO in 2022 called Iron and Magic, but this seems to have stalled.
Let’s keep those fingers crossed that someday, these two legends of game development can join forces.
Original case and manuals in new condition.