Ultima VII: The Black Gate Interview, Part Two
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Crispy Gamer: So you never intended for the game to be so dark - killing everyone including women and children, and cats and dogs and anything else that you wanted to take a run at?
Garriott: Well, the game's called The Black Gate, so there's no question that it was intended to be dark. Very much so. In fact, Ultima IV, V and VI were all quite the opposite. I mean, Ultima IV didn't even have a bad guy. Ultima V only had a misguided bad guy. Ultima VI, with the gargoyles, you were sort of the bad guy in a sense. Ultimas IV, V and VI were the lighthearted goody-two-shoes games, while Ultima VII was very purposely dark. I may not articulate it the same way you did in that (you, the player, could kill anything and everything,) but I would say that it is dark in that the world had become dark. We now had truly prescient evil, and we had a pantheon of characters you were interacting with that were absolutely trying to take advantage of the time of darkness for their own personal gain. So you're constantly being befriended by people who were in fact not your friends. So, yeah, it was purposely a very dark game.
And then a bit from the "outtakes" section:
Crispy Gamer: So what are you doing with your time now? Are you taking some time off or planning something exciting?
Garriott: I'm extremely embroiled in the privatization of space travel. Technically I am now a Space Adventures employee. My job title is Astronaut, and I'm now helping them work with other companies that are out building rockets to take people to space -- and that's everyone, from people you know well, like John Carmack of id Software -- who's got a company called Armadillo Aerospace -- and Elon Musk of PayPal fame, who's got a company called SpaceX, etc. I'm a big believer in both the importance and viability of taking people into space and lots of other people in our industry seem to be getting into this these days as well. While by no means is my time in gaming done, I'm spending time on this while it's fresh to me.
