Times of Lore

Times of Lore is a 1988 action role-playing game by Chris Roberts that was developed and published by Origin Systems.

Gameplay
Like most Origin games developed before Wing Commander, Times of Lore was a serious RPG. In terms of story, the game followed the typical RPG path at the time, asking the player to choose among character classes and then sending him to locate and retrieve magic artifacts to save a kingdom, however the game featured an intricate world map and boasted alack of in-game load time.

Earlier RPGs, chief among them Origin’s Ultima series, featured a text-based interface. As games became more complex, the number of commands multiplied. For times of Lore, Chris Roberts developed a mouse-drive icon-based interface. Times of Lore managed with eight icons what contemporary RPGs and adventure games were doing with dozens of commands.

It had a whole interface for the conversation system that was menu driven for joystick.

American influences aside, Times of Lore still fit best of all into the grand British tradition of free-scrolling, free-roaming 8-bit action/adventures, a sub-genre that verged on completely unknown to American computer gamers.

Devlopement
Chris Roberts was working on his own on Ultra Realm, the precursor to what would become Times of Lore. It was inspired by console action-adventures, particularly The Legend of Zelda. He started working on it in England before he came to the US.

When he went to a boardgame club in Texas he saw the art of local artist Denis Loubet displayed on a wall and contacted him to make art. Denis Loubet had been working with Richard Gariott since Akalabeth in 1980 and had been hired as a fulltime artist at nearby Origin Systems just three weeks earlier. Loubet showed what he was working on to Richard Garriott and Dallas Snell at Origin, who were impressed by the work-in-progress of Chris Roberts, and they invited him to Origin’s offices to ask if he’d be interested in publishing it through them. Chris Roberts had never heard of Origin Systems or the Ultima series; he’d grown up immersed in the British gaming scene, where neither had any presence whatsoever. But he liked the people at Origin, liked the atmosphere around the place and he ended up with a publishing contract at Origin Systems.

Working from Origin’s offices as a contracted outside developer, Chris Roberts finished Ultra Realm and changed its name to Times of Lore. During the development, it grew considerably in scope and ambition, and took on some light CRPG elements as well. In much of this, Roberts was inspired by David Joiner’s 1987 action/CRPG The Faery Tale Adventure. Roberts made sure the whole game could fit into the Commodore 64’s memory at once to facilitate a cassette-based version for the European market.

Legacy
Times of Lore went on to inspire several later titles by Origin Systems. This includes the 1990 title Bad Blood, another action RPG based on the same engine. It also inspired the 1990 title Ultima VI: The False Prophet, which adopted several elements from Times of Lore, including real-time elements, a constant-scale open world (replacing the unscaled overworld of earlier Ultima games), and an icon-based point & click interface. The interface of Times of Lore had a huge influence on later Origin games. Richard Garriott, in addition to citing it as an influence on Ultima VI, said that Ultima VII: The Black Gate was also inspired by Times of Lore. The game was a precursor to Diablo and Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance.

Trivia

 * Martin Galway came to Austin in 1988 as a contractor, to help develop Times of Lore.