Times of Lore

Times of Lore is a 1988 action role-playing game that was developed and published by Origin Systems for several platforms, including PC, Commodore 64/128, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Apple II, NES, and Amiga.

When Chris Roberts made Wing Commander in 1990 he was already a household name among gamers. His first title for Origin, Times of Lore, had been released in 1988 to excellent sales and critical acclaim. 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. But that seeming simplicity belied a technological marvel: the game featured an impossibly intricate world map and boasted an unheard of lack of in-game load time. With that feat alone, Chris established himself as a master programmer.

Earlier RPGs, chief among them Origin’s Ultima series, featured a text-based interface. The player would need to remember that you O-P-E-N a door, P-I-C-K a lock, T-A-L-K to an NPC and so on. As games became more complex, the number of commands multiplied. For times of Lore, Chris developed something far simpler: a mouse-drive icon-based interface. Instead of L-O-O-King at something you would click an eye, instead of T-A-L-King you would click on a mouth. Times of Lore managed elegantly with eight icons what contemporary RPGs and adventure games were doing with dozens of commands; perhaps the first indication of the attention to detail and cinematic styling that would be let loose upon the game industry a few years later…

Times of Lore, developed by Chris Roberts, was originally titled Ultra Realm. According to Roberts, it was inspired by console action-adventures, particularly The Legend of Zelda.

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. 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.