Today's issue of The Escapist focuses on mythology and games. Garriott is credited as one of the fathers of storytelling in the gaming medium thanks to his work on the Ultima series. Now at NCSoft, he's the driving force behind Tabula Rasa, which hopes to reshape the way people tell stories in online worlds. Check out what he has to say on the idea of story in games in this article.

Garriott had a lot more to say than what is in the interview. Over the next couple days, we're going to bring you the rest of this interview, exclusively here on WarCry. Keep your eyes peeled!

TE: You've described, in speaking about the evolution of Tabula Rasa, what you call "ethical parables." How do these expand the play possibilities over typical MMOGs? Are they essentially missions that give people a chance to examine both sides of a problem?

RG: Exactly. When I started Tabula Rasa, in addition to things like the language, we also set off to build a virtue system very much like Ultima's, but not Ultima's. We really broke it down to its individual circumstance and its individual needs. So some of the tests and factions you might engage have fairly deep and sophisticated levels of interactions, if appropriate, and others are even a very small thread of an issue to showcase.

When I look back across the whole later Ultima series, starting with Ultima IV, each game had, [at] the core of its story, some contemporary issue that I

would mutate into a medieval setting and put in the game in a way where honestly I am not sure how many people would recognize it as being inspired by the contemporary social issue that was plaguing the world where I lived at the time. But I knew, and I felt it made for a rich and poignant storyline.

Read the full article at the link below.