![]() Q: How did you get the idea for Bane's plot?Ī: In a flash. Thus, with a little help from interviewer and subject (all the quotes below, gods' truth, come from the hint guide), let's begin exploring this game. No "A" appears to that last "Q," so I guess the facts behind this shocking anecdote will have to remain unknown. Eventually, you came out with "Bane of the Cosmic Larva." Q: We were going through the dictionary and you were saying "Bane of the Cosmic." whatever. Q: You know, I still remember you saying, "Bane of the Cosmic Larva."Ī: I did not say "Bane of the Cosmic Larva." ![]() Among such questions as "How did you become interested in computer programming?" and "What's a typical day while you're in the middle of game design?" and "Once you had finished Bane of the Cosmic Forge, did it turn out to be bigger than you had imagined?," we get this gem of an exchange: The guide's author is given as Brenda Garno, but I have trouble believing that Bradley didn't write both the "Q" and "A" part himself. Either way, this little retconned history is mind-boggling.īut the centerpiece of the hint guide-remember, this is supposed to be a hint guide-is a four-page Q&A with Bradley that reads exactly like a Q&A that someone fantasized for himself while sitting in traffic. ![]() Is Bradley really claiming credit for developing it (let alone the CRPG genre in general)? Either he was passing around a completely different game to his co-workers who were supposed to be "planning corporate stratums" (pity those in the lowest caste) or he was passing around a game that plagiarized Wizardry. And that's when it happened-David threw the entire system out the door on its ear.Īm I missing something? Wizardry V was basically the same game as Wizardry I-III, right? Same structure, same combat system, same spells, even the same names for the stores on the castle level. After its release in 1988, Wizardry V won several gaming awards and increased the series' fame to even higher levels. Norm and Rob Sirotek decided it was just too good to pass on, and so set the production wheels in motion. In just a few weeks, the game was a hit with Sir-Tech's office staff, too. In 1984, David contacted Sir-Tech Software about his program, then called "Dragon's Breath". People who were supposed to be typing memos, planning corporate stratums and comparing financial sheets, were instead trouncing through dungeons, battling dragons and collecting gold pieces. In the office where he worked, the game passed from disk to disk and person to person. Being a fan of fantasy role playing and computers, David naturally mixed the two. Bradley had begun to program what would become Wizardry V: Heart of the Malestrom. After discussing the founding of Sir-Tech and the publication of the first few games, the guide, using glorious malapropisms, says:Īt the same time and on opposite ends of the United States, David W. The guide begins with a little chronicle of David Bradley's arrival at Sir-Tech, insisting that he began programming Wizardry V back in the early 1980s, long before his employment at the company, thus completely hand-waving the fact that Wizardry V was almost entirely based on the programming that had gone into Wizardry I-IV. Oh, my.ĭid anyone tell David that the 90s had begun? Then one of my readers, JJ, mailed me the game's hint guide. There's no reason an "author" of a game shouldn't be as proud as the author of a book. ![]() But even with that, I was going to leave it alone. There's a full dedication page to his mother. His byline is on nearly every page or screen that mentions the game. In my post on Windwalker, I made fun of developer Greg Paul Malone's constant presence in the game materials, and I have to do the same here with David Bradley. I'm not entirely sure who was responsible for Wizardry VI. For their work in creating the series, the Wizardry VI documentation gives Greenberg and Woodhead the same acknowledgement that they gave Jim Schwaiger and Oubliette: none.
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