In many senses, theUr Example/Trope Maker for the computerRole-Playing Game.

Ultima is a long-running series of computerRPGs created by Richard "Lord British" Garriott.^[1]

TheUltima series more or less invented or defined all the classic computer role playing game tropes. Though the series was computer-based, its general mechanics became likewise imprinted on the consoleRPG market thanks to its influence on the mechanics of theFinal Fantasy andDragon Quest series.

Main Series:

^[2]

Spinoffs:

Compilations:

Ultima Online:

TheUltima saga begins, it is generally considered, with a primitiveDungeons & Dragons-inspired game calledAkalabeth (and which Garriott now refers to as "Ultima 0", though this title has never been made official), which introduced the character of Lord British, king of a pastiche medieval/high fantasy type world.

Originally titled "D&D28b", as it was Garriott's 28th game,Akalabeth was also heavily influenced by J.R.R. Tolkien'sThe Lord of the Rings books; the nameAkalabeth itself derives from Akallabêth, the fourth part ofThe Silmarillion. The game was hand-coded entirely by Garriott in Applesoft BASIC.

This world was fleshed out to form "Sosaria", the world ofUltima (later subtitledThe First Age of Darkness). TheEvil Sorcerer Mondain is stopped byThe Hero.

The series continues withUltima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress, as space-time distortions threatening Earth areBest Served Cold by Minax, thejilted widowed lover of the last game's dead villain.Time Travel is required to save the day.

The series started to find its legs inUltima III: Exodus, in which the evil robotic child of the previous two villains wreaks havoc across Sosaria. This game started laying the foundation of RPG elements such as towns, overworld, dungeons, and monster encounters in the way many video game RPGs came to emulate. It has been cited for inspiringDragon Quest andFinal Fantasy.

But when people speak of theUltima series, its tropes and mechanics, they tend to think of the next three games in the series,Ultima IV,V andVI, collectively called the "Age of Enlightenment". In these games, "the Avatar", another visitor from our world (By Ultima IX, he appears to be a middle-aged park ranger) becomes a key player in upholding Brittania's virtue and keeping the world safe.

With the unification of Sosaria under the rule of Lord British -- a visitor from "our" world, the place was renamed "Britannia". After the fairly cataclysmic events which ended Ultima III, the whole world was largely rebuilt, and its geography and culture would remain more or less unchanged for the rest of the series history. (As a result, the cloth maps given out asFeelies for some releases of the games can be used for any game in the series.)

Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar sets the player out on a quest, essentially, to bring virtue and general goodness to the land -- the main objective of the game is, quite simply, to live a virtuous life^[3]. InUltima V: Warriors of Destiny, the Avatar must once again journey to Britannia, to reclaim Lord British's throne from a usurper^[4]. The last game of this era,Ultima VI: The False Prophet, deals with some of the long-term consequences of the events of Ultima IV, as the Avatar must save his own life from the gargoyle race, whose ancient and infallible prophecies tell them that he will one day destroy their race (also, they're pissed off thathe the Councilstole the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom two games ago).

The third age of Ultima, "The Age of Armageddon," is a mixed bag, despite considerable technological improvement. In all three, the Avatar battles an other-worldly being called "The Guardian."Ultima VII: The Black Gate pitted the Avatar against a cult seeking to allow the megalomaniacal "Guardian" into Britannia, and is often considered the best game of the entire series.Ultima VII Part 2: Serpent Isle featured the Avatar returning to one of the lands fromUltima I that is now aseparate world. Each of these games had an expansion pack that added new sub-quests and locations to the game^[5].

Ultima VIII: Pagan follows on from Serpent Isle. The titular "Pagan" is a very different world from Britannia, to which the Avatar has been banished bythe Guardian. Pagan lacked the Britannian virtues, and while there, the Avatar found himself forced to violate them as well, eventually sacrificing that entire world. Between the loss of virtue and the drastic changes in gameplay, this is where most claim the seriesjumped the shark.

Ultima IX: Ascension is the last canonical Ultima game (thoughfans say otherwise, fora good reason). It changed things even further, replacing the traditional tile-based top-down (later isomorphic) display with a standard 3rd person 3D view, and made numerous deviations from the canonical series history. (Though, truth be told, there is still more continuity between Ultima IX and the previous Ultimas as between any two games in any other videogame franchise.) The Avatar was summoned one final time to Britannia, where the Guardian has resurfaced and totally corrupted the hearts and minds of the people (not to mentionthe code of the game), perverting the traditional virtues.

A number of otherUltima games exist: theUltima Underworld sub-series were first-person RPGs set in the Ultima universe. Two games based on the Ultima VI engine, and outside of the primary continuity, were called "Worlds of Ultima," one based on a prehistoric land, the other onVictorian space travel. A Britannia-based MMORPG, "Ultima Online" was the first large-scale MMORPG success. There were also two abortedMMOs that would have followed:Ultima Worlds Online: Origin andUltima X: Odyssey, the latter of which was intended to be a direct continuation of the storyline of Ultima IX andamong other things, was to have incorporated the Virtues of Ultima as a significant gameplay mechanic.

There was alsoUltima: Escape from Mt Drash, which came out between Ultima II and III. Richard Garriott had nothing to do with this game; Sierra just slapped the Ultima logo and the words "Mt Drash" (a location from Ultima I) onto a pretty awful RPG in an attempt to boost sales. They did this without Richard Garriott's permission; as a result, he fell out with Sierra and left to found his own company, Origin Systems Inc.

While Garriott no longer owns the rights to the games, and is no longer with EA/Origin, he does still hold copyright on several of their characters, and therefore future Ultima games can only be made if EA and Garriott can be persuaded to get along with each other. (With the roaring success ofDragon Age, however, EA is unlikely to turn back towards their old property anytime soon.)

The first eight games (with the first six bundled into two trilogy packs) and both Underworld games are all available fromGood Old Games for a quite reasonable price.

More information on the series is available onthis 15-part series byHardcore Gaming 101.

• Lord British, the ruler of the kingdom, very heavily based on Richard Garriott himself. Lord British is always asking you for favors and isNigh Invulnerable. Clever players amuse themselves by findingcreative new ways to kill him.
• A flat world (in Ultima IV, V and VI) surrounded by an ethereal void. Ambrosia, the land of the Gargoyles, was the flip side of the world in Ultima VI. (In Ultima IX, it is a domed underwater city instead.)
• In Ultima III, IV and V, a separate and distinct interface for combat than the usual world map (seeFight Woosh).
• A consistent spellcasting system (in Ultima IV-VII), where spells consisted of incantations built up from individual semantic atoms (thus, the common "Help" spell was "Kal Lor", literally "Invoke Light"; noting which constructions were spells in a previous game, and what their requirements were, sometimes allowed a player to access high-level spells early in the next game), and were powered by alchemical formulas (more-or-less consistent across games) which had to be mixed.
  • In Ultima IV and V, magic spells had to be explicitly mixed before use, requiring the player to look up which reagents were needed and, frequently, do all this in the heat of battle. In Ultima VI and VII, reagents were mixed automatically, so long as the player had enough on hand. By Ultima IX, reagents were only needed once for each spell, as a "binding ritual" allowed the player to cast the spell whenever he liked afterward.
  • In Ultima VIII, much of the story and gameplay revolved around the Avatar achieving mastery over not one, but five exotic magic systems, each of them manipulated differently, themed upon the five (western) elements.
• A recurring cast of NPCs, especially those who (from Ultima IV through Ultima VII) join the player's party, most of whom arebased on Garriott's friends.
• Themes about the evils of totalitarianism.
• Bizarre anachronisms (especially in the first two games).
• The ability (in some games) toimport character data from an earlier game
• Perhaps one of the most memorable notes in Ultima VII was the extendedTake That against Electronic Arts. The company devoured Origin quite soon after, implying a win forThe Fellowship, which proved rather prophetic considering the states in which VIII and IX were released...
  • Pretty obvious once you notice thatthe Guardian's blackrock generators looked like the shapes in EA's logo at the time.
• AnUr Example of theDigital Avatar with its deeply customizable characters
• Ultima VIII wasDarker and Edgier than Ultima VII-2, which wasDarker and Edgier than Ultima VII, which wasDarker and Edgier than Ultima VI, which wasDarker and Edgier than Ultima V, which wasDarker and Edgier than Ultima IV (that was pretty idealistic).
• Wide Open Sandbox - Ultimas V to VII offer a fully interactive world that carries on with or without you. NPCs follow their own schedules (sleeping at home at night, going to their place of work, then to the inn for lunch), and almost everything can be interacted with - shear a sheep for wool, spin the wool into thread, etc. Even before Ultima V the game was completely non-linear and you were free to travel through the world. That changed in the second part of VII, Serpent Isle.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential (AndVideo Game Cruelty Punishment) in spades.
• Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe -- Everything was written in this style: dialogue, room descriptions, the manuals,everything.
• AChekhov's Skill in the form of the Armageddon spell, first learned in Ultima VI as proof that knowledge isn't always good, and appearing in every game afterward to the point it's nearly aRunning Gag. When used, it wipes out every monster, NPC (save Lord British), item, etc. in the world. In the last Ultima game (and the end of the "Age of Armageddon" as mentioned above), it actually has a good usewhen used inside an impenetrable shield to destroy the Guardian.

• Work
• Ultima
• Video Game
• Video Games of the 1980s
• Video Games of the 1990s
• Video Games of the 2000s
• Video Games of the 2010s
• The Nineties
• The Eighties
• Commodore 64
• Video Game Long Runners
• Fantasy Video Games
• Western RPG
• Apple II
• Origin (EA)
• GOG.com