| Ultima | |
|---|---|
 The most commonly used logo in the series | |
| Genre | Role-playing |
| Developers | |
| Publishers | |
| Creator | Richard Garriott |
| Platforms | Amiga,Apple II,Atari 8-bit,Atari ST,Commodore 64,Commodore 128,FM Towns,MS-DOS,MSX,Mac OS,Master System,NES,PC-98,PlayStation,SNES,VIC-20,Windows,X68000 |
| First release | Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness 1981 |
| Latest release | Underworld Ascendant 2018 |
Ultima is a series ofopen worldfantasyrole-playing video games fromOrigin Systems, created byRichard Garriott.Electronic Arts has owned the brand since 1992. The series had sold over 2 million copies by 1997.[1]
A significant series in computer game history, it is considered, alongsideWizardry andMight and Magic, to be one of the norm-establishers of the computer role-playing game genre.[2] Several games of the series are considered seminal entries in their genre, and the early installments especially introduced new innovations which then were widely copied by other games.
The Ultima games are primarily within the scope of fantasy fiction but contain science fiction elements as well. They take place for the most part in a world called Britannia; the constantly recurring hero is initially called the Stranger, until he attains the role ofAvatar inUltima IV and is known by that appellation from then on.
| 1979 | Akalabeth |
|---|---|
| 1980 | |
| 1981 | Ultima I |
| 1982 | Ultima II |
| 1983 | Ultima III |
| Escape from Mt. Drash | |
| 1984 | |
| 1985 | Ultima IV |
| 1986–1987 | |
| 1988 | Ultima V |
| 1989 | |
| 1990 | Ultima VI |
| Worlds of Ultima | |
| 1991 | Ultima: Worlds of Adventure 2 |
| Ultima: Runes of Virtue | |
| 1992 | Ultima Underworld |
| Ultima VII | |
| 1993 | Ultima Underworld II |
| Ultima VII Part Two | |
| Ultima: Runes of Virtue II | |
| 1994 | Ultima VIII |
| 1995–1996 | |
| 1997 | Ultima Online |
| 1998 | |
| 1999 | Ultima IX |
| 2000–2009 | |
| 2010 | Lord of Ultima |
| 2011–2012 | |
| 2013 | Ultima Forever |
| 2014–2017 | |
| 2018 | Underworld Ascendant |
The mainUltima series consists of nine installments (with the seventh title divided into two parts) grouped into three trilogies, or "Ages": The Age of Darkness (Ultima I-III), The Age of Enlightenment (Ultima IV-VI), and The Age of Armageddon (Ultima VII-IX). The last is also sometimes referred to as "The Guardian Saga" after its chiefantagonist. The first trilogy is set in afantasy world named Sosaria, but during the cataclysmic events of The Age of Darkness, it is sundered and three quarters of it vanish. What is left becomes known as Britannia, a realm ruled by the benevolentLord British, and is where the later games mostly take place. The protagonist in all the games is a resident ofEarth who is called upon by Lord British to protect Sosaria and, later, Britannia from a number of dangers. Originally, theplayer character was referred to as "the Stranger", but by the end ofUltima IV he becomes universally known as theAvatar.
InUltima I: The First Age of Darkness (1981),[3] the Stranger is first summoned to Sosaria to defeat the evil wizardMondain who aims to enslave it. Since Mondain possesses the Gem ofImmortality, which makes him invulnerable, the Stranger locates atime machine, travels back in time to kill Mondain before he creates the Gem, and shatters the incompleteartifact.
Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress (1982) details Mondain's secret student and loverMinax's attempt to avenge him. When Minax launches an attack on the Stranger's homeworld of Earth, her actions cause doorways to open to various times and locations throughout Earth's history, and brings forth legions of monsters to all of them. The Stranger, after obtaining the Quicksword that alone can harm her, locates the evil sorceress at Castle Shadowguard at the origin of time and defeats her.
Ultima III: Exodus (1983) reveals that Mondain and Minax had an offspring, the eponymous Exodus, "neither human, nor machine", according to the later games (it is depicted as a computer at the conclusion of the game, and it appears to be ademonic, self-awareartificial intelligence). Some time after Minax's death, Exodus starts its own attack on Sosaria and the Stranger is summoned once again to destroy it.Exodus was the first installment of the series featuring aplayer party system, which was used in many later games.
Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar (1985) marked a turning point in the series from the traditional "hero vs.villain" plots, instead introducing a complexalignment system based upon theEight Virtues derived from the combinations of the Three Principles of Love, Truth and Courage. Although Britannia now prospers under Lord British's rule, he fears for his subjects' spiritual well-being and summons the Stranger again to become aspiritual leader of Britannian people by example. Throughout the game, the Stranger's actions determine how close he comes to thisideal. Upon achieving enlightenment in every Virtue, he can reach the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom and becomes the "Avatar", the embodiment of Britannia's virtues.
InUltima V: Warriors of Destiny (1988), the Avatar returns to Britannia to find that after Lord British had been lost in theUnderworld,Lord Blackthorn, who rules in his stead, was corrupted by the Shadowlords and enforces aradically twisted vision of the Virtues, deviating considerably from their original meaning. The Avatar andhis companions proceed to rescue the true king, overthrow the tyrant, and restore the Virtues in their true form.
Ultima VI: The False Prophet (1990) details the invasion of Britannia byGargoyles, which the Avatar and his companions have to repel. Over the course of the game, it is revealed that the Gargoyles have valid reasons to loathe the Avatar. Exploring the themes ofracism andxenophobia, the game tasks the Avatar with understanding and reconciling two seemingly opposing cultures.
Ultima VII: The Black Gate (1992) sees the Avatar entangled in the plan of an ostensibly virtuous and benevolent organization named the Fellowship (inspired byScientology)[4][5] to create a gateway for the evil entity known as the Guardian to enter Britannia. Though all of the main line ofUltima games are arranged into trilogies, Richard Garriott later revealed thatUltima VII was the first game where he did any sort of planning ahead for future games in the series. He elaborated that "the first three didn't have much to do with each other, they were 'Richard Garriott learns to program'; IV through VI were a backwards-designed trilogy, in the sense that I tied them together as I wrote them; but VII-IX, the story of the Guardian, were a preplanned trilogy, and we had a definite idea of where we wanted to go."[6] Anexpansion pack was released namedForge of Virtue that added a newly arisen volcanic island to the map that the Avatar was invited to investigate. The tie-in storyline was limited to this island, where a piece of Exodus (his data storage unit) had resurfaced. To leave the island again, the Avatar had to destroy this remnant of Exodus. In the process of doing so, he also created The Black Sword, an immensely powerful weapon possessed by a demon.
Ultima VII Part Two: Serpent Isle (1993) was released as the second part ofUltima VII because it used the same game engine asUltima VII. According to interviews, Richard Garriott felt it therefore did not warrant a new number. Production was rushed due to deadlines set to the developers, and the storyline was cut short; remains of the original, longer storyline can be found in the database. Following the Fellowship's defeat, its founderBatlin flees to the Serpent Isle, pursued by the Avatar and companions. Serpent Isle is revealed as another fragment of former Sosaria, and its history which is revealed throughout the game provides many explanations and ties up many loose ends left over from the Age of Darkness era. Magical storms herald the unraveling of the dying world's very fabric, and the game's mood is notably melancholic, including the voluntary sacrificial death of a long-standing companion of the Avatar, Dupre. By the end of the game, the Avatar is abducted by the Guardian and thrown into another world, which becomes the setting for the next game in the series.The Silver Seed was an expansion pack forUltima VII Part 2 where the Avatar travels back in time to plant a silver seed, thus balancing the forces that hold the Serpent Isle together. LikeForge of Virtue, the expansion contained an isolated sub-quest that was irrelevant to the main game's storyline, but provided the Avatar with a plethora of useful and powerful artifacts.
InUltima VIII: Pagan (1994), the Avatar finds himself exiled by the Guardian to a world called "Pagan". The Britannic Principles and Virtues are unknown here. Pagan is ruled by the Elemental Titans,god-like servants of the Guardian. The Avatar defeats them with their own magic, ascending to demi-godhood himself, and finally returns to Britannia. A planned expansion pack,The Lost Vale, was canceled afterUltima VIII failed to meet sales expectations.
Ultima IX: Ascension (1999), the final installment of the series, sees Britannia conquered and its Virtues corrupted by the Guardian. The Avatar has to cleanse and restore them. The Guardian is revealed to be the evil part of the Avatar himself, expelled from him when he became the Avatar. To stop it, he has to merge with it, destroying himself as a separate entity. Theunreleased version of the plot featured a moreapocalyptic ending, with the Guardian and Lord British killed, Britannia destroyed, and the Avatar ascending to a higher plane of existence.
Akalabeth: World of Doom was released in1979, and is sometimes considered a precursor to theUltima series.
Sierra On-Line also producedUltima: Escape from Mt. Drash in1983. Themaze game has nothing in common with the others,[8] but is highly sought after by collectors due to extreme rarity.
TheWorlds of Ultima series is aspin-off ofUltima VI using the samegame engine, following the Avatar's adventures after the game's conclusion:
The second spin-off series,Ultima Underworld, consisted of three games with afirst-person perspective:
Console versions ofUltima have allowed further exposure to the series, especially inJapan where the games have been bestsellers and were accompanied by severaltie-in products includingUltimacartoons andmanga.[9] In most cases, gameplay and graphics have been changed significantly.
| 1998 | The Second Age |
|---|---|
| 1999 | |
| 2000 | Renaissance |
| 2001 | Third Dawn |
| 2002 | Lord Blackthorn's Revenge |
| 2003 | Age of Shadows |
| 2004 | Samurai Empire |
| 2005 | Mondain's Legacy |
| 2006 | |
| 2007 | |
| 2008 | |
| 2009 | Stygian Abyss |
| 2010 | High Seas |
| 2011 | |
| 2012 | |
| 2013 | |
| 2014 | |
| 2015 | Time of Legends |
Ultima Online (1997), aMMORPG spin-off of the main series, has become an unexpected hit, making it one of the earliest and longest-running successful MMORPGs of all time. Its loreretconned the ending ofUltima I, stating that when the Stranger shattered the Gem of Immortality, he discovered that it was tied to the world itself, therefore its shards each contained a miniature version of Britannia. The player characters inUltima Online exist on these "shards". Eight expansion packs forUO have been released (The Second Age,Renaissance,Third Dawn,Lord Blackthorn's Revenge,Age of Shadows,Samurai Empire,Mondain's Legacy andStygian Abyss). The agingUO graphic engine was renewed in 2007 with the officialKingdom Reborn client.Ultima Online 2, later renamed toUltima Worlds Online: Origin and canceled in2001, would have introducedsteampunk elements to the game world, following Lord British's unsuccessful attempt to merge past, present, and future shards together.
UO spawned two sequel efforts that were canceled before release:Ultima Worlds Online: Origin (canceled in2001, though the game's storyline was published in the Technocrat War trilogy) andUltima X: Odyssey (canceled in2004).Ultima X: Odyssey would have continued the story ofUltima IX. Now merged with the Guardian, the Avatar creates a world of Alucinor inside his mind, where the players were supposed to pursue the Eight Virtues in order to strengthen him and weaken the Guardian.Ultima X was developed without participation of the original creatorRichard Garriott and he no longer owns the rights to the series. However, he still owns the rights to several of the game characters so it is impossible for either him orElectronic Arts to produce a newUltima title without getting permission from each other.
Lord of Ultima is a defunct free-to-play browser-basedMMORTS released in 2010 byEA Phenomic. It was the first release in theUltima series sinceUltima Online, and also the first title to have no involvement from series creator Garriott or founding company Origin. It has been criticized[by whom?] for having slow-paced gameplay and very weak connections to the Ultima franchise lore.EA announced on February 12, 2014, thatLord of Ultima would be shut down and taken offline as of May 12, 2014.[needs update]
Announced in summer 2012,Ultima Forever is a defunct free-to-play online action role-playing game. In contrast toLord of Ultima,Ultima Forever returns to the lore of the original game series.As of August 29, 2014. Ultima Forever's servers were shut down.
A group of volunteer programmers createdUltima V: Lazarus in 2005, a remake ofUltima V using theDungeon Siege engine.
TheExult open-source project aims to recreate Ultima VII for modern operating systems, using the game's original plot, data, and graphics files.[11]
Several novels were released under theUltima name, including:
In Japan, various novels, multiple gamebooks, a soundtrack CD, two kinds of wrist watches, a tape dispenser, a pencil holder, a board game, a jacket, and a beach towel were released. There were rumours of anUltima anime cartoon,[14] but its existence has been described as unlikely.[15]
Four main manga comics were released in Japan:
Ultima game boxes often contained so-called "feelies"; e.g. fromUltima II on, every game in the main series came with a clothmap of the game world. Starting withUltima IV, small trinkets like pendants, coins and magic stones were included. Made of metal or glass, they usually represented an important object found within the game itself.
Not liking how games were sold in zip lock bags with a few pages printed out for instructions, Richard Garriott insistedUltima II be sold in a box, with a cloth map, and a manual.[16][17] Sierra was the only company at that time willing to agree to this, and thus he signed with them.
In the Atari 8bit version ofUltima IV one of the floppy disks had an unformatted track. In its absence the player would lose on every fight, which would not be obvious as a copy protection effect right away as one could assume that this was just due to either lack of experience or proper equipment. The protection mechanism was subtle enough to be overlooked by the German distributor that originally delivered Atari 8bit packages with floppies that were formatted regularly, and thus these paid copies acted like unlicensed copies, causing players to lose every battle.[18]
InUltima V, there were one or two instances where ostensibly insignificant information found in the accompanying booklet were asked by person(s) encountered in the game. The game also used runic script in some places and a special language for spell names, for both of which the necessary translation tables / explanations were provided in the booklet. Similarly, a journal of Lord British's doomed expedition into the underworld was included with the box; over the course of the game it turns out that the player will have to retrace the expedition's steps to recover a vital item. These can be seen as subtle copy-protection measures, well fitted for the context of history and fantasy so that a casual player didn't take them for copy protection.[19]
Ultima VI introduced a more systematic use of copy protection in the form of in-game questions, preventing the player from progressing any further if the questions were answered incorrectly.[20] InUltima VII, this practice was continued, although in both games the player had an unlimited number of tries to answer the questions correctly. Answers could be obtained by consulting the manual or cloth map, although the manual released with theUltima Collection contained all copy protection answers for every game.[21]
InUltima VII Part 2: Serpent Isle, the copy protection was changed slightly. Players were asked questions at two points in the game, and if they could not answer after two attempts, all NPCs said nothing but altered versions of famous quotes. Everything would also be labeled "Oink!", preventing the game from being played. From Ultima VIII onward, copy protection questions were discontinued.[22]
Originally, the world ofUltima was made up of four continents. These were Lord British's Realm, ruled by Lord British and the Lost King; The Lands of Danger and Despair, ruled by Lord Shamino and the King of the White Dragon; The Lands of the Dark Unknown, ruled by Lord Olympus and the King of the Black Dragon; and The Lands of the Feudal Lords, ruled by the lords of Castle Rondorin and Castle Barataria.
After the defeat of Mondain and the shattering of his Gem of Immortality inUltima I, there was a cataclysm that changed the structure of the world. Three of the four continents seemingly disappeared, leaving only Lord British's realm in the world. This remaining continent was referred from then on as "Sosaria". The Lands of Danger and Despair were later rediscovered as the Serpent Isle, which had been moved to a different dimension or plane, so it seems likely that the other two continents still exist.Ultima II shows Castle Barataria on Planet X, suggesting that the Lands of the Feudal Lords became this planet;Ultima Online: Samurai Empire posits that the Lands of the Feudal Lords was transformed into the Tokuno Islands by the cataclysm.
After the defeat of Exodus inUltima III, Sosaria became Britannia in order to honor its ruler, Lord British. Serpent Isle remained connected with Britannia via a gate in the polar region. The Fellowship leader, Batlin, fled here after the Black Gate was destroyed inUltima VII, preventing the Guardian's first invasion. Ninety percent of the island's population was destroyed by evil Banes released by Batlin in a foolish attempt to capture them for his own use inUltima VII Part 2.
In Ultima, the player takes the role ofthe Avatar, who embodies eight virtues. First introduced inUltima IV, the Three Principles and the Eight Virtues marked a reinvention of the game focus from a traditional role-playing model into an ethically framed one.[23] Each virtue is associated with a party member, one of Britannia's cities, and one of the eight other planets in Britannia's solar system. Each virtue also has a mantra and each principle a word of power that the player must learn. The Eight Virtues explored inUltima are Honesty, Compassion, Valor, Justice, Sacrifice, Honor, Spirituality, and Humility. These Eight Virtues are based on the Three Principles of Truth, Love, and Courage. The Principles are derived from the One True Axiom, the combination of all Truth, all Love, and all Courage, which is Infinity.[23][24]
The virtues were first introduced inUltima IV: Quest of the Avatar (1985), where the goal of the game is to practice them and become a moral exemplar. Virtues and their variations are present in all later installments. Richard Garriott's motives in designing the virtue system were to build on the fact that games were provoking thought in the player, even unintentionally. As a designer, he "wasn't interested in teaching any specific lesson; instead, his next game would be about making people think about the consequences of their actions."[25] The original virtue system in Ultima was partially inspired by the 16 ways of purification (sanskara) and character traits (samskara) which lead to Avatarhood in Hinduism.[23][26] He also drew on his interpretation of characters fromThe Wizard of Oz, with theScarecrow representing truth, theTin Woodsman representing love, and theCowardly Lion representing courage.[27]
The Virtues have become a frequent theme in the Ultima games followingUltima IV, with many different variants used throughout the series.Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny saw Lord Blackthorn turn the virtue system into a rigid and draconian set of laws.[28] The rigid system of Blackthorn unintentionally causes the Virtues to actually achieve their polar opposites, in part due to the influence of the Shadowlords. This shows that the Virtues always come from one's own self, and that codifying ethics into law does not automatically make evil people good.[23]Ultima VI: The False Prophet confronted the Avatar with the fact that, from another point of view, the Avatar's quests for Virtue may not appear virtuous at all, presenting an alternative set of virtues.[29] InUltima VII, an order known as the Fellowship displaced the Virtues with its own seemingly benevolent belief system, casting Britannia into disarray; and inUltima IX, the Virtues had been inverted into their opposite anti-virtues.
Ultima's virtue system was considered a new frontier in game design,[30] and has become "an industry standard, especially within role-playing games."[31] The original system fromUltima IV has influenced moral systems in games such asBlack & White,Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and theFable series.[31][32] However, Ultima can only be won by being virtuous, while other games typically offer a choice to be vicious.[32] Mark Hayse specifically praises Ultima's virtue system for its subtlety. The game emphasizes the importance of virtue, but leaves the practice ambiguous with no explicit point values and limited guidance. This makes the virtue system more of a "philosophical journey" than an ordinary game puzzle.[31]
The earlyUltima games referred to the player-protagonist as theStranger, with an open game design that allowed players to complete quests through theft or violence. After the release ofUltima III, creatorRichard Garriott received letters from parents that criticized theUltima series for allowing immoral actions, such as theft or murder against peaceful citizens. Garriott also received criticism about supposedSatanic content, particularly the demonic nature of the antagonist ofUltima III who appeared on the game packaging. InThe Official Book of Ultima, Shay Addams described Richard Garriott's thinking, that "if people were going to look for hidden meaning in his work when they didn't even exist, he would introduce ideas and symbols with meaning and significance he deemed worthwhile, to give them something they could really think about."[33] After watching a television show onHinduism and the concept of theAvatar, Garriott was inspired to create his own system of eight Virtues for the next protagonist inUltima IV, the Avatar.[34]
The Avatar makes his first appearance in thefourthUltima game, where his goal is to follow the path of the Virtues, and retrieve the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom from the Great Stygian Abyss.[35] In thefifth game, the Avatar defeats a repressive regime in Britannia, and in thesixth, he brings peace between men and gargoyles. InUltima VII andVIII, the Avatar battles the Guardian, finally destroying both himself and his foe inUltima IX: Ascension.
With the exception ofUltima IX: Ascension, the player can choose the Avatar's name.Ultima VIII: Pagan fixed the Avatar's identity as a blond-haired blue-eyed male, while the other games allowed the player to select the Avatar's race, gender, and appearance.[36] InUltima IV onward, the player activates the Avatar's speech using singular keywords, untilUltima VII andUltima Underworld allowed full dialog.Ultima IX added digitized speech to accompany the text.
The Avatar was initially designed to be a blank slate through which players could reflect their own personality[37] The use of the word "avatar" in this manner is the first time that the word represented a concept defined byits modern virtual context.[38] The Avatar was one of the first times that a player could select the race and gender of the protagonist, and can be interpreted as a representative of the player, allowing them to reflect on their actions in the game.[39] However, the Avatar eventually evolved to take on a more specific appearance and character.[40]
Lord British is the ruler of Britannia, and an in-game personification of the creator of the series,Richard Garriott.[41] His name comes from a nickname given to him by friends at a computer camp, who felt that his way of saying "hello" was distinctly "British." The "Lord" prefix was added when he played thedungeon master inDungeons & Dragons games.[27] Garriott released early games, such asAkalabeth, under the name and occasionally appeared inUltima Online playing as Lord British. He is still known as Lord British even after his departure fromUltima makerOrigin Systems: Garriott retained the trademark rights to the name Lord British with its associated symbols, and the character appeared in his latest (and now defunct) online game,Tabula Rasa as General British.
Lord Blackthorn becomes regent of Britannia when Lord British disappears while exploring the Underworld inUltima V. Originally, he is a wise and just ruler, but he is twisted by the Shadowlords and becomes an oppressivetyrant. By the game's conclusion, Lord British is restored to his throne and Blackthorn sent toexile through a red moongate to an unknown world.Ultima VII Part Two: Serpent Isle explains that his destination is the Serpent Isle. While on Serpent Isle, Blackthorn takes refuge among the Xenkan Monks and finds redemption, eventually joining their order. ButUltima IX diverges from this restoration of Lord Blackthorn having him leave the island before the Avatar arrives on the Serpent Island. Blackthorn returns again as a villain inUltima IX: Ascension, this time as a servant of the Guardian, which again contradicts the restorative end onUltima VII: Part Two: Serpent Isle. In the end Blackthorn perishes at the hand ofLord British after an extensive magical duel at the center of the Great Stygian Abyss, completely contradicting everything written prior to Ascension and afterUltima VII.
InUltima Online, the timeline of which diverges from the main series afterUltima I, Blackthorn is the closest friend of Lord British, but at the same time he is also his fiercest enemy. He has been defending the peoples' individuality and freedom of belief by creating his own virtue, chaos. In this case, chaos does not represent the destructive force with which it is usually associated. He eventually forged an alliance with various dark magics and emerged as an evil force. After "surviving" through a few years, he was seemingly killed in an assault on the city of Yew. The evil form was later retconned into being a facsimile, and the original Lord Blackthorn became the king of Britannia. Lord Blackthorn was the virtual persona of Ultima Online project directorStarr Long.
The Guardian is an alien being of immense power from another dimension. A large red humanoid, he is described as a conqueror of worlds. He first appears inUltima VII: The Black Gate although for the majority of the game he is only a disembodied voice. Having conquered other worlds, he first attempts to conquer Britannia through his agent Batlin, the founder and leader of the Fellowship. The ultimate plan was to create a black moongate to allow the Guardian to physically enter Britannia and conquer it. The Avatar discovers the Guardian's plan and destroys the black moongate as the Guardian is attempting to enter.
TheUltima series of computer games employed several differentartificial scripts. The people of Britannia, the fantasy world where the games are set, speak English, and most of the day-to-day things are written in Latin alphabet. However, there still are other scripts, which are used by tradition.
Britannianrunes are the most commonly seen script. In many of the games of the series, most signs are written in runic. The runes are based onGermanic runes, but closer to Dwarven runes in Tolkien'sThe Lord of the Rings, which creator Richard Garriott has stated he has read. They gained steadier use sinceUltima V, which was the first game in the series to use a runic font for in-game signs. Runes in earlier games were mostly found in hard copy materials, such as maps and the decorative covers of booklets. Runes appear less inUltima VII and in later games.
Gargish is the language of the gargoyles of Britannia and the language used in spellcasting within the game. Unlike the runic script, which is usually used simply as a visual cipher for English, the Gargish script encodes a genuineconstructed language, based on (but expanding greatly upon) the magical words of power that first saw use inUltima V, as well as the mantras for each of the Shrines of Virtue, which had remained consistent sinceUltima IV. The lexicon mostly comprises deformed or truncated Latinate stems (flam "fire" ← Latinflamma;lap "stone" ← Latinlapis;leg "to read" ← Latinlegō), but other origins are also apparent (uis "wisdom" ← Englishwise;kas "helmet" ← Frenchcasque). But the grammar isde novo and bears little resemblance to Latin, being largelyanalytic in structure instead. Gargish uses suffixes to denotegrammatical tense andaspect, and also in some forms ofderivation. The Gargish alphabet is featured inUltima VI, though it is seen only in specific game contexts.Ultima VII and onward does not feature anything written in the alphabet, with the sole exception of some books to be found in the gargoyle colony in the underwater city of Ambrosia inUltima IX. The Gargish language and alphabet were designed by Herman Miller.
The Ophidian alphabet, featured inUltima VII Part Two: Serpent Isle, was used by the Ophidian civilization that inhabited the Serpent Isle. It is based on various snake forms. Ophidian lettering was quite difficult to read, so the game included aTranslation spell that made the letters look like Latin letters.
![[icon]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aWiki_letter_w_cropped.svg) | This sectionneeds expansion. You can help byadding missing information.(August 2013) |
In the United States, the first fiveUltima games had collectively sold more than 470,000 copies for home computers by 1990.[42] In Japan, total sales ofPony Canyon's Japanese versions of theUltima series had reached nearly 100,000 copies on home computers and over 300,000 units on theFamicom (Nintendo Entertainment System), by 1990.[43]
In 1996,Next Generation ranked theUltima series as collectively the 55th top game of all time, commenting that, "While the graphics and playing style change with the technological leaps of the day, [it] has been the most consistent source of roleplaying excitement in history."[44] In 1999,Next Generation listed theUltima series as number 18 on their "Top 50 Games of All Time", commenting that, "Most PC RPGs are about hacking and slashing through anything that moves, usually while crawling through a dungeon. TheUltima series, however, has always been firmly grounded in a world where a character's virtues are as important as their armor class in determining success."[45] In 2000, Britannia was included inGameSpot's list of the ten best game worlds, called "the oldest and one of the most historically rich gameworlds."[46]
Many innovations of the earlyUltimas – in particularUltima III: Exodus (1983) – eventually became standard among later RPGs, such as the use of tiled graphics and party-based combat, its mix of fantasy and science-fiction elements, and the introduction oftime travel as a plot device.[47] In turn, some of these elements were inspired byWizardry, specifically the party-based combat.[48]Exodus was also revolutionary in its use of a written narrative to convey a larger story than the typically minimal plots that were common at the time. Most video games – including Garriott's ownUltima I andII andAkalabeth – tended to focus primarily on things like combat without venturing much further.[49] In addition, Garriott would introduce inUltima IV a theme that would persist throughout laterUltimas – a system of chivalry and code of conduct in which the player, or "Avatar", is tested periodically (in both obvious and unseen ways) and judged according to his or her actions. This system of morals and ethics was unique, in that in other video games players could for the most part act and do as they wished without having to consider the consequences of their actions.[49]
Ultima III would go on to be released for many other platforms and influenced the development of such RPGs asExcalibur,The Legend of Zelda andDragon Quest;[50] and many consider the game to be the first moderncomputer role-playing game.[47]
On June 30, 2020, Garriott said he was turned down by EA for any attempts to revive or remaster the Ultima series.[51]
Richard Garriott's new companyPortalarium developed anRPG/MMORPG that Garriott has described as a clearspiritual successor of theUltima series.[52] On March 8, 2013, Portalarium launched a Kickstarter campaign[53] forShroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues.[54]Forsaken Virtues is the first of five full-length episodic installments inShroud of the Avatar and was designed as a "Selective Multiplayer Game". This allowed the player to determine his or her level of multiplayer involvement that ranges from MMO to single player offline. Despite original plans to launch in Summer 2017,[55] with Episodes 2 through 5 estimated for subsequent yearly releases,[56] the first episode would ultimately be released on March 27, 2018, to mixed reception. Further episodes have not yet been released.
