When I look back on the golden age of RPGs, one series that jumps to the forefront for its revolutionary innovation and deeply immersive worlds is Ultima. Designed by Richard Garriott, otherwise known to the gaming world as Lord British, Ultima ran from 1981 to 1999 and left an indelible mark on the RPG genre. From a rough beginning to lavish, bold attempts to create moving, breathing living virtual worlds, Ultima snatched gamers’ minds into its world because of its rich storytelling, the complicated characters, and intricately designed and coded game mechanics. Let’s dive into the immersive worlds of Ultima further and examine how this series transformed the RPG landscape.
The tale of Ultima starts in the early 80s, a time when computer games were in their embryonic stages. A young programmer by the name of Richard Garriott, his heart full of love for Dungeons & Dragons and fantasy novels, set about creating a computer game that would bring the tabletop RPG experience to the computer screen. The result was Akalabeth: World of Doom, which is often titled the precursor to the Ultima series. Released in 1980, Akalabeth was a small dungeon game, but it laid the foundation for what was to come.
Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness, the series’ first official entry, saw release in 1981 and was a staggering jump in terms of complexity and scope compared to Akalabeth. Rather than a simple 2D dungeons, Ultima I featured a top-down view of the world, allowing players to explore towns, dungeons, and wilderness areas. However, this wasn’t really the innovative part. Unlike other games of the time, Ultima I had a very strange atmosphere about it. On one hand, the game features a not-so-fantasy Medieval setting of knights, princesses trapped in towers, and magic rings, but on the other hand, it had cyberpunk elements like Phasers and spacecrafts. This amalgamation of material would become the basis of the series’ setting.
I recall playing Ultima I and becoming in awe of the range of choices it provided. In contrast to numerous games of that era, which were uncomplicated and target-focused, Ultima I would enable the player to wander around in its universe without any pressure. Its open-world concept showed players had a lot of options, and that was pivotal. In my experience, nothing could coincide with being in control of an animated setting and observing whatever there was to see whenever you felt like it. Graphics and mechanics might have been modest, but there wasn’t the slightest lack of purpose in what you were doing.
The series grew as time went on, each new videogame adding to what the previous ones set. The creators stayed in touch with the rest of the industry and that showed, with increasingly detailed visuals and more intricate stories and mechanics in each game that came out. Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress (1982) gave the game a science-fiction twist with time travel. Because of this, there were new epochs and geographies in Ultima II, bringing in lots of variety. Ultima III: Exodus (1983) beamed in new features like a party and selectable characters. These new features not only made the game more entertaining to play by the new content, but the enhanced gameplay brought the character to new highs.
The turning point for the Ultima series occurred when Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar hit stores in 1985. In a bold move, the fourth game in the Ultima series abandoned the familiar RPG conceit of killing some Big Bad and took a look inward instead. In Ultima IV, players would no longer win by killing an evil villain, but by becoming a good person, and, in fact, by embodying goodness so completely that one would become the Avatar. The Avatar, embodying the eight virtues, honesty, compassion, valor, justice, sacrifice, honor, spirituality, humility, would become the very image of those virtues, and therefore lead people to them, by Being one, by being all of them.
Ultima IV revolutionized the gaming industry by offering a whole new approach to morality. Instead of simply killing monsters to get treasure, players had to live by the virtues and choose actions that reflected their commitment to these principles. The game didn’t take place in some abstracted far-off land, but in Britannia, a place where the player’s actions actually mattered. NPCs and other game elements would (and I shit you not) react differently depending on the player’s actions and reputation. It was like real life, except with dragons and magic and eight other virtues.
I can still picture the introspective quality of Ultima IV. The game started by asking you questions that a gypsy used to figure out your starting class based on your answers. This was only the beginning, and the personal questions set the stage for the entire game, which harps on the requirement of self-exploration and personal gain. As I considered the moral dilemmas offered by the Virtual World, I couldn’t help but think about my values and decisions. It was eye-opening and remarkable, turning Ultima IV from a game into a quest for self-discovery.
The explosive triumph of Ultima IV supplies the solid foundation for its continuations, Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny (1988) and Ultima VI: The False Prophet (1990). These successors continue the profound examination of ethical concepts, conflicts and dilemmas within the rich medieval world of Britannia. To the degree that it examines the corruption of power and the quest for rectification, Ultima V is a game exploring the battle between good and evil; likewise, Ultima VI is obsessed with issues of prejudice, the need for understanding, the search for peace between species that now hate each other. Each sequel was both anchored and liberated by the powerful narrative and moral assumptions of Ultima IV; in combination, the games continued and reinforced a sense that there was a real world taking shape on the computer’s screen, a world with history, choice, thought, and change.
With the evolution of the Ultima series well into the 1990s, the games started to become more daring, both in narrative substance and technological pioneers. Ultima VII: The Black Gate in 1992 and its next of kin, Ultima VII Part Two: Serpent Isle in 1993 are often viewed as the best and brightest of the series. The two together brought a new scale of activity and detail across a massive game world.
It revolved around the rise of a sinister cult and the mysterious figure of the Guardian. The world of the game was huge and brilliantly detailed. This included impressively detailed towns, bustling marketplaces, and diverse characters. Yet one of the most amazing things about Ultima 7 was the vastness and depth of its interactivity. You could, for instance, listen to NPCs to learn more about the world. You could also examine every tiny detail of an item or thing within Britannia. You could look at a poster on a wall in your bedroom and find a crumpled-up map of the world. You could go to marketplace and buy a silver pitcher and then actually sit down at a friendly inn and eat bread and cheese out of it from your inventory. You could chew gum while talking to someone, you could blow kisses at women to make them love you, and you could try on magic masks while wearing a tattered shirt, a floppy hat, and no pants.
Ultima 7 puts more things in than you can even think of. You can kill almost every creature you meet in the world. You can destroy just about every object you see, too. You can make a parking lot out of every detailed, perfect neighborhood. You can break windows and smash table legs and set kitchens on fire.
Ultima 7 has the most words. Even players who saw a dozen or so words they disagreed with in their own time almost certainly never saw an entire game universe imbued with a writer’s touch. Every signpost, every rune, every book, and every piece of fruit had a history and a personality and a purpose. Every character in the game cared about something. Ultima 7 was not just a simulation of one murder and one conversation and one assembly. It was a simulation of every single conversation and every single murder in the world. It was a simulation in which every character coordinated with every other character and every character flourished or floundered in response to every other character.
I put in a lot of time playing Ultima VII. Nothing else at the time could begin to match the game’s lucid open-endedness and meticulous attention to detail. I don’t have especially fond memories of the game’s combat or magic systems, but even at the time I recognized that these systems represented a fresh break from tradition, and I was thrilled by the game’s dialed-down reliance on fighting the utter crap out of everything. Even more memorable was the technical side, the game that made you first seriously consider a new PC, or at least as was my case, as a broke teenager, a new video card.
Ultima VII’s a machine-pusher of a game, with its day-night cycle and weather system. Ultima VII: The Black Gate. If you don’t have fond memories, here’s a reminder: It’s the best Ultima game, it’s the best isometric-style computer role-playing game ever made, and it may well be the smartest and most interesting computer role-playing game ever made, period. Ultima VII lets you finish off the bad guy by turning back time to prevent the bad guy’s birth. I saw and did all these things to a degree few computer role-playing games would let me see and do things. But I finished the game anyway, and that was the wrong decision.
Building on the story of Part One, Serpent Isle took players to a new world with its own backstory and obstacles. It was a sequel that explored the Ultima canon in the lore’s own right, expanding themes of cultural differences and the need for understanding. The intricacy and passion for details made Serpent Isle an admirable continuation of The Black Gate, further proving the Ultima legacy of brilliant narrative and escape.
Thanks to advancements in technology during the ’90s, the Ultima series was able to push the envelope of what was possible in computer gaming. In 1994, Ultima VIII: Pagan showed us a grittier, more atmospheric world, alongside improved graphics and animation. The new, more action-oriented gameplay it provided earned mixed reviews, but the immensity of its scope, and the way it embraced players on Pagan was still absolutely insane. Five years later, Ultima IX: Ascension was designed to take the series into the 3D graphics realm, and its Britannia is still a visual feast. Whether that’s what you recognized during the famously buggy game’s time of 1999 is another matter, but Ultima IX was a brave attempt to let a grand old series evolve beyond its beginnings to today’s gaming.
The impact of the Ultima series on the world of role-playing games and gaming as a whole is incalculable. In many ways, Origin’s flagship property is the progenitor of almost every concept and game play mechanic that has since become standard in new RPGs: open-world exploration, moral choices, a quest-heavy narrative called “story” in CLOUD NINE and “fiction” at Origin. Every game that followed Ultima owes Ultima a debt, whether you are talking Fallout or The Witcher, Skyrim or Dragon Age.
The emphasis on the shaping of “living, breathing” virtual worlds is one of the greatest contributions of the Ultima saga. Until 1992, the imagined but static environments of computer roleplaying games largely relied on the scenic artwork they had become famous for. With Ultima VII, the world of roleplaying games ceased to be a mere backdrop for quests and encounters. Players were no longer simply navigating through virtual environments; they were journeying through virtual universes, realms teeming with characters leading lives and telling stories, an approach to game design that would define the RPG genre, and would have a profound influence on the subsequent development of the open-world/sandbox game.
Another standout factor in Ultima IV, its sequels, and maybe most of all its legacy is its dedication to moral and ethical dilemmas. This game did not get as much attention in the moment nor for several years after these games, but the influence that its ability to suggest choices to the players had on the way that video games tell stories is incalculable. This ability for players to shape and even warp the narrative of the game world around them seemed positively revolutionary at the time. It has since of course become a well established tradition in the genre, one of many ways in which Ultima, and to a lesser extent, Oblivion, lay the groundwork for the games mentioned above (Mass Effect, The Witcher 3, Detroit: Become Human, Fable).
Many players had an experience with Ultima that was more than a series of games but a formative experience that shaped their understanding of what games could be. The rich lore, the complicated characters, the living worlds, all came together to create a sense of wonderment and discovery that never left me. To this day I can recall the feeling of uncovering a hidden secret in the game, or solving a tricky puzzle. The sense of accomplishment and immersion that came from being a part of the story of Britannia.
The sense of camaraderie and shared experience among Ultima players was a testament to the series’ ability to connect, but it was also a tribute to its fans. Creating maps, sharing tips, and telling stories, the Ultima community extended the game into the real world. Everywhere there was a game. Presenting to students. In chat rooms. On bulletin boards.
