"Cautiously optimistic" could not better describe how I'm feeling about EA's upcoming Ultima Forever. As I mentioned before, Ultima Online is responsible for some of my absolute best gaming memories, and the thought of even vaguely replicating that on my phone is almost too awesome to imagine. Ultima Forever seems to be modernized quite a bit from the old UO days, featuring a quest and party system along with instanced dungeons to crawl though.
The initial setup seems to be curing the world of a nasty plague called the "Black Weep" which is spreading across the land. This time Lady British has called upon adventurers to save the world. Check out the trailer to see the game in action:
Word on the street is that Ultima creator Richard Garriott doesn't have anything to do with Ultima Forever, which may be slightly disappointing to fans of the series... But, he's busy doing things like traveling to space, so it shouldn't be all that surprising.
Ultima Forever is scheduled for a spring release, and judging how EA typically handles promoting their games with trailers and things like that I'd hazard a guess that we're going to be seeing this game sooner rather than later.
Last month we learned that a new online Ultima game was making its way to the PC and iPad soon thanks to EA and Bioware Mythic. It’s called Ultima Forever and although there weren’t a ton of details at that time, but we did find out several key things. First, it would be based on the 1985 classic Ultima IV, where your chosen character quest his heart out in an effort to embody 8 virtues and become the mighty Avatar.
The next big feature in Ultima Forever is its cross-platform play, meaning you can team up with buddies whether they’re on desktop or iPad. Finally, we learned that the game will be free-to-play, but that the developers are very keen on not limiting the free experience for their players. Monetization will come in the form of decorative items for you character or speeding up some of the progression if you’re the impatient type.
It all sounds pretty good, and our resident Ultima Online advocate Eli Hodapp seems to be bursting at the seams to get in on some Ultima Forever iPad action. Over the weekend, IGN once again got the scoop on some early details about the game from an interview with executive producer Jeff Skalski.
A few of the highlights include how Ultima Forever is being produced with the touch screen in mind first, then seeing how to adapt things to a mouse and keyboard for the desktop. That bodes well for iPad gamers as typically the translation of a computer game can be cumbersome on the touch interface in terms of UI. Also, fans of the original Ultima IV should be able to recognize certain characters and significant events making their way into Ultima Forever, though the actual storyline is taking place 21 years beyond Ultima IV.
One of Skalski’s more interesting answers has to do with your character and the moral choices you will make throughout your journey. These aren’t the typical “black and white, good guy-bad guy” moral systems, but stuff that’s a bit more ambiguous. One example was taking a quest from a wife whose husband went missing after going to explore a cave. You check it out, but discover the man dead and find evidence that he had been unfaithful to his wife.
When you return to her, you’ll need to choose to tell her the truth, which will be even more upsetting on top of the news of his death, or hiding his transgressions since he’s already passed and it will only make the whole situation worse. Either choice is a right one, but it will shape what kind of personality your character has during the game.
Be sure to check out this latest interview for even more insights into Ultima Forever, including a bit about the change to real-time combat and information on the first playable classes that will launch with the game, which you can see pictured above. We’ll be hanging out and waiting for any more news on Ultima Forever over in our forums and of course are anxious to get our hands on it hopefully sometime soon.
When I look back on my life as a gamer, there are two ages: Before Ultima Online and after Ultima Online. I've attempted to explain why Ultima Online was so incredible, and really, I've never been able to fully do it. It's something that other UO players totally get, in that there was just something so... magical about the first year of the game's existence. The concept of the mass-market MMORPG was still so new that no one really knew what to do. The chaos that ensued, in a world where you could do nearly anything, was remarkable.
Anyway, I could wax poetic over how amazing Ultima Online was for eternity, but that's not the point of this post. IGN scored some details on an upcoming free to play Ultima game titled, Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar.
Ultima Forever is a throwback to classic Ultima games, with mechanics grounded in Ultima IV. Starting as either a fighter or a mage (a druid and paladin class are coming later), your hero sets out on a quest to become the Avatar, a person who embodies what are known as the eight Virtues. Using a Baldur's Gate-like isometric perspective, you'll guide your hero either alone or with friends through hours and hours of quests, battling it out with monsters and making hard choices until your character embodies the virtues and reaches the end-game dungeons. Once you beat it, becoming the Avatar, you then start a new game plus, playing through all the content again on an even harder setting.
My personal excitement doesn't stop there. The article makes comparisons to Diablo, but it's also going to be totally cross platform, allowing you to team up with players regardless of whether they're playing on their PC or iPad. It sounds like the free to play model is pretty sweet too, hinging entirely on cosmetic upgrades and boosts to get you through the game faster instead of ever hitting any sort of pay wall.
You can sign up for the closed beta on the Ultima Forever web site, which I've already done with the quickness. If I can, ahem, "PK scrubs at the Brit' x-roads" all day on my iPad, well, we may have ourselves a serious productivity problem around here at TouchArcade.
"Cautiously optimistic" could not better describe how I'm feeling about EA's upcoming Ultima Forever. As I mentioned before, Ultima Online is responsible for some of my absolute best gaming memories, and the thought of even vaguely replicating that on my phone is almost too awesome to imagine. Ultima Forever seems to be modernized quite a bit from the old UO days, featuring a quest and party system along with instanced dungeons to crawl though.
