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Mooooreee! That was your reaction when we released Ultima Underworld 1+2, it was the same when we gave you Ultima 1+2+3 and Ultima 4: Quest of the Avatar (for free!). And you guys especially know that all we ever want to do is keep you guys happy, so without further ado, we bring you the Age of Enlightenment games of the fantastic Ultima series!

Ultima 4: Quest of the Avatar is already released and available for free on GOG.com. You can read the description of the game in the previous news post. Why is it included in this game pack? Well, the Ultima series</a> breaks down into three trilogies, and it seemed a shame to break up the lovely symmetry.

Ultima 5: Warriors of Destiny picks up on the story of the Avatar, the hero of Britannia. The country’s benevolent monarch is nowhere to be found, and an usurper named Lord Blackthorn has claimed the throne! It’s your duty as the embodiment of the Eight Virtues to make all wrongs right and recover the world of Britannia from the paws of Blackthorn and his three evil Shadowlords! This installation of the Ultima series expands on the world of Ultima 4 in a number of ways: towns are larger, have more unique buildings, and NPC interaction has evolved. With enhanced dialogues, diverse conversation topics, and a diverse array of characters, Ultima V shows that Lord British kept raising the bar for games looking to call themselves an “RPG.” The day and night cycle affects the gameplay. For example you can’t shop at night because the NPC shopkeepers are asleep! Delve into the world of Britannia and save its inhabitants & moral codex!

Ultima 6: The False Prophet starts out with a bang! You, the Avatar, are captured by demons, imprisoned, and ready to be sacrificed on an altar. Like in all those Hollywood movies, in the nick of time your friends from earlier adventures come in guns a-blazing to save you! You learn that those demon-like creatures are gargoyles, a new race that invaded Britannia and have seized the shrines of Virtue. As you venture forth on your next adventure as the Avatar, you try to understand the true motivations of gargoyles. As the embodiment of the Eight Virtues, the Avatar will understand that his mission is to establish peace and make the two races coexist in Britannia peacefully. Ultima 6 is a one of a kind game which, without over imposing it on the player, tells a story of the evil of human prejudice and ignorance. This is where the motto of Origin Systems, “We create worlds”, is best visible and it really steps up to its name!

Play the full “second” trilogy of Ultima 4+5+6! Now available DRM-free on GOG.com for $5.99.

Note: The character import function does not work yet, but we are doing everything we can to find a solution to this problem and we will update the game as soon as we can get it worked out.
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lukaszthegreat: how come screens are not longer marked from which game they come from?
I've noticed they haven't been doing that for a while. Sux.
yes gog did mention 7,8,9 fill out the trilogy of trilogies :) I'm not convinced that is what we'll see although I'd like to see it (including serpents isle)....7 and SI are the best of the final trilogy by far.

I am concerned that it won't happen though. I would expect the other two Ultima Worlds titles since they definitely have VI working. VII used that funky memory system and I don't know how difficult it would be to ensure that it works properly with dosbox or whatever. Hopefully it's easier than I expect, but I remember all the problems due to the memory management...usually workable but it entailed changing autoexec.bat and config.sys

Beyond that...I think it is monumental that EA and gog have this 2nd trilogy in the ultima series...they are true video game classics and should be remembered and enjoyed.
Anyone know if this release supports Tandy 3-voice sound? I prefer it to Adlib or PC speaker for these games.
Looking at the Ultima 6 screenshots, I'm surprised at how much I am reminded of the old Macintosh game Cythera.
(That main site no longer has screenshots on it -- you can see some here, although evidently these are beta screenshots.)
I'd known for a while that Cythera was meant to be (at the time) a modern Macintosh take on the Ultima games, but I had only ever heard of the Ultima games at the time. It's interesting to see how closely Cythera's graphical style, interface setup, and so on hews to U6.

So far -- as far as the Ultima series goes -- I've only played a little bit of U5 Lazarus, which is great, but when it comes to the originals I'm betting 6 is going to be the one I enjoy the most, when I get around to playing these.

edit: after reviewing some screenshots, it seems like U7 appearance also bears a great deal of similarity to Cythera, perhaps even moreso. Interesting.
Post edited September 09, 2011 by LaithArkham
I believe the next Ultima will either be The Black Gate or (hopefully) The Complete Ultima VII but the problems they have been having with expansions leads me more to believe Black Gate and Serpent's Isle will be released separately with no expansions for $5.99 each. Also, the last of the batch will probably be something else from EA because as much as we Ultima fans love our Ultima, it is not virtuous not to let others have their fun as well. Regarding Ultima VII, I'm sure they can do it because they did a beautiful job with VI in this set. Even back when I first ran u6 on my Packard Bell 386 it ran a bit fast, and on every computer since, it was playable, but the characters jetted around Britannia too fast to enjoy anything. On this release, the game plays exactly as it did at release, at the perfect speed and with near perfect Adlib sound card emulation. In those days it was worth it to spend a couple hundred extra dollars on your $2000 PC to get music and voice capabilities. I'm so happy GOG can turn back the clock on Ultima VI, and I'm sure Ultima VII will be exactly like it was back in the day. Next set, I'm sure they will do it....or maybe Tuesday....
wish you COULD get your hands on Diablo... The first one
Awesomeness. Worth it for Ultima VI alone IMO.
There is a program called Exult that allows you to run both Black Gate and Serpent Isle under Windows. It's a free download. I know it works under XP. Never tried it with Vista or Windows 7.
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cangelo: yes gog did mention 7,8,9 fill out the trilogy of trilogies :) I'm not convinced that is what we'll see although I'd like to see it (including serpents isle)....7 and SI are the best of the final trilogy by far.

I am concerned that it won't happen though. I would expect the other two Ultima Worlds titles since they definitely have VI working. VII used that funky memory system and I don't know how difficult it would be to ensure that it works properly with dosbox or whatever. Hopefully it's easier than I expect, but I remember all the problems due to the memory management...usually workable but it entailed changing autoexec.bat and config.sys

Beyond that...I think it is monumental that EA and gog have this 2nd trilogy in the ultima series...they are true video game classics and should be remembered and enjoyed.
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bagelobo: Ultima IX is better than a lot of the RPGs GoG already has listed on the site. I'd be disappointed if they skipped over it.
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spindown: They won't skip it just because it's bad. They have released a number of bad sequels for the sake of completeness, like Master of Orion 3, Empire Earth 3, MegaRace 3 and Lords of the Realm 3.
Not on that reason alone, sure. However, I don't feel GOG is doing anyone a disservice by omitting Descent to Undermountain or Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor from their catalog. And GOG would be within their rights to do so (that is sell them), as these are Interplay and Ubisoft titles, respectively. But I presume GOG figures the burning nostalgia and clamor for these titles from the retro-gaming public is scant at best.

Frankly, I would be disappointed if GOG "wasted" a Tuesday/Thursday release slot with Ultima IX, considering EA's extensive backlog of games, when said slot could (and should) go to something far more deserving. For those of us who shadowed and followed the game's arduous and painful development hell for five years after Ultima VIII (which wasn't that bad in hindsight) and for our efforts were rewarded with a shoddily programmed, incomplete, ineptly written, broken UI "Action/RPG" build that now resembles nothing so much as a beta version of Gothic with some Ultima references slapped on, I think our desire for amnesia is justified. The searing disappointment was analogous to modern times' Fallout 3 vis-a-vis old Fallout fans, except 10 times worse, and at least Fallout 3 was an adequate game for what it was (if not a fallout game).

Me, I'd rather see Strike Commander, Shadowcaster, or just about anything else. really, even a minor obscure title, in a EA release.
But I wanna see Pool of Radiance here =P Its like the retarded brother of Temple of elemental evil. Whats not to like?
Ultima VIII (which wasn't that bad in hindsight)
I've been playing U8 for the past week or so and I've been enjoying the hell out of it. Then again, I never played it without the patch, so my first impressions are decidedly better than if I'd played it when it was new.
The searing disappointment was analogous to modern times' Fallout 3 vis-a-vis old Fallout fans
I never played FO3 but I found FO2 pretty disappointing compared to the first. It felt like a really awkward an bloated fan-mod.
I actually really enjoy Fallout 3 (on the PSP) because it has a unique battle system that seems more like a table-top game than any others save Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic. If you set the game for turn-based, you actually get to choose a part of the body to aim at, get percentages of hitting for each body part, and "roll" to see if you hit based on the percentages. FOIII is brilliant to me in that it combines first person exploration with a combat system that is one of the most paper-and-pencil type combat systems around. It really felt like playing RPGs at a friends house until sunrise (and sometimes well beyond) in my youth more than any other computer RPG. Then again, I find Bethesda to be probably the most Ultimaesque game designer around now, especially when it comes to world interactivity and characters having their own schedules, something that also exists in FOIII.
Ultimaesque game designer around now, especially when it comes to world interactivity
I wouldn't really say that applies to ANY of the TES* games. I did hear that FO3 was improved a lot in that regard, though.

* Especially Daggrfall. That was REALLY low on the interactivity scale. Also I am so tired of hearing that DF had realistic cities because they were 'large.' I could write an essay on why their hugeness actually makes them *less* realistic.
Post edited September 21, 2011 by amccour
Daggerfall was like all the other games of the time. The cities may be large, but they are monotonous. Every pub has the same people inside, even in cities clearly across the world from each other. True, none of the Elder Scrolls games reaches the level of interactivity as Ultima VII, but so far nothing has yet. Seeing the coming attractions for Skyrim, it looks like people will be doing various jobs the player can do, including logging and farming. If they let the players bake bread, it will finally seem to be approaching Ultima level interactivity. The reason I mentioned the Elder Scrolls is because the more recent games do have character schedules, people do go home and sleep (although you can't watch them sleep unless you break into their houses) and people do go into pubs and inns and have random conversations with each other. Also, you cannot go and buy weapons 24 hours a day in Elder scrolls games like you can in many other games.
Anyway, the implication I was saying Daggerfall has realistic cities is wrong. I never said or believed that. Later games in the series do have more realistic cities, but any game with truly "realistic" cities (especially a fantasy game) would be rather dull, don't you think?
Before I reply to another post, I just got horribly stuck in Ultima 8. Fun fact: I just wasn't going far enough east in the dungeon I was in. It wasn't even a particularly hidden thing I was looking for. I just suck.

Anyway.

"Daggerfall was like all the other games of the time. The cities may be large, but they are monotonous."

True to an extent, but Daggerfall kicked the hugeness up to a new level, and the amount of content down to a new low.

"True, none of the Elder Scrolls games reaches the level of interactivity as Ultima VII, but so far nothing has yet. "

Morrowind actually had some crafting mods that essentially bring it to that level. I never saw anything like that for Oblivion, which was disappointing.

As for other games, Gothic 2 gets damn close. So does UnReal World, really. And Minecraft I guess, and a lot of the Harvest Moon games, but those two aren't really story-driven RPGs in the same way Ultima 7 and Gothic are.

"Anyway, the implication I was saying Daggerfall has realistic cities is wrong. I never said or believed that."

I know, but the hardcore DF fans on the official TES forums do.

"but any game with truly "realistic" cities (especially a fantasy game) would be rather dull,"

Basically this, too.

Actually I find Alternate Reality: The City dull and overrated for pretty much the same reasons -- zero interactivity, and a huge, empty city.