Ultima Forever: Concept Art & Screenshot Galleries

These have been a bit overdue in coming, but I’ve finally gotten around to adding two new galleries to the site’s media section: Concept Art and Screenshots.

9 Responses

  1. Marquillin says:

    Meh, I was never a fan of that Blizzard style of humongous weapons and armor and those exaggerated male/female proportions.

    Otherwise these screens are, nice, though they do evoke a feeling of Diablo that’s not all that wanted by me. Ultima already has a style of it’s own that I only vaguely recognize here.

    • WtF Dragon says:

      Looking at the above, it really only is the Fighter that seems out of proportion. The other characters there seem to be pretty normal-sized.

      Not that this disproves your point, of course, and I’ll readily agree that not all art styles are for everyone. I wasn’t a big fan of this particular art style until I played Torchlight, for example. Still, art is but one thing; there’s gameplay as well, among other factors.

  2. Marquillin says:

    Absolutely. If the game makes you think about hard choices, and is fun besides, I can learn to like the graphics by mere association. And if it feels like Britania, that would be even better.

    Also, those fighters are bigger then Arnold in his body building steroid days. Makes for good tanks I suppose, but I hope there’s lean fighters to; one can have muscle without it engulfing your head! 😉

  3. Frank says:

    I don’t know about this game… I’m a pretty big ultima fan. I’m not old enough to have played the first few ones but I’ve played ultima 6 through 9 , including UO for many years. Ultima 7 is still a favorite game of mine.

    I saw some promotional material for this game, the devs were talking about how everyone around the office have their own personal favorite game from the series and how they don’t plan on just using the name like Lords of Ultima did. Everything I’ve seen so far just makes them out to be liars, there’s nothing Ultima about this game. I could go on and on and list everything that is wrong with it but I think most people here could come up with the exact same list.

    I really don’t think we’ll ever see a good successor to the Ultima series, Garriot’s project seems interesting but his latest efforts have been too casual for my taste.

    • WtF Dragon says:

      I’m not going to flat out say that you’re wrong, but I have to wonder: there hasn’t been a lot of media released for the game, so I’m curious as to how you can arrive with seeming certainty at the conclusion that Ultima Forever will be, in essence, another crass misuse of the Ultima label in a manner alike to Lord of Ultima?

      Yes, the game has a different aesthetic, but there have been relatively few screenshots released, and they tell us very little about how the game plays, what sort of writing and plot(s) it features, and suchlike. There has been a tiny bit of concept art released, and yes, the creatures look a bit different, but when did the gazer ever look the same between two successive numbered Ultimas?

      And at the same time, we’ve seen the cloth map for the game, which seems to align terrain features in at least one screenshot. We’ve seen the tarot cards, which are beautiful takes on the depictions of the Eight Virtues.

      Ultima Forever certainly won’t hit the world simulation benchmark of Ultima 7; that much was made clear by Paul Barnett in his GDC Online talk. But in a certain way, it doesn’t have to; it has set itself up as an homage to Ultima 4, not Ultima 7. Can it deliver on that? The plain truth is that we really cannot tell from what little has been released.

      • Frank says:

        I know, I’m still hoping it will be a fun game.. and I agree that we’ve seen very little from the actual game to form a valid opinion but from what I’m seeing I’d rather not get my hopes up.

        It might be that I’m yearning for a RPG without predetermined classes or archetypes, an experience that lets me play the game the way I want, not a mindless hack-n-slash.

      • WtF Dragon says:

        Well, for THAT experience, you may have to look a little further afield. If you haven’t yet tried Reckoning, even though its developer is now defunct, let me recommend it to you. It may scratch that itch a bit.

      • Frank says:

        are you talking about kingdom of amalur? I’m confused.

      • WtF Dragon says:

        Yeah! The single-player RPG, not the failed MMO.