I’ve been horribly lax in posting this, but the Forgotten World project — an ambitious, in-engine remake/modification of Ultima 9 — has seen several major updates in recent months.

Their first bit of news is that the project’s founder, Michael “Firstknight” Menapace, has returned to the team; his return has, in turn, stimulated a kind of “return to the roots” for the project, which has now split into two projects: Beautiful Britannia and Forgotten World. Notable distinctions between the projects include:

What is Beautiful Britannia?

FORGOTTEN WORLD in its original form – that means only enriching the landscape with animals and vegetation and adding the Old Cove Map as “Great Wilderness” to the game.

More simply in comparsion to FORGOTTEN WORLD, but with the possiblity to make a faster release.

…

The creation of FORGOTTEN WORLD is based on the self-developed, FANTASTIC world editor (mainly developed by Hawkwind, with support of all the other team members). The editor (when it’s done) will support fully 3D worldbuilding for terrain and all available objects, also story changes and the adding of more NPCs.

BEAUTIFUL BRITANNIA will be created using Firstknights self-developed ingame-creation methodics, combined with hex editor coding and the usage of an self-written tool for automated code changes. This all allows limited changes to the landscape and adding of some of the unused maps.

Personally, I’m still looking forward to Forgotten World more than Beautiful Britannia, although the thought of exploring an even more lush Britannia (for all its faults, Ultima 9 did feature a beautiful world) does have a certain appeal.