New Gallery: Ultima Reborn
This project, brought to my attention by Radogol (in the comments) and Ceearrbee (via Twitter), was, according to lead artist and project designer Stephane Belin: “a reboot of Ultima IV on Nintendo DS. The idea was to make a brand new interpretation of my favorite game of all time. I wanted to shine a completely new light on the Ultima universe, while keeping all the great core values of the original game. We wanted to make it on [the Nintendo DS] which cruelly lacked [for] good western RPGs. The project was canceled 6 months after the original pitch.”
His take on Ultima was…different, to say the least, and ultimately crept toward the JRPG template (Addendum: or did it? Some commenters think the style is closer to that of Frank Frazetta.) rather than remaining more Western in nature and style.
Some of the artwork was also contributed by Mathieu Latour-Duhaime. The game was pitched to, and began development at, EA Montreal at some point in 2008. These various art assets (mostly concept sketches) are likely all that remain of the project.
As I’m sure most of you are thinking, almost nothing here has a particularly Ultima-esque feel to it, especially as regards the odd dress of the various female characters. I mean…a basically nude Druid and Mage? And what’s with the dominatrix Shepherd…is that even remotely humble? Honestly, I’m rather surprised that EA Montreal greenlit this project at all, given that right out of the gate it seems to have failed in its goal to establish a Western-style RPG feel and style. It does capture a couple of Ultima-like elements in some of the screenshots, most notably the one glimpse of what I would assume is the overland map (in the style of the early Ultima titles).
Still, it’s an interesting glimpse into how at least one particular Ultima fan interprets his most favourite series.
“crept toward the JRPG template rather than remaining more Western in nature and style”
Nah. If it was in JRPG style, the characters would be drawn like anime and the main character would be a skinny guy whose face looks like that of a girl.
Still, the character designs look ridiculous, especially that Avatar (though it still looks much better than the average male JRPG protagonist).
Boggle! I like the shadows on the one landscape shot.
Yeah, that’s not anime, it’s a faux-European Frank Frazetta-style presentation.
The gameplay itself might have been JRPG-ish, though.
I think the art in itself is very good. There’s some obvious Frazetta influence there, though with a JRPG/Animùe edge to it as well. (I wouldn’t exactly call it “anime-like” however albeit the influence is pretty obvious).
Oh and the Avatar looks suspiciously like The Prince from the 2008 Prince of Persia. I’d kinda wonder if there was some people moving between Ubi and EA at the time, with both being done at Montreal.
This might have been an interesting game – as a Ultima though I can’t say this is really exciting 😛
Also I gotta wonder about WRPG IP being reimagined with anime-like style for the DS… I mean both Wizardy and Might&Magic followed a similar pattern (with games that WERE released) around the same time this Ultima Reborn was being conceived.
In any case I’m pretty sure this would have been terribly received by fans… I can’t help to notice however that from non-Ultima players, I see a lot of comments saying this looked great and dissapointment this was cancelled … but as I said as a non Ultima title it is some really good art ! But hey, perhaps for whatever future project that will be coming, Ultima fans will become more receptive by thinking of what was avoided with Ultima Reborn 😛
Oh well it was nice seeing this stuff though… I’d really wish there were some leaks from Ultima Ressurection as well, I’ve always wondered how that game looked 😛
I’m reliably informed that while the execs of these companies might trade barbs, at the developer level there is a lot of back-and-forth, camaraderie, and even idea sharing between the various studios in Montreal.
To be honest, I’ve always felt a bikini might not be the most effective means of defense on the medieval battlefield.
Dungy:
Infinitron:
You two crack me up.
That said, this would hardly be the first fantasy game that featured women who were…questionably clad for battle. Since someone mentioned the Wizardy series, I can even cite the most readily apparent example in my mind: Vi Domina!
A bikini? Some of these girls would have benefited from the increased protection of a bikini. 🙂
The pixel art looks -exactly- like 2D Capcom fighting games such as Darkstalkers and SF3. Maybe someone should create an Ultima 2D beat ’em up like Double Dragon or Bad Dudes. Or is that what this was supposed to be? Looks kinda like it.
Up-down-back-forward, sweep from back through down to forward and press punch and scream, “Vas Corp Bet Mani!”
Wow… Jaana and Mariah seem ripe for wardrobe malfunctions, as does Shamino the furry. Looking at what I assume is Geoffrey, I can only hope that Jhelom was intended to be high-fantasy Sparta.
Blu3vib3:
THIS! IS! JHELOM! (I couldn’t resist.)
I would argue that Jaana is ripe for a wardrobe malfunction the moment the fortuitous breeze that is presently holding things in place dies.
Interesting how wide the gap is between the quality of the design and the quality of the execution. The character designs and costumes are pitiful jokes, but the actual art rendering is quite moody and skillful. I wonder if the terrible designs stem from lack of competent editorial control, or if they were handed to a good artist from a bad producer who thought it’s be cool to be all “edgy” and “extreme to the max!”
Funny posts. 🙂
At Odkin, from what I can tell there are a lot of gifted artists that simply do what people tell them because that’s the only way they can make money. I don’t mean that as a slight against the artistic, either. Sadly art is cheap these days. Those who control the purse strings can dictate the direction of art easily and do so all the time. “Art for art’s sake” or “pure” art is pretty rare, as most artists can little afford to take the risk that often goes unrewarded.
I can see some exec or “designer” dictating to the artists in this project what inspiration they should pull from, probably citing specific examples.
I actually love all the artwork here, it’s just utterly bizarre that it was for an Ultima project. Methinks the modern gaming industry is truly a land of confusion.
Sanctimonia:
Thank you so very much…now I have Phil Collins stuck in my head.
Stephane Belin’s paladin looks like a jester, because of his weird helmet with its integrated face mask.
And his bard is a total anachronism, as far as Ultima is concerned:
– cigarette (Why not a joint, while we’re at it?)
– rifle (a bow or crossbow, even a triple one, would’ve been more appropriate)
– uniform from the time of the American Revolution
The art is beautiful, it just doesn’t fit into an Ultima.
I always preferred a joint or stout pipe after a few beers, followed by a cigarette or two. Last I heard round the Buccaneers’s Den, anyway.
Wow… Jaana and Mariah seem ripe for wardrobe malfunctions
Apparently, the Avatar’s ninth companion was a plastic surgeon.
What ! No Female Gargoyle character art ! How lame ^_^
The art in itself is good but as for a recent Ultima illustration work I vastly prefer the portraits from Lord of Ultima.
BTW I always lved the Land of confusion clip. It’s so weird !
Oh man, I forgot just how messed up that video was. Thanks for the link!
The Mage and Druid are actually the logical evolution of the Dungeon&Dragons approach to magic. In D&D you can’t cast magic with armor because it infered with magic. In Ultima Reborn this would have been the same… but with cloth! Hence the almost naked Druid and Mages!
That being said I don’t necessarilly hading scandily clad women (or even men… hell look at Conan the Barbarian!) in fantasy. I mean sure it’s not realistic. But who cares ? I don’t play or read fantasy to get some boring generic realistic medieval recreation. What’s important is that it look cool really.
The fact that this project does not look Ultima-ish though, well… I figure the idea was to aim at a new market obviously. In essence this is often kind of the point of reboots really a new approach and to hell with fans of the original – I mean Battlestar Galactica 2003 sure don’t look at all like the original for excemple 😛
Admitedly, this feel rather extreme though.
However thinking of other cancelled Ultima projects you can look how they all tried different approach from regular Ultima art style… UO2 had regular Ultima stuff, but hardcore McFarlane weirdness. Ultima X had this cartoonish “WoW before WoW” 3D style. And now Ultima Reborn… I guess there is some sense of trying to bring a new market by giving a unique style in all those cases even if fans are pissed of in hte process.
Oh and regarding the Prince of Persia similarities, just look at this concept art from PoP 2008 http://www.videogamesblogger.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/new-prince-of-persia-4-artwork.jpg – it’s so similar that I doubt this can be a coincidence.
I don’t play or read fantasy to get some boring generic realistic medieval recreation.
But there is a successful market for fantastic settings that are “played seriously”. See: Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy (movies), George Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire (books), and to a great extent, Bioware’s Dragon Age (games).
Well there’s a difference between “playing things seriously”, and offering a generic and bland setting/feel/look.
I’d argue Game of Throne doesn’t feel generic or bland, even if it plays things seriously and has a *somewhat* more realistic approach to the genre at first glance.
I’m not sure I would consider Dragon Age in the “played seriously” category, altough it does suffer from the a very bland and generic feel&setting IMO (at least the first one, there is some nice improvement on this point in DAII).
Of course this does not mean every fantasy setting needs to offer scantilly clad men & women, or extravagant looking armors and weapons… but as long as it’s cool looking and feel consistent with the world offered I would not call this a flaw.
Oh, and while Ultima would certainly not fit with the kind of extravaganza seen in Ultima Reborn, it would not fit either with an ultra realistic medieval setting IMO.
“Oh, and while Ultima would certainly not fit with the kind of extravaganza seen in Ultima Reborn, it would not fit either with an ultra realistic medieval setting IMO.”
I agree with you Sergorn. Ultima (in my opinion), has always been about trying to create a realistic fantasy setting. I know that sounds like an oxymoron, but I think it was fitting with the world of Ultima. Sure there were a myriad of fantastic arms and armour, but they always seemed like something a person could realistically use. There were fantastic settings and cities, but to me they always seemed like a place that could conceivably be built and lived in.
Ultima was sort of in-between fantasy and realism, you could say.
Points in favor of realism:
* Humans are basically the only sentient race.
* World has peasants, merchants, religion, politics (especially in U7). Not everybody’s an “adventurer”.
* Magic is not very ubiquitous (this is why U9 Moonglow was such a facepalmer).
Points in favor of fantasy:
* The entire world has a sort of fanciful wish fulfillment element to it. Lord British’s personal fantasy kingdom!
* A “world” of ten or so “cities”, each with a population of a few dozen at most, usually less. Yeah, right.
* A hero that wanders around the world talking to *every single person* and solving their problems.
I think one of the main point in favor of “unrealism” though… is basically how Ultima could get very quirky and silly, often breaking the fourth wall and reminding you that well… you were playing a videogame. It does show that the creators never really took their world completly seriously, though it’s rather representative of the mindset of the 80/90 era of videogames.
Regarding the ubiquitous of magic, I think it depends of the episodes really. This was true about Ultima VII (but then the *point* of the game was to present an era where magic had became virtually non-existant) but when you take the Ultima V era for instance where the Governing body was basically supposed to be the Eight most powerful mages of Britannia, I wouldn’t say this was meant to be a world where magic was not very ubiquitous. And I don’t think I need to point Serpent Isle and Pagan where magic a strong part of the land, tough obviously these were different worlds from Britannia altogether.
But to keep with the same comparaison above regarding the use of magic well – Ultima’s certainly no Game of Throne.
(And on a side note I loved Moonglow’s design in Ultima IX personally)
And another point, I don’t think we were ever meant to consider that Britannia *really* was a world solely composed of 200 or so people – and obviously it was just done a way that the games would just show us a sample of people. So I won’t really call this as a point in favor toward fantasy or else every single CRPG ever made is fantasy.
I wouldn’t say this was meant to be a world where magic was not very ubiquitous
I disagree. Having some powerful wizards in your world isn’t the same as the feeling of “magic, magic, everywhere!” you get in certain settings.
But it’s not just “some” magic users. I mean we’re talking about a world were pretty much every place have healers that can bring DEAD people back to life! (even leading to a nice debate on the subject in U6). Where you can buy magic items everywhere. Where people pray at magical shrines. Where many cities’ main representative populations (Mages but also Druids, Rangers, Paladins, Barde…) have at least some capacity in Magic.
Sorry but this strikes me as a world where magic is very common. Perhaps not in an in your face kind of way but definitly as an aknowledged part of life. This is very much how thep U4~6 era feels described in say U7s manual.
I always get this feeling that really many fans envision the Britannia of the AoE era as not so different from the U7 solely because U7s was more detailed and thus should stand as some kind of definitive vision of Britannia. But these were meant to be vastly different Britannias in most ways.
As a matter of fact if I have one complain about Lazarus it was this really: it did not really felt like U5’s Britannia at times but more like Ultima V reenvisioned through a U7 lens… While in essence really the Britannia of this era would feel more like U9’s in many ways.
Now admitedly due to the limitations of the times, the lands of U4~6 left a lot more to one’s interpretation… But I’d still argue the Britannia of this time was meant to be one with a lot of magic.
As a matter of fact if I have one complain about Lazarus it was this really: it did not really felt like U5?s Britannia at times but more like Ultima V reenvisioned through a U7 lens
Now that’s an interesting comment. Worthy of a blog post, even.
My opinion: If Lazarus and U7 seem similar it’s because the Lazarus team went for a very dark interpretation of the U5 plot.
They could have made it more light-hearted in a Robin Hood kind of way, but chose not to. Michael Hilborn’s excellent fan fiction backstory no doubt pushed things to the “dark” direction.
I would say the reason Lazarus and U5 seems similar… is quite simply because the people doing it were huge U7 fans 😉
I agree the U5 plot could work in a Robin Hood kind of tone (albeit I would argue U5 was still pretty dark for its time), but I don’t really see the correlation about how taking it in “dark” direction would make it more like Ultima VII.
Nevermind the fact that I don’t feel U7 was *that* dark to begin with, but (since we’re talking about the magical elements of Ultima here mostly) there is nothing technically preventing to tell a dark version of Ultima V in say a more magically heavy/fantasy setting that was was presented in Lazarus for instance.
I’m talking more about the setting here, not the tone. Lazarus setting is very good and well written, but it did gave me more the feeling of playing in an Ultima VII kind of Britannia, rather than in Ultima V’s Britannia. That and also a lot of smaller details contributed to this feeling of “Ultima V reenvisionned through a U7 lens”.
For instance one small thing that struck me in Lazarus is how often the PC goes and say “I am the Avatar” most NPCs will go “Sure and I’m Lord British” which in essence basically defines U7 because the point was that the Avatar had basically became a legend that some people would even begin to doubt he even existed. But not so in the AoE era… which was basically a “Virtuous Era” (even if a corrupted one in U5) and basically people knew the Avatar and most people would not go and doubt someone claiming to be the Avatar because really: who else but he would say so ? (Indeed you just need to go and look at Ultima VI where basically everyone know who you are and you never see any kind of doubt – Ultima V should be no different IMO).
As I said this is basically a detail, but it felt out of place to me because it’s something that belongs to U7 and should not be in U5 – and I often got this kind of feeling while playing Lazarus.
Of course I still loved Lazarus, but it’s these kind of details that prevents me from considering it as some kind of definitive vision of Ultima V – because while this was a very good and personal interpretation by Team Lazarus, it does not really fit with my own personnal interpretation of the game I’ve had for 20 years.
But to put it simply, I kind of envision Britannia as this big fantasy setting but which gradually grew less magical over time with the world taking a path leading away from magic and more toward what we could call a more realistic version of a medieval world (or even in the case of UVII Renaissance-ish). But Lazarus’ Britannia felt like this always was a realistic fantasy-lite setting like Ultima VII – which is as valid an interpretation as any, but not quite how I see things.
Hmm. But in Ultima V, wasn’t the Avatar basically just a mythical figure invoked by Lord British, to most people? Some adventurer from a generation ago who’d gone down into the Abyss with a bunch of folks, delivered the Codex and disappeared?
He hadn’t yet actually Saved The World at that point.
The reason I liked Ultima VII substantially more than most of the other titles was because it is representative of what I’d consider post-modern high fantasy. At this point in the series, the typical black and white morality and well worm tropes that characterize so many fantasy settings were getting worn away by the march of progress.
There was a feminist on the Great Council. Antibiotics were in their early stages of development. Experimental theater was entering the art scene. Piracy had given over to the more lucrative field of pirate-based tourism. Institutional racism, corporate greed, political corruption and drug dependency were real and hard to immediately remedy features of society. People were reconsidering their moral philosophy and falling prey to freaking medieval Scientologists!
This is why I’m often loathe to label things “appropriate” or “inappropriate” to Ultima – because what made the Ultima I love most brilliant for me was its willingness to dispense with formula and make fun of its own genre.
While I’m guessing that Ultima Reborn would probably be pretty standard and boring high fantasy fare, I’ve become rather keen on seeing different interpretations of the Ultima story in general, and this sort of stuff fascinates me. I really love some of the immensely hardcore dialog in the admittedly rather crappy NES port of ”Ultima IV”, and while scanlating the utterly awful ”Ultima IV” manga might be my current thing, I can say definitively that the robot and space-ranger filled manga for ”Ultima III” is probably my favorite take on the story (barring my own I came up with as a child).
For me, seeing stuff like this is sort of like seeing things based on old myths or classical texts when they’ve been given a new spin – like watching Euripedes’ ”Medea” recast as a transsexual or re-situating ”King Lear” in feudal Japan. It might not be in the exact mold of the original, but it gives you the ability to think about why the original captivated you.
Well actually if you stick to the latest Ultima canon, the Avatar had already saved the world three times by the time of Ultima IV 😛
There was a feminist on the Great Council. Antibiotics were in their early stages of development. Experimental theater was entering the art scene. Piracy had given over to the more lucrative field of pirate-based tourism. Institutional racism, corporate greed, political corruption and drug dependency were real and hard to immediately remedy features of society. People were reconsidering their moral philosophy and falling prey to freaking medieval Scientologists!
Excellent breakdown. I would note that Ultima: Lazarus for all its grittiness did NOT have this kind of stuff.
@Blu3vib3 – You’ve basically highlithed everything that irks me about Ultima VII. I feel a lot of this stuff just didn’t belong in Ultima, and in some ways U7 didn’t felt like an Ultima anymore to me. And while I’m willing to grant to this was a rather novel way to fantasy, I’d argue that the way most of this stuff was executed was just heavy handed and not very interesting for the most part.
I think I understand where you’re coming from, Sergorn. You miss the mystical experience of an idealized fantasy world, where the little dirty details of the world are hidden from the viewer and magic fills in the gaps.
I can sympathize with that. The genre has been travelling in the opposite direction. That sort of experience is considered passe.
The archtypical example of this is what Terry Pratchett has turned Ankh-Morpork into over the years – from a medieval City Of Adventure, where even the ruler of the city was unnamed, into a multicultural steampunk Victorian London with a complex bureaucracy.
I argue that this is the natural and inevitable trajectory of the fantasy genre. The reason is that many of the people who like fantasy are nerds, and they just LOVE theorizing and adding in those little details of how everything works. They make FAQs and wikis, and discuss these things on Internet forums. And in most cases, the content creator eventually feels obliged to fill in the gaps for them and create more “canon”.
And something is lost in the process.
Back in the Age of Enlightenment trilogy the tone was hopeful. Despite all what happened during the adventures of the Avatar, in the end everything was better.
The tone changed with U7 and while the Avatar actions helped solved the crisis something was lost. In respect of the Ultima Prime timeline, that darkness was not something new, something that came with Batlin or the Fellowship.
The ending of Ultima Underworld or even the mention of the minor wars during the 200 years when the Avatar did not come to Britannia, is the start of the corruption of the utopian dream that Britannia was.
The main difference with grittier settings that we now have in crpg is that we have “lived” through the Golden Age of the setting and seeing it going down is truly a bittersweet experience.
I have the same feeling towards the D&D setting of the Forgotten Realms. The 3rd edition of the game did bring in a more “serious” tone: vilains were winning, heroes were dying. suddenly it was more tragic and less like a comic in tone.
Somehow… I think my point is getting lost here.
When I read the comments by other people here, it sounds as if I am asking for some lighthearted goody two shoes fantasy and that this is what Ultima should be about or what else. Which is not what I’m saying. I actually don’t think the AoE game were particularily lighthearted (as I mentionned U5 was rather dark for its time) and my issues with U7 don’t come from its supposed grittyness or dark tone.
All was saying is that IMO, Britannia in the U4~6 era was a very magical world. And this was the point of U7 really : magic had gone awry which lead the world to get in some essence more “modern” and even scientific in part.
But this is *completly* unrelated with the tone of the games, or how dark they can be. By reading some of you guys, it almost sound like you feel a magical world would need to be some form of lighthearted fantasy or some such. But this is of course not the case, there are *tons* of dark gritty fantasy stories with a lot of magic.
Hell you don’t even need to look outside of Ultima really: Pagan was a very magical world, and it was very dark and violent, much moreso than Britannia has ever been.
So no, grittiness is in no way uncompatible with having a lot of magic – and if anything magic opens up a lot of other new possibilites for grittiness.
So basically I’d argue you could have made a Lazarus with the exact same grittyness in a more magical version of Britannia than how the world was presented there. I just don’t see how that would have been uncompatible.
I known the appeal of high fantasy, and I don’t think that its impossible to have a sense of tragedy or grit within that genre, but I’ve long been a proponent of kicking established genre in its proverbial aesthetic ball sack.
While the Age of Enlightenment is delightfully well done (the game design in Ultima V is probably the best in the series), it’s actually my least favorite trilogy of the series, as I often felt that I could get a similar “feel” from a lot of other games, books and similar media. What captured my heart were all the Ultimas that did something off the beaten path, and I’m quite vocal in my love of Taloroids, space lasers, naked tax evaders, Sigmund Freud and almost everything in the Ethereal Void.
I think that the relatively stable worlds of U4-U6 all dealt with mature themes (racism, tyranny, spiritual transformation) despite their lack of “modernity” and their tendency to cling to well established fantasy archetypes in their stories – but I think that its problematic to claim that within this trilogy lies the “correct” thematic feel for Ultima. Ultima is a crazy series that spans multiple genres and thematics, and while the natural range of personal preference will lead some people to like one installment for another, I think its important to embrace all of it as being Ultima.
That’s why, even if I think the artwork’s a bit tacky (although I’m totally envious of the tinker’s thighs), I get a bit weird when people react disdainfully to the series having potentially been taken in a different direction with Ultima Reborn. Ultima was a strange and many-headed beast that went in any number of directions, and I think that a fresh and bizarre take on it could have been fun.
I couldn’t agree more with that. I know we all have our own personal idea of what Ultima embodies based on when we started playing it, what we projected from ourselves onto it and which ones we played (and in what order), but you’re right. Ultima, from I to IX and all between, really danced from one edge of the rainbow to the other with only a handful of attributes that even attempted consistency. If one was forced to condense Ultima to a single flavor it would seem logical to choose the heart of the order (IV – VI), but I don’t think anyone’s being forced and those games constitute less than 33% of the canon.
That’s not to say that any fool’s interpretation of Ultima should be blindly accepted by anyone who was ever a fan, but it’s something to think about and accept as part of the series’ nature. RG didn’t start writing Akalabeth with Ultima Online and Ultima IX in mind. It evolved organically with a million reasons behind every choice in game design, both creative and practical.
I think a thread should be started where we can all tell stories about why we love Ultima. Testimonials, basically, so we can gain greater insight into each other’s understanding and perception of the series, and perhaps in some way begin to understand what we as a collective define Ultima to be.
Good idea or nay? It’s been touched on here and there, myself included, but I’d love to see everyone’s experiences in one place. It’d be hella inspirational and maybe bring us together a bit more. This is a very fractured community at times.
I wholeheartedly concur. I was an adorable fankid when I started to play Ultima, and I have many fun anecdotes about pretending to be a metal golem to scare my little sister.
Sanctimonia:
Not a thread. I have a category already which is labeled “What Makes an Ultima?”, which I set up as part of a project I have not yet had time to pursue. I would love nothing more than to fill it up with guest posts of people explaining what Ultima was to them and what, in their opinion, constitutes a proper Ultima game.
This will go up in the news today.
Cool, let it begin. Also I’m going out of town for a week. Not Saudi Arabia, but Nevada.
I think Britannia and Ultima fans need magic. Magic describes the things -not- described by other things. It’s the mystery in the game. Magic should be half about reagents and incantations and half about proper circumstances. Some spells work better when the wind is blowing toward your target, etc. Magic should be both real and, well, still magic. Easy to cast, studious to master. Much like modern tradesmen, skilled men of Britannia should be appreciated, rewarded and respected. Mages could light the street lamps by pointing at them as they walk down the road, for example. People hiding could be momentarily darkened as a sign of good will. Spells don’t need to be a bunch of crazy glowing particles.
A Britannia without magic is a country in a game by some other name.
My brain…*stares at concept art* I want to say ‘Purge it with fire!’ because someone’s already beaten me to a 300 crack. 😉