Ultima Underworld 3’s Storyline
As part of his own tribute to Ultima Underworld on the occasion of its 20th anniversary, Origin historian Pix uploaded something I’m sure a lot of you have been hoping would one day materialize: a story outline document for Ultima Underworld 3!
This details an entire potential storyline for the game as of August 22nd 1997 and is available as a pdf from here.
The Ultima connection appears to have been dropped in favour of another fantasy world and the game is far less dungeon based than UW1 & 2. The document is only a brief outline and there is precious little about gameplay unfortunately. I find it hard to form an opinion of how Underworld 3 might have turned out based on this alone but the scale of some of the events was certainly ambitious for 3D engines of the time and the potential was there. It’s hard not to think that this would have been in direct competition with Ultima 9 which could be one reason why it never happened.
The game would have begun in a way not unlike Ultima 9 did: your character (presumably the Avatar) would have been enjoying a quiet retreat at a lakeside cottage when, quite suddenly, you are drawn into a moongate and whisked off to the world of Jaal, which was to be filled with dungeons, underwater cities, pirates…and, of course, the usual evil and intrigue that the Avatar is so expert at addressing and dealing with. Much of the game would, seemingly, have centered around traveling between destinations on a pirate ship which I can only surmise was named for Janis Joplin. The game would ultimately have ended on a bit of a cliffhanger, implying that there was some intention of seeing the Underworld games continue as a series.
Sadly, Looking Glass Studios Origin Systems was never able to capitalize on these designs, and Pix readily admits that there is evidently much more in the way of documentation for the game out there, especially at the University of Texas at Austin archives. But, alas, access thereto is not all that easy to come by, so we may have to wait some time more for more word on what Underworld 3 would have been like, and/or where Looking Glass planned to take the series after it.
Whoa. After all this time wondering what Underworld 3 might have been like this is… rather underwhelming to say the least.
Indeed this is basically Underworld 3 and NOT “Ultima” Underworld 3… it has no realations to the Ultima series anymore than Arx Fatalis has basically, and the plot isn’t exactly exciting to begin with.
On a side note AFAIK the Underworld iterations considered at that point were all done internally at Origin, so whatever Looking Glass might have planned for Underworld 3 would have been years before this and probably unrelated to this (by ’97 they no longer worked with Origin AFAIK). This is likely not the first version of UW3, and likely not the latest one either (I’ve heard of a early ’98 revision).
That being said I’d agree with Pix’s assessment that it probably was never made because of U9’s move to a 3D engine. With the core Ultima series moving to a full 3D world, the point of a having a 3D Underworld game was probably less interesting.
The Underworld 3 bible at Texas University has a section devoted to why UW3 wouldn’t compete with Ultima 9 so it was clearly a concern right at the start. I would guess that the Ultima link was purposely dropped to keep the two games as far removed as possible.
The plot is a lot less than I was hoping for also for but it’s such a brief outline it’s hard to say it couldn’t have worked out. The plot of UW1 summarised like this would be worse still and probably only need 3 or 4 pages. Considering the uninspiring story and the issues with Ultima 9’s move to 3D, it might be just as well this one never got made though.
This particular incarnation didn’t have any Looking Glass involvement to my knowledge although Paul Neurath does have partial rights to the brand and Origin would have at least needed him to sign off on it. There were definitely other attempts to continue the series but I don’t know how far any of them got. All the photos of documents from the UW3 bible I’ve seen are dated within a few days of this plot.
I would never have referred to myself as an Origin historian by the way but it does sound better than obsessive fanboy.
I’d be curious to see other dev docs and that UW3 Bible too. I know LOAF took pic of all the UW3 stuff as the University of Texas last summer, so hopefully these will surface at some point.
I’m also surprised about your mention of Neurath having partial rights to the brand. I’ve hard all the issues regarding the jointly owned System Shock IP, but it feels weird to hear something like this about UW3, especially since the Ultima brand was EA to begin with.
(Hell considering how the game wasn’t exactly focusing on underworld dungeons only, you might argue they could have dropped the “Underworld” name in any case).
Oh regarding the competing with U9 thing, thinking of it actually with this document being made in mid ’97 that would still technically have been the “original” U9 on the table even if it was on hiatus due to UO at that point.
From that point of view that wouldn’t have competed much with U9, but I could see how it would become an issue with U9 becoming a fullblown 3D game with a single character later on.
Just another relic of a company in deep decline…
I’d disagree about Origin being in decline, much less a deep one, in 1997 personnally.
If I were going to describe Origin in 1997, I’d say either distracted or over-extended. Over-extended would probably be the best of the two.
They had a relatively large number of major projects in the design stage, in active development, or in the process of being published.
Yeah, you’re probably right. I amend my post – it was the start of the decline, not yet deep.
Yeah, I mean the start of the decline basically : that would be UO’s release and success.
I guess you could make the argument it began when they shifted U9’s team to UO, but they still had plenty of major projects ongoing at this point none the less.
I don’t think they were overextended, in that a lot of these projets would likely have been released.
But UO’s success really changed everything, and basically and gradually doomed everything as EA shifted Origin toward an online only company and cancelled single player games that were either at a design stage or in production in order to make MMO versions of their core IP (which never went anywhere either, but heh)
When I say overextended, I mean that Origin had several projects that were ripe for cutting or being undermined due to EA’s internal turf wars, and Don Mattrick’s views of what Origin should be. Overextended is not the best word. Distracted, because by 1997, I believe Chris Roberts and Warren Spector had already left, and others had left or were leaving, and there were a lot of internal politics really screwing things up.
I don’t think there is anything necessarily wrong with them moving Origin to an online-only company. The problem is they weren’t willing to execute.
Look at the online games they canceled. UO2 had a lot of elements that were in World of Warcraft, Privateer/Wing Commander Online could have beaten EVE Online and Star Wars Galaxies, Harry Potter Online…actually Harry Potter Online didn’t make sense to me, unless it was going to be some watered-down kids game, like Wizard101. Still, it would have made a lot of money. Even if they just took UO and reskinned it for Harry Potter, people would have been playing it.
Yeah Roberts and Spector had already left by 1997. But Wing Commander Prophecy was made without Roberts and turned out to be a great game none the less.
I think turning Origin into an online only company was a terrible mistake because they basically put all their eggs in the same basket. They saw online games as this goose with golden eggs and put everything in it without really thinking of the consequences while really the most reasonnable thing would have been to keep doing both.
It’s obvious though EA just didn’t really know how to handle the whole online thing (Origin’s games wasn’t just the only examples). I’m still at a loss by the cancelattion of UO2 because it doesn’t makes any sense, I can understand Privateer Online (because they had Earth&Beyond and didn’t want to self compete), I can understand Ultima X (because… they no longer had a team to work on it), but UO2 ? That’s weird – it’s like they god scared by all the MMOs that were dying around them and thought “Okay let’s forget about this all right ?”
But what I mean about the issue with shifting to online only games, and that if they hadn’t, Origin would likely have kept releasing and producing quality single player games in the following years.
There’s something crazy in thinking that between UO’s release in 97 and Origin’s closure in 2004, the only thing that got released were Ultima IX and UO updates, when you look at all the stuff Origin was releasing just a few years before.
Yes, it’s all of their eggs in one basket, but if they had 3-4 online games going, as a studio/brand it would have been a lot easier to survive.
I’m at a loss about UO2’s cancellation as well. I’ve read a lot of what’s been said by some of the major players from both within Origin and within EA, and something just doesn’t sit right. UO2 was going to make a lot of money, and it was a huge project and a sequel of sorts, and EA loves their big sequels.
Privateer Online/Earth and Beyond. Maybe it’s just who I hung out with, but I didn’t know anybody excited about E&B. I knew plenty of people who had been excited about some kind of online Privateer/Wing Commander. I understand it partly, better than UO2. EA bought Westwood in 1998, and Earth and Beyond had already been in development for a year.
But EA loves big sequels, and if I described Earth and Beyond as this MMORPG that was in development for a year when EA bought the parent company and it wasn’t based on a huge franchise or anything, and I described Privateer Online as a MMORPG that’s a sequel to a huge and well-loved franchised, going by EA’s past actions, you’d think they’d ditch E&B in favor of Privateer.
I wished that Warren Spector and some of the others could have stuck around and developed single player games. I think if properly supported, Ultima could be up there with Elder Srolls now, Oblivion and Skyrim. The Elder Scrolls franchise is not a newer franchise – the first one came out just two years after Ultima VII. Elder Scrolls III came out just a few years after Ultima IX.
And this whole Underworld III thing could have been a proper Ultima game if it weren’t for the timing and with proper support and management. It could have even been an addon to Ultima IX 🙂
Regarding UO2, the only thing I heard was some hearsay (from which I can’t even pinpoint the source anymore because it’s been too long), was that they had just gotten a new exec at EA in early 2001 who just seem to have some personnal hatred for the project and just pushed and pushed to have it cancelled. I remember the team really was at a loss as well by the cancellation because they really felt the game was a sure deal – it was like THE game that couldn’t be cancelled. A couple weeks before cancellation we had conducted an interview with Starr Long (I co-ran one of the biggest UO2 french site), and when we asked him “What set UO2 apparts from other games ?” he jokinly answer “Well… OURS is gonna get released!” in reference to teh fact that many MMO projects were getting cancelled. That’s irony biting you in the ass, but it does show that up to the highest level of the dev team everybody was confident the game would be coming out. I remember getting to sleep one night posting some stuff on the UO2 website… and waking up the next morning leadning of the cancellation.
That’s crazy because it really came out of nowhere. When these sort of things happen, you usually have some signs (I mean look at UXO… it didn’t come as a surprise for anyone in the end), but here…. nothing.
Regarding Privateer Online it was a powerful brand, but ironically if what I’ve heard is correct I’m not sure this would have been well received actually, because from what I’ve heard the latest iteration lead by Raph Koster was basically very much like Star Wars Galaxies and aimed to ship without space combat (!). Not exactly what people would have expected of Privateer Online methinks. (Though unless I’m mistaken there were other attempts and pitchs for a WC Online before that)
I gotta say I never cared about E&B either, but I could see how two space franchises as online games would have made EA warry – I mean this is basically the reason UO2 aimed for a steampunk kind of world in order not ot canabalise on UO’s fanbase, and later on why UXO aimed at a vastly different kind of game so as not to to self concurence with UO (indeed I even remember they had annouced price plans to have cheaper subcription if you had both a UO and UXO account).
I agree that Ultima could be up there with Elder Scrolls as a big AAA RPG IP. I also think it could succesfully be brought back as well. But it doesn’t look to be in the cards – EA aimed to ressurect Ultima as a AAA franchise a few years, but I think it all went away when they ended buying Bioware.
Wow. Just skimmed through it and was… disappointed. Kinda glad that one didn’t get made.
As for the talk about all the other games that were cancelled… I think everything I have to say has been said years ago.