CNN has put together a large article on Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar. It is probably one of the highest-profile pieces done on U4E within the mainstream media, even if it’s in CNN’s Gaming and Gadgets section.

It starts off giving a little bit of history about Ultima IV:

Making a video game espousing the virtues of compassion, sacrifice and spirituality doesn’t sound like a winner in today’s battle-happy gaming environment. But 27 years ago, it was exactly the type of game that caught the imagination and spurred excitement in gamers.

Kate Flack is trying to get in your head:

Rather than seeing how many creatures a player can kill or how much gold they can accumulate, Flack is more interested in getting inside the player’s head. She says the game is almost like a personality test, giving players choices in the attempt to be a good person. How they get there is up to them.

Another designer was named outside of Kate (Lead Designer) and Graham Bennett (Senior Designer)

Bioware designer Alec Fisher-Lasley was a former Arlington County, Virginia, police officer before deciding to get into video games. He says the decisions made in “Ultima Forever” are similar to the types of decisions he had to make while on the force — just at a much slower pace.

“When I found out they were working on the ‘Ultima’ series, I was really excited about it. It ties into what I had done as a police officer facing these kinds of moral decisions every day,” Fisher-Lasley said. “I wanted to give that experience to players. What do I do in this situation? What are the consequences? Why would I do this one thing over another?”

Most important of all, Bandit Loaf of the Wing Commander CIC was outed on CNN as being a retro-gamer 😉

“‘Ultima IV’ is the game that all modern (role-playing games) flow from, but it’s also kind of the impossible platonic ideal of a (computer role-playing game),” said retro-gamer Ben Lesnick, 31, of Washington. “It came at this incredibly special time in game development history where that kind of game could exist. Really, if ‘Ultima Forever’ is one-tenth as engrossing as ‘Ultima IV,’ then we’ll have a pretty fantastic game that’s worth playing on its own merits.”

Head over to CNN to read the whole thing. You can discuss it below or over on the Ultima Forever portal.