Ultima Forever Reflection Wallpaper
Browncoat Jayson has whipped up a fine piece of Ultima Forever wallpaper.
Sadly, it’s available in just one size (640×480), but it is nevertheless a beautiful piece. Do note the clever use of Ultima 4 imagery in the stained glass windows! Grab it above, or from our Ultima Forever smartphone & tablet wallpaper collection.
Anyone think it’s weird that there are what at least appear to be Catholic churches in the game? I remember from The Official Book of Ultima that Garriott was against religion and God being in his games (I think he may be agnostic). Probably the resemblance is only architectural and they’re shrines to the virtues or something.
You’ll note that the book on the table/altar there has an Ankh symbol on it. I doubt it’s the Codex, but it stands to reason that whatever this building is, the object of the devotions offered therein is most likely the Virtues.
And to be fair, although Garriott eschewed the portrayal of anything resembling a “traditional” religion (jabs at Scientology in Ultima 7 aside) in the Ultima games, it wasn’t hard to find religious trappings like shrines and temples. The Codex in Ultima 6 wasn’t housed in a shed, after all. And then there were places like Empath Abbey (what’s an abbey, right?), or the Temple of Love in Britain in Ultima 9, the latter of which (in particular) had very church-like architecture.
So yeah, in this case, the resemblance to a typical cathedral is, as in any other Ultima, incidental, and probably the result of nothing more than using that sort of architecture as a design reference.
@ WtF It was harder to distinguish vertical or symbolic architectural styles in Ultimas before VII. The Fellowship was the first time I noticed a religious reference playing an Ultima (III – VII). None of the tilesets (I – VI) have religious symbols. Even the tombstone in V says “RIP” and has no cross or other symbol.
I don’t mind the design, as it reminds me of old JRPG maps but even more amazingly rendered. It is curious however and interests me.
@R.I.O.T. Watch The Pillars of the Earth and World Without End (two miniseries) if you haven’t already. And Kingdom of Heaven (film). And Copper on BBCA. And Game of Thrones on HBO. Good Ultima-ish shows in many appreciable ways.
Thanks for posting this, WtF!
I’m not sure if they just scaled it up or somehow got a higher resolution of the original image, but there is a 1024×768 version here:
http://screens.latestscreens.com/iphoneipad/screenshots/ultimaforeverquestfortheavatar/ultima-forever_2.png
Hm, I pretty liked the absence of church-like architecture in UIII-VII, the stonecircles and shrines had some vague pagan/religious feeling without associating the virtues to any religion at all, since stonecircles are found all over the globe.
Well, its really a mix. After all, the actual Shrines for each virtue are standing stones, but the Temple of Virtue from U4 and U5 is a cathedral-like structure in Cove (this is actually what I hope is portrayed in this image, but I’m not sure of that). Similarly, the Shrine of the Codex looks fairly gothic.