Sergorn Dragon has posted an update — and a new piece of art — to the Ultima Return website:

Since we don’t want to make you all think we’re resting on our laurels and the project isn’t moving forward, we have decided to begin sharing regularly more content that is being done behind the scenes. Now you’re all familiar with Andrea’s wonderful character portraits work we have shared in the last few month. But as you may guess, the roughs we have shown were only the first step of those portraits and Andrea has been hard at work. You’re already familiar with Cassandra, the mysterious and beautiful companion we have exposed on our gallery.

Now let me introduce you, Captain Ylbert!

Ylbert will be one of the first characters the player will encounter in the Prologue and as and old experimented seadogs he’ll have a lot to share with you! But most importantly, he’ll offer some major help during the course of the Prologue but to learn more of if, you will have to wait and see!

Click on through to see the full image!

And of course, since Sergorn’s project deals with a return to the Serpent Isle, he of course felt moved to weigh in on Serpent Isle’s 20th anniversary:

We had just gotten our first PC at home at that point (I even remember the date precisely, March 3rd 1993) and Ultima Underworld II which had been released a few month earlier had been my first PC game (while my brother got Wing Commander II…Origin classics, those were the days!)

So getting a new Ultima game, brand new, with little knowledge of its content beforehand – well that was marvelous. I vaguely remember going home, opening the box, getting the paper map out of it (I only became aware many years later this should have been a cloth one) and reading the manual, immediately entranced by the story of Erstam’s journey and his twisted rendition of Britannia’s history.

And the game…well it shall be pointed that having no played Ultima VII had this point, this was my first foray with the Ultima VII engine. But boy, was it bliss. I just…everything in the game immediately captured me: from the intro which looks more amazing than anything I had seen before in game, the explosive opening with Thoxa and Karnaxx…and this feeling of discovery, this sense of exploration of discovering a strange new world.

Do go and read the whole thing.