Ultima Forever & The Eight Virtues: City of Honesty
The Ultima Forever Facebook page has been updated again, and in keeping with the theme of the Virtue of Honesty, Mythic Entertainment are taking a look at the city of Moonglow, the home of the Mages:
Moonglow – city of Honesty! This one has changed just as much as Britain has!
In order from top left to bottom right:
Ultima IV, VII, IX, and Forever.
Moonglow is located on Verity Isle, close to the Lycaeum. Verity Isle, and its counterpoint Dagger Isle, have also evolved and grown over the years.
Which version of Moonglow do you remember most fondly? What are some of your favorite characters associated with Honesty? Do you remember Frank the Fox from Ultima VII? He sure took honesty to an extreme! Mariah the mage embodies the Virtue of Honesty, and has been a loyal companion to the Avatar since Ultima IV.
I strongly recommend you take a look at The Tale of Mariah and the Demon for a beautiful example of how Honesty can be used to defeat evil: http://bit.ly/13YnhCQ
Personally, I actually quite like the Ultima 9 version of the city. Oh, sure, the engine doesn’t really handle the transparent textures all that well, at least not when using DirectX, making it one of the more crash-prone areas of the game. But even so, the architecture has a certain mystical quality, the magical barriers around the town seem quite fitting, and the entire area has an arcane glow about it when the sun sets. It looks and feels like a place where Mages would live.
The Ultima 6 version of the city was pretty good, too.
Obviously inspired by U4’s version again.
Moonglow always came across as a rather small city which is why it was kind of weird that it was to become a major faction in the Bob White plot.
I liked the U7 version because it emphasized the city’s normality. It had peasants! It wasn’t a cartoon city where everybody is a mage with levitating staircases and force fields everywhere.
I agree with the comments on the U9 version. This is actually one of two locations in the game that I have given the most thought about for Forgotten World (the other being Trinsic). Cliffs and fog with some magical lighting are planned to shroud the city/towne especially during the twilight hours. Should be make travelling into the port quite a sight.
I look forward to screenshotting the living heck out of that.
It’s also worth noting that in U4E proper, Moonglow is significantly more Weep-ravaged than this image lets on.