Ultima Forever & The Eight Virtues: City of Justice
Mythic have once again updated the Ultima Forever Facebook page, continuing their examination of the Virtue of Justice with the (now typical) mid-week collage of the Virtue’s representative city, Yew:
Yew! No not you – Yew!
Yew is established as the City of Justice and headquarters of the Druids of Britannia. Yew has always been a heavily forested town, and is one of the oldest in Britannia — dating back as far as Ultima 1.
Its appearance changed a bit over the first three Ultima games — from a heavily walled fortress to a sparse forest village. Come Ultima 4 it had a wall surrounding the entire city, and even had an underground in U5. At that time, it was the 2nd largest city in Britannia – second only to Britain itself.
Come U6 the wall was removed, and a more rural look took hold over the city. The population declined steadily, and by Ultima 7 Yew was no longer considered a city. Rather, its inhabitants were spread more throughout the forest in an effort to get closer to nature.
In Ultima 9, it once again grew into a larger city. Most of its inhabitants lived in tree huts nestled within the branches of giant trees within the Deep Forest.
What are some of your favorite locations surrounding Yew and the Deep Forest? What do you think happened to Tseramed and the Emps of U7? Have you ever visited the Bee cave? Make sure to stop at Iolo’s hut before leaving!
From top left to bottom right:
U3, U5, U9, Now!
You can see a larger version of Yew, as it appears in Ultima Forever, here.
Anyone have a link to the Ultima IV map of Yew (IBM PC – the most beautiful of versions)? It’s suspiciously absent here and I can’t find it on Google Images (or anywhere else since searching more deeply). Weird.
http://wiki.ultimacodex.com/wiki/File:U4_Yew.png
The one in U4E is almost identical to the one in U4.
Oh, WtF: The map on the page you linked to is Trinsic, not Yew.
Argh, so it is. FIXING!
Thanks, although they spruced it up with a nicer tileset. Of all my Ultima memories playing the IBM PC Ultima IV is my fondest.
This one is the biggest departure so far from U4, I think.
…or not.
Yeah…chalk one up for my rampant competence.
So the entire town consists in only 3 houses? Ugh. The more I find out about UF the less I care about it. Could the designs of the cities possibly be any less inspired?
They’re more or less basing the town layouts directly on their Ultima 4 equivalents.
Which, arguably, no other Ultima game has really done; this is the only example I can think of where the layout of a city was significantly similar to the layout of that same city in the game that preceded it in the timeline.
It’s a small thing, but nice to see even so.
I see what you mean. That’s indeed a interesting idea. However, with U4 being a really old game, these updated maps feel pretty bland by modern standards. I would rather have content-rich cities that actually feel like cities, not mini-towns made out of 2-5 houses.
Even some AAA RPGs don’t meet that standard, though, instead opting to feature one or two large hub cities and a bunch of smaller towns, some with not much more than 3 or 4 buildings and a handful of NPCs. Rare indeed is the game that is able to present a succession of large, densely populated cities…so much so that I can’t think of an example off the top of my head.
Holding a mobile game designed on a fairly minimal budget to that standard really doesn’t demonstrate a keen understanding of the realities of game design. Yes, the technology has evolved somewhat, but that’s only part of the picture. The level of effort required to build and populate a city with NPCs hasn’t significantly diminished since the days of Ultima 4; art still takes time to create, UI still takes time to design, exteriors and interiors still take time to assemble and set up triggers & collisions for, and dialogue still takes time to write.
“Hasn’t diminished” would be an understatement.
I was trying to be charitable.