Paste Magazine Considers Ultima 7 the #2 Best Open World Game
Paste Magazine is running a feature listing the ten best open world games, or at least their opinion concerning same. Ultima 7 ranks at the #2 spot on the list, losing out to Legend of Zelda:
The increasingly intricate world of Ultima was most fully realized in Ultima VII. It’s easy to lose track of the main quest while exploring the game’s massive world and multiple subplots. With countless interactive objects, daily schedules for non-playable characters, real-time combat and borderless transitions between open space, towns and battlegrounds, Ultima VII presents a seamless open world that seems to live even when you’re not in it.
Well…in this, at least, they’re not wrong. One could say less for their ranking…or the absence of Ultima 6 from the list.
The First Age of Update As Linguistic points out below, the list is arranged in chronological order, not in order of greatness.
#2 isn’t a bad rank, but to lose to Legend of Zelda (even though it is a classic in its own right) on a list of open world games just seems, I dunno, wrong.
Interesting and strange choice for the number one spot. If The Legend of Zelda had evolved into something like Ultima VII or TES4/5 there would be some logic, but it went in the other direction. Another possibility is that it was revolutionary as an open world game in its time, yet Ultima IV predated it by a year (1985 vs. 1986). The final possibility is based on units sold (68 million). I don’t know how many units Ultima IV sold, but I suspect it was far less than TLoZ. TES4/5 separately haven’t come close to units sold as TLoZ.
My best guess is that TLoZ is the most well known and well loved open world game to date, and that Ultima VII takes second spot because it is, in fact, the best open world game ever made, though lesser known to the unwashed masses.
Says right in the article that they’re listed in chronological order, rather than highest-ranked first… it’s second because it’s second-oldest of their Top Ten, right after LoZ.
Oh, for the love of…how did I miss that?
Thanks for pointing that out.
LOL, what I get for not reading TFA. Good find Linguistic.