Canst thou believe it?

Twenty years ago, Origin Systems released what is — without question, I think — the darkest chapter in the Ultima series: Ultima 8, also known as Pagan after the world in which it was set. A more action-oriented game, its combat system was decidedly more hack-and-slash in nature; comparisons to Diablo arguably have merit, since it’s almost a certainty that Blizzard took cues from Ultima 8 when designing that game. It was also the first main series Ultima title to incorporate a jumping mechanic, which was horribly glitchy in the initial release. I think deviantart contributor lisastrous all but nails just how poor the jumping was in the game, prior to being patched:

As noted, Ultima 8 featured a much darker tone than the other entries in the series, and arguably forces the Avatar into some morally ambiguous — if not outright evil — situations and actions. And while it’s arguable that the other Ultima games tended to offer players the choice of being good or evil, it’s that element of choice that is found to be lacking in Ultima 8 where some actions are concerned. Indeed, the game cannot be passed without (to take just one example) robbing the world of Pagan of a powerful school of healing magic…to say nothing of the many NPCs that meet unfortunate ends as a consequence (direct or indirect) of the Avatar’s actions.

Ultima 8 also had a storied, and unfortunately truncated, development. The game shipped in a somewhat incomplete state, and Richard Garriott has often admitted that the game is flawed in numerous ways. He is also on the record as saying that Origin would have required three more months to complete everything that was planned for the game. To meet its March release date — which, if memory serves, was itself a delay from an initially-planned Christmas launch window — a fair bit of content was removed from the game. And of course, the planned expansion pack — The Lost Vale — was never released, despite having been essentially complete and ready to ship.

At any rate…post is actually as much a “mea culpa” as anything else. I had meant to have a couple of things ready to publish by this evening to formally mark the occasion of Ultima 8’s 20th year, including the Jason Ely interview. Alas, that won’t be happening; I haven’t been able to find a large enough block of time to get everything in place and ready. I’m thinking of pushing the release of that material back to Monday, St. Patrick’s Day, which will also hopefully give me time to re-organize the Ultima 8 subdomain a bit.

And actually, there will be even more Ultima 8-related content coming later this month, once GDC has wrapped up.

But for tonight, this summary will have to suffice.