Ultima 5 Redux is, per the developer’s description of it:

…a remake of Ultima 5 with improved graphics and combat that utilizes original game data to ensure the core game is as close to the original as possible.

What that means, practically, is that Brad Hannah is using the Unity engine to take the original data for Ultima 5 to create a voxel-based, isometric 3D reworking of the game.

And if you’re curious about how he’s going about converting Ultima 5 to voxels, here are some details:

It is worth noting after a rather mean message I saw on a forum – these initial Voxel models are pretty simple rips of the original, I hope to go from a 16x16x16 to a 32x32x32 in the future with greater detail. I’m a coder, not an artist, so I am trying not to sink too much time into the fine details yet.

I spent quite a bit of time optimizing lighting, shadows and anti-aliasing. It looks quite a bit better but I am realizing that I have to make a major shift if I want to “hide” parts of the world or town/village etc that the Avatar can’t see in the original game.

This remake maintains an overall old-school aesthetic; it uses the Ultima 5 tileset as the basis for its graphics. However, it does add a few more modern contrivances, including improved ambient and twilight lighting, voxel-based models, and will in due time feature a vastly improved UI for controls and conversations.

Brad began by implementing the basic voxel engine and improving the lighting in the game, and last month further improved both the ambient and twilight lighting and implemented basic NPC dialogues (and the dialogs to support them). Most recently, he’s been working on implementing sign posts.

So…how does it look? Well, it turns out, it looks pretty amazing:

You can also check out some screenshots here. And there’s a newly-minted project entry — no downloads as yet! — which can be found here at the Codex.

And for the most current news and updates about Ultima 5 Redux, you should of course keep checking back at the project’s website.

The First Age of Update: Header image changed to reflect the current state of Ultima 5 Redux development.