It is always a welcome thing when Peter Tieryas (you may also know him as Tieryas Yu) turns his attention to Ultima. He has written about the series before — Ultima 4, the Virtues, a prior Kotaku piece on morality in the games — and each time he does his part to keep the memory of Britannia alive somewhere that people who do not, unlike yours truly, live on Ultima Dragons Discord server might still find it. His latest, at Kotaku, is a long look at Ultima 7: The Black Gate: one of the greatest RPGs ever made, if you ask him. (And many others, though for what it’s worth, Ultima 6 is my favourite.)

I should say up front that I had the good fortune to contribute to the piece. Peter reached out via Discord for my thoughts on Exult, on the Ultima Dragons, and on how Ultima 7 still echoes through later RPGs. I was both happy and honoured to help. He also borrowed a handful of images from the Ultima Codex to illustrate the article, which is a courtesy I never take for granted. (There’s a lot of great material over on The Origin Gallery which provides glimpses into the development history of several Ultima titles, and it’s always great to see it shine in the light of day.)

The essay is not a short tip of the hat. Peter talks with Richard Garriott about the Guardian as a competitive belief system to the classic Eight Virtues, and how it was meant to “earn your spite” as a player. He also spoke at length with Raymond Benson (who has also written The James Bond Bedside Companion, an Edgar-nominated Bond RPG module, and various Bond novels) about turning that premise into a Hitchcock-style murder mystery that begins in Trinsic and widens into the a Britannia-wide conspiracy involving the Guardian-inspired Fellowship. The late Andrew Morris also gets a mention by way of some of his long-documented comments about the game’s NPCs, Skara Brae, and the clue book. And you’ll also find several passages from Dominik Reichardt (also known as Dominus Dragon) as he walks through Exult’s long, unglamorous life as a reimplementation rather than an emulator. It’s a lengthy and wide-ranging piece that I haven’t the first clue as to where to draw excerpts from; you’d do well to read it all at Kotaku.

What I will say is that putting Exult, the Dragons, and the game’s lingering influence on one map — as Peter does toward the end — is, as I said above, a welcome thing. Ultima 7 is a game that inspired many but was rarely imitated, which felt as if it kept its world alive even when we weren’t playing it. Exult kept that world runnable long after the game had any right to be playable on modern PCs. The Ultima Dragons kept the people who loved it from scattering. And that Peter is still willing to spend Kotaku column inches on all three is, I think, something worth pointing at.