Ultima VIII

Ultima VIII: Pagan (1994) is the eighth part of the computer role-playing game series Ultima. It was not as well received as Ultima VII leading many, including Richard Garriott, to blame its faults on hasty development used meet the release date and appease Origin Systems owner Electronic Arts.

Following the defeat of Batlin on Serpent Isle, the Guardian drops the Avatar onto a world that he had already destroyed, Pagan . The world of Pagan is in eternal twilight as the result of an ancient battle between the Elemental Titans and the evil "Destroyer", which resulted in the victory of the Titans. However the people of Pagan had to pay a high price for that — the world's sun was eternally dimmed, and they must now worship the Titans as gods. The Titans bestow powers on their most ardent followers, but they are otherwise cruel and unloving rulers, and their followers terrorize the general population. And what is the Guardian's role in this scheme?

In this part of the series, Garriott delegated most of the work to others, and the result disappointed many fans. Garriott later explained, "... I sacrificed everything to appease stockholders, which was a mistake. We probably shipped it three months unfinished." (Computer Games Magazine, 1999) The most common complaints were:

• The world was much smaller than in the preceding parts
• NPC portraits were eliminated
• Day-and-night cycles were eliminated
• The game went back from the "party" concept to the "lone hero" of the first two parts
• Platform-game-like "jumping" was introduced
• Major plot holes
• Frequent glitches

A second release corrected the bugs, fixed some plot holes, and mostly eliminated the problems with the jumps, but by then the damage to the game's reputation had already been done. However this fixed second release (and all the identical later releases) is actually a very decent RPG, even if maybe not quite up the immediate predecessors.

Ultima VIII has a much darker tone and a very different premise, in comparison to most of the Ultima games. In this version, the Virtues system was completely abandoned, and it featured an entirely different system of magic and bestiary. These were certainly some of the reasons that made many fans, already used to the old style of the series, upset with Ultima VIII, despite its numerous interesting features.

The Ultima VIII engine was later reused in the Crusader game series.

Contents

1 The Lost Vale expansion 2 Compatibility with modern systems 3 Fan remakes 4 External links

The Lost Vale expansion

This expansion to Ultima VIII was planned from the outset, and was much anticipated, but never released; it was cancelled when the main game didn't sell as well as had been expected. Hints from texts in the main game suggested that the expansion pack would have added a new story regarding resisters to the Pagan gods, followers of the old religion known as Zealans .

Compatibility with modern systems

Ultima VIII has problems running on modern systems. The game has problems starting on Windows 98 and later, and even with a later-made fan patch (see External links) it may still run unstably.

Ultima VIII works reliably under DOSBox environment.

A fan engine rewrite called Pentagram (similar to Exult for U7) is in works. It allows you to play the game from beginning to end, but does not implement all the functionality yet.

Fan remakes

Currently, the most actively developed Ultima VIII remake is titled Ultima VIII: Exile. This remake is based on Neverwinter Nights engine.

External links

• Bootstrike's Ultima VIII Files Collection, a file resource center
• Dino's Guide to Ultima VIII - Pagan, a comprehensive site about the game
• Ultima VIII nitpicks
• Ultima VIII in Windows, a fan patch to help run Ultima VIII in Windows 9x
• Pentagram
• Ultima VIII: Exile, a fan remake