Ultima V - Unofficially Reborn Via Dungeon Siege

Ian "Tiberius" Frazier writes "Team Lazarus, a volunteer-run 'mod' organization, has released a playable demo of Ultima V: Lazarus to the public. Ultima V: Lazarus is a complete, but unofficial recreation of ORIGIN Systems' classic 1987 role-playing game Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny, utilizing the modding capabilities of Gas-Powered Games' Dungeon Siege. Functional on both Mac and PC versions of Dungeon Siege, Lazarus Alpha Demo 1.0 is not yet feature-complete, but includes the ability to explore all of Verity Isle, a robust dialogue system, re-designed, custom artwork, vicious monsters and cunning wizards, and a digitally re-mastered soundtrack."

Comments

Congrats to the Lazarus Team

[Render]

The demo has been a long time coming, and I'm glad to see that they've pulled it off. Congrats to Tiberius and the Lazarus Team!

Other Ultima remakes worth mentioning:

Ultima IV - The Dawn of Virtue, a recreation of Ultima IV using a custom engine, from the author of Nethack Falcon's Eye:
http://www.hut.fi/~jtpelto2/ultima4/

Exult, a fully-playable reimplementation of the Ultima 7 engine that runs on Windows, Linux, and a few other platforms (Slashdot had better know all about this by now):
http://exult.sourceforge.net/

The Ultima 6 project, which is developing their Dungeon Seige mod in cooperation with the Lazarus team:
http://www.planetdungeonsiege.com/archon/

That will do to go on, but there are plenty of other such projects out there. AFAIK, every Ultima game but Ultima VIII is getting the remake treatment by someone.

Re:Congrats to the Lazarus Team

[nekura]

I'd like to add the Ultima IV remake Avatarship Polished to this list, which is a Neverwinter Nights module.

Re:Congrats to the Lazarus Team

[Haeleth]

AFAIK, every Ultima game but Ultima VIII is getting the remake treatment by someone.

I thought there was a project to remake Ultima VIII using Neverwinter Nights? Did that die?

And who's doing Ultima I, now that Peroxide switched to making an original RPG "inspired" by the Ultima games?

Re:Licensing the Ultima name

[j-turkey]

Britannia, for example, would work as a game name

According to this page:

ELECTRONIC ARTS, ORIGIN, UltimaTM and Britannia are trademarks or registered trademarks of Electronic Arts Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. ORIGINTM is an Electronic ArtsTM brand. Lord British is a trademark or registered trademark of Richard Garriott in the U.S. and/or other countries.

It sounds like EA's got their bases covered on the trademarks. Fortunately, since the project is pretty low-key, it would be really easy to just change the name(s) if it ever came up. I am glad that it got Richard Gariott's blessing, and I hope that it is able to keep all of the original Ultima names. I do think that the names, places, titles, etc add alot to an Ultima game (famaliarity, authenticity, etc) and it would be a shame to see EA put a halt to this.

Re:Licensing the Ultima name

[Anonymous Coward]

What you say is not correct at all! Peroxide wasn't forced by EA. They decided to create a *commercial* game, and as a consequence changed their game from an Ultima remake to an original game. EA was not involved in this whole affair.

No false assumptions, please.

--
Hacki

Re:Licensing the Ultima name

[Lathan]

Actually, EA stomped on Peroxide's "Ultima 1: A Legend is Reborn" 3D remake. At that point (early 2003) it was just about the only 3D remake with a demo out. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, but nobody could really do anything.

Re:ULTIMA IS BACK BABY

[Firehawke]

Actually, I'd say it's more like EA pressured Origin to release U9 despite it being unfinished, having already systematically dismantled Origin over the past prior years and killing several other series in the process.

The enmity between Richard Garriott and Trip Hawkins is nearly legendary, with at least one snipe at EA in an early Ultima (2? Maybe 3, but most likely 2) with a pirate character named Pirt Snikwah. I'd venture to say EA bought out Origin PURELY to dismantle them and remove them from the market.

Of course, by the time U9 was released, no further Origin projects were on the release list per-say, so Garriott managed to extricate himself from the burning wreckage of his company.

Man...

[BadmanX]

Everyone is bagging on the original Dungeon Siege. While it wasn't the best game in the world, it did two interesting things that made me glad I'd picked it up. The "streaming world" technology was extremely well done; I'm really hoping that this will become the norm for ALL games - DEATH to load screens! If you're a developer and you want to know how they did it, Scott Bilas has tons of information on his site here: http://www.drizzle.com/~scottb/

Tho other thing I really liked was the character advancement system. Want to get good at something? Do that particular thing. No levelling, no "skill points", just practice.

While the plot and dialog were weak, these features, plus some interesting environments and enemies, made me glad I'd picked it up. And hopefully DS' weaknesses will be fixed in the sequel.