Ultima VIII: Pagan
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| Ultima VIII: Pagan | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer(s) | Origin Systems |
| Publisher(s) | Origin Systems |
| Designer(s) | Richard Garriott |
| Engine | Ultima VIII Engine |
| Platform(s) | DOS |
| Release | March 15 1994 |
| Genre(s) | RPG |
| Mode(s) | Single Player |
Ultima VIII: Pagan is a video game, the eighth part of the computer role-playing game series Ultima. It was not as well-received as its predecessor, Ultima VII, leading many, including lead designer Richard Garriott, to blame its faults on a hasty development timetable forced on the team by Electronic Arts.[citation needed] Developed in 1994, it is a DOS only title.
Plot
Following the defeat of the charismatic religious leader Batlin on Serpent Isle, the Guardian banishes the Avatar to a world that he has already conquered: Pagan. Ultima VIII has a much darker tone and a very different premise, in comparison to most of the Ultima games. The world of Pagan is entirely different from that of Britannia: the Virtues were not part of Pagan's culture, and the magic systems and monsters were entirely different.
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: the Titans had to henceforth be worshiped 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.
Ultima VIII sets off where Ultima VII ended: The Guardian has grasped the Avatar from the Void, and now drops him into the sea of the world Pagan through a pentagram-shaped portal. In the introduction, the Guardian reveals his plot:
You have been a thorn in my side for far too long, Avatar. Your two worlds will be crushed. Britannia first, then Earth. I shall parade you before their conquered peoples as the fallen idol of a pathetic ideal. I banish you to the world of Pagan. No one here knows of the Avatar!
The Avatar regains consciousness on the shore after being rescued from the sea by a fisherman (who turns out to be an important character later on in the plot). He soon witnesses the execution by beheading of a townsman, ordered by the tyrannic ruler of the region, Mordea.
Later, visiting the wizard Mythran, he learns that there are four Titans on Pagan, each one having one of the Elements as his/her domain: Water (Hydros), Air (Stratos), Fire (Pyros) and Earth (Lithos). The more privileged followers of Lithos are identified as necromancers, the followers of Pyros as sorcerers, the followers of Stratos as theurgists and the (albeit highly selective) followers of Hydros as tempests. Apart from those, a fifth type of magic known as Thaumaturgy exists and is pioneered by Mythran. In order to escape Pagan, the Avatar has to overcome many obstacles and master the ways of all titans, finally becoming the Titan of Ether: the magical field and fifth element.
During his quests, the Avatar collects the four artifacts of the Titans, unleashing violent thunderstorms, hurricanes, earthquakes and meteor showers by doing so. These artifacts allow him to enter the Ethereal Plane and defeat the Titans on their own turf. The Avatar then reconstructs the original blackrock gate that originally allowed the Guardian to enter Pagan. By entering the reconstructed gate, the Avatar is teleported back to Britannia, which is now ruled by the Guardian.
Development and reception
In this part of the series, Garriott delegated most of the work to others. Garriott later explained, "... I sacrificed everything to appease stockholders, which was a mistake. We probably shipped it three months unfinished."[1]
Common complaints include:[2]
- The world is much smaller than in the preceding parts.
- There are far less non-player characters in the game to interact with.
- NPC portraits are no longer included.
- The game went back from the "party" concept to the "lone hero" of the first two Ultima games.
- Stepping onto just a small puddle of water, will instantly kill you by drowning.
- Battle against enemy characters is hack and slash mouse clicking. There is some resemblance to the later game Diablo.
- Poor game balance. Among other problems, a spell that can be learned early in the game grants total invulnerability, rendering all further combat trivial.
- Platform game style running, climbing and jumping across moving platforms is introduced.
- Less interactivity with objects and items.
- Major holes in the plot.
- Frequent bugs/glitches.
A patch was released to correct the game's bugs as well as fix some plot holes, and eliminate most of the problems with jumping (the original release contained many moving platforms to be jumped across; the patch stopped their motion), but by then the damage to the game's reputation had already been done.[citation needed] Long-time Ultima fans jokingly referred to Ultima VIII by the nickname 'Super Avatar Brothers', in reference to the abundance of platform-jumping puzzles.[citation needed]
The Ultima VIII engine was later reused in the Crusader game series.
Expansion packs
Speech Pack
The Speech Pack add-on was released concurrently with the game. This pack adds spoken lines for certain key characters, such as the Guardian, the Titans and Khumash-Gor.
The Speech Pack did not sell very well as a separate add-on, mostly because the CD-ROM Gold version of Ultima VIII, which was released shortly afterward, also includes the speech files. The speech files are also included in the later budget releases and the Ultima Collection release.
The speech pack was available in English, French, and German.
The Lost Vale
This expansion to Ultima VIII was planned from the outset, and was highly anticipated, but never released; it was canceled when the main game did not sell as well as had been expected, despite being all but finished and ready for duplication.[citation needed] Hints from texts in the main game suggested that the expansion pack would have added a new story regarding resistance to the Pagan gods and followers of the old religion known as Zealans. A single Lost Vale game box surfaced in October 2005, and was confirmed to be genuine soon afterwards. It was auctioned in eBay for US$1923. Some low-resolution scans of the box are located on this web site.
Compatibility with modern systems
Being a DOS title, Ultima VIII has problems running on modern systems such as Windows 98 and later; however, it works reliably under the DOSBox environment. Unlike Ultima VII which used Intel's undocumented "Big real mode" which became known as Voodoo Memory at Origin, Ultima VIII used a more conventional DOS extender.
An open-source project called Pentagram aims to create an engine capable of running Ultima VIII on modern operating systems, most notably Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.[3]
References
- ^ July 23 1999 Computer Games Magazine(official site no longer there, company gone)
- ^ Ultima VIII nitpicks from Hacki's Ultima Page
- ^ The Pentagram project at SourceForge
External links