Huge news, folks.

Ethelwulf alerted me to the existence of a remake of Ultima 7 Part 2: Serpent Isle using the Neverwinter Nights 2 engine, and I have to say that it looks very promising. Development seems to be progressing quickly, and what few screenshots there are look promising. The developer appears to be aiming for a straight-up, no “extra content” remake.

I’ve added an entry at Aiera for the project, although it has not yet released any files.

There haven’t been many attempts at remakes of Serpent Isle (indeed, there really aren’t any actual “remakes” so much as there are language ports or Exult-related upgrades of the game), so this is particularly exciting news as a result. Serpent Isle is a fan favourite, certainly one of the best of the Ultima series, and I for one think it would be fascinating to see it brought to new life with a nice 3D engine.

And hey…NWN2 is coming to the Mac soon, so a remake like this couldn’t be more timely.

Tags: Exult, Mac, Neverwinter Nights 2, Serpent Isle

Petrell alerted me to the existence of an Ultima 4 Gold, by the same developer (MagerValp) who produced Ultima 3 Gold. I have added an entry for this project at Aiera, and it can be downloaded from there. As with its Ultima 3 counterpart, it is an optimized version of the game for the Commodore 64.

It would seem that I need to begin assembling lists of game-mods related to Ultima and posting/hosting these on Aiera as well. Frilly Wumpus alerted me to the existence of yet another Neverwinter Nights content package, this time for NWN 2: Ultima-like Moongates, a transportation package for the game that attempts to replicate the behaviour of the moongates in Ultima Online (yes, yes, I know).

This is not the only bit of Ultima-related content available for NWN and/or NWN2, and I’m sure there’s related development out there for a few other modable RPGs. So perhaps I should begin compiling a list.

Leave any thoughts or opinions in the comments.

Tags: Aiera, Commodore 64, Neverwinter Nights, Neverwinter Nights 2, Ultima, Ultima 3, Ultima 3 Gold, Ultima 4, Ultima 4 Gold, Ultima Online

Produced by: MagerValp
Website: Ultima IV Gold
Releases:
* Ultima 4 Gold (1.0 MiB, 22 hits)

This project is an improved version of Ultima 4 for the Commodore 64. Notably, it features optimized code and no disk swapping (1541 users will have to flip the disk once only), and the save system has been revamped (saving is now possible in dungeons). Trainers have been improved, and even little fixes have found their way in — the music, for example, no longer interrupts when you are walking around in Britannia.

Tags: 1541, Britannia, Commodore 64, Ultima 4

Over at Lost Sosaria, there is news of a new team member — Reclaimer Dragon — joining the project to assist with map development and plotting. I’m pretty jubilant about this fact, and would like to remind any interested Ultima fans out there that we can always use more help.

Also, while Googling around for something completely unrelated, I stumbled over an old Ultima “expanded universe” project: The Official Ultima7: Part 3 – Lands of the Dark Unknown. It would appear that the developers were attempting to use the Ultima 7 engine, and the early Ultima 7 editing tools, to tell the tale of what happened to the Avatar between being snatched by the Guardian at the end of Serpent Isle and being dropped into the world of Pagan.

I’ve added this project to the cemetery, as they would appear to have folded some time back in 2001, and did not leave any project files behind.

Tags: Avatar, Guardian, Lands of the Dark Unknown, Lost Sosaria, Serpent Isle, Ultima, Ultima 7

Produced by: Chris V. and Adam V.
Website: The Official Ultima7: Part 3

Another project that just didn’t quite make it (projected release date: 2002), this “third part” to the Ultima 7 lexicon involved an event that transpired between the moment that the Avatar was snatched by the Guardian (at the end of Serpent Isle) and the moment that the Guardian dropped the Avatar onto the world of Pagan (at the beginning of Ultima 8).

From the project website: the Avatar underwent a rebirth of his soul between Serpent Isle and Pagan. During the Avatar’s interdimensional travel, which most likely occurred through some form of a moongate, his soul, or lifethread, was rewoven into another dimension. While his body was clearly in the hand of the Guardian, during that brief instant of time between worlds, his soul was reborn and lived a life in another world…

…What has happened is that someone or something has woven an arcane spell, a spell from a world long forgotten, a world the Virtues never reached. Someone has summoned a ’spiritual net’ that has extracted the soul of the Avatar from his body and rewoven it into a new body, in a new world. The reborn Avatar has no memory of his previous life or that he even is the Avatar. The soul of the Avatar will be burned down to its core and reforged in new lands, in the forgotten and mysterious Lands of the Dark Unknown.

Here’s some news to cheer you up after the previous post about EA. Someone by the (nick)name of Hexxxer contacted me to let me know of a project he’s involved in to produce high resolution scans of game box covers and disc labels. He is working, presently, on the Ultima Collection, Ultima IX, the Underworld Collection, and the Worlds of Ultima titles.

Currently, only the Ultima Collection box has been scanned in, but the reproduction is very high quality (all covers are 300 dpi scans).

Tags: box covers, disc labels, EA, Ultima Collection, Underworld Collection, Worlds of Ultima

While my friend Myles assures me, via his contacts within BioWare, that this is a good thing, I for one look upon the pending purchase of BioWare/Pandemic by Electronic Arts as a death-knell for a promising studio.

I’ll be happy to be proven wrong, of course…but EA’s track record of turning effective companies into wrecks and producers of poorly-executed, buggy, narratively weak games has been pretty consistent since the days of Ultima VII Part 2: Serpent Isle.

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. – Electronic Arts Inc., the video game developer known for titles such as “Madden NFL” and “The Sims,” said Thursday it will acquire two software studios from Elevation Partners in a deal worth up to US$860 million.

The studios, BioWare Corp. and Pandemic Studios, have a total of 10 games under development. Elevation owns their parent, VG Holding Corp.

Together, the studios employ about 800 people in Los Angeles and Austin, Texas, as well as in Canada and Australia.

I guess we’ll see if Dragon Age gets rushed out the door now, or (worse) cancelled.

You can read the official press release from BioWare here.

Update: Further thought…

Tags: BioWare, Dragon Age, EA, Electronic Arts, Pandemic