Ultima VII

Ultima VII es la séptima entrega de la serie de juego de rol para computadoras Ultima. Fue el inicio de la tercera trilogía Ultima, y fue lanzada en dos partes y dos expansion packs en 1992 y 1993. Los dos juegos Ultima VII son vistos por muchos jugadores como los de mayor puntaje de la serie, con sus increíblemente detallados mundos, sus conmovedura música medieval, y sus varios personaje no-jugadores memorables. En una entrevista con Gamespot, Richard Garriot afirmó que Ultima VII "fue la más brillantemente ejecutada de la serie Ultima." Él también afirmaba frecuentemente que el juego, junto con Ultima IV, fue su parte favorita sobre las otras.

Primera Parte: El Portal Negro

Ultima VII
Información general
Desarrollador	Origin Systems
Distribuidor	Electronic Arts
Diseñador	Richard Garriott
Compositor	Dana Karl Glover
Datos del juego
Género	videojuego de rol y videojuego con personajes LGBT
Modos de juego	un jugador
Datos del software
Plataformas	DOS y Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Datos del hardware
Formato	CD-ROM y cartucho
Dispositivos de entrada	teclado
Desarrollo
Lanzamiento	WW16 de abril de 1992
Ultima
Ultima VI	Ultima VII	Ultima VII Part Two: Serpent Isle

Archivo:Ultima7-bg-exult.png

Ultima VII ejecutándose en el motor Exult.

En Ultima VII: El Portal Negro (1992), han pasado dos siglos desde que se resolvió la amenaza gárgola y que el Avatar fue llevado repentinamente a Britannia por un portal lunar rojo.

Al comenzar el juego, ElGuardián, As the game starts, The Guardian, an evil creature, taunts the Avatar, telling him that Britannia "has entered into a new age of enlightenment", and that he will eventually rule Britannia. The Avatar arrives in Britannia via a red moongate, and as he arrives to Trinsic, he's asked to solve a ritualistic murder that occurred the night before. He also learns that "The Fellowship", a new religious philosophy led by a man called Batlin, has been formed.

The Fellowship is most likely inspired by Scientology and similar personal improvement groups and faiths; the game can be said to satirize such movements.

This game introduced a major change; turn-based gameplay was abandoned for real-time gameplay, and the whole screen was now devoted to the map, with anything else being overlaid whenever the need arises. This way, larger, much more detailed, and no longer visibly tile-based graphics were possible. Also, the game was the first in the series that was entirely mouse-driven; in theory it could be played without ever touching the keyboard.

The gameworld is known for its interactivity: almost everything can be taken, moved or interacted in some ways. You can bake bread, forge weapons, take milk from cows, play musical instruments. You can even scare your companions by wearing masks (but only if they don't see you wearing it!). This game is also highly non-linear: even if the main quest is rather linear, there are many sub-quests, including one that parodies Star Trek: the Next Generation. Almost every quest can be solved in two or more ways and you can roam through the world as long as you want: from the city of Britain to the gambler-house of Buccaneer's Den. You can even lose your virginity and take a test from a unicorn....

In Ultima VII, the virtue system was not enforced as strictly as it was in Ultima IV. Instead, the game simulated a society that sticks to some of the virtues: the NPCs — either the party members or the people of Britannia — reacted to killings of innocents and stealing whenever they became aware of it. Also the combat system was changed due to the change to real-time gameplay. The new AI system allowed the player to choose general tactics for party members. The AI was not perfect, but it saved the player the need to micromanage up to eight different characters in battle.

Archivo:Electronic Arts logo classic.png

EA's logo in 1992.

Parts of the Ultima VII storyline are inspired by game creator Origin Systems' conflicts with competitor (and later, their new owner) Electronic Arts. The main antagonist of the story, The Guardian, is presented as a 'destroyer of worlds'. Origin Systems' corporate slogan was 'We Create Worlds' and it can be implied that The Guardian represented Electronic Arts' attempts at destroying the competition. The three evil 'Generators' created by The Guardian in the game took the physical shapes of the contemporary Electronic Arts Logo: a cube, a sphere, and a tetrahedron. Elizabeth and Abraham, two apparently benevolent characters who later turn out to be murderers, have the initials "E" and "A". The EA logo is again mocked in Ultima VIII as an animated cube-sphere-tetrahedron object.

The Black Gate was released in English, German, French and Spanish.

List of notable characters

Some of the notable non-player characters include

• Batlin, Elizabeth and Abraham - founders of The Fellowship.
• Spark, made an orphan by the murderers, who joins Avatar.
• Alagner, the wisest man in Britannia
• Alchemist Caine, mayor Forsythe, healer Mordra, lady Rowena, blacksmith Trent, and Horance the Liche - ghostly inhabitants of Skara Brae.
• Hook, a pirate who works as an assassin, and Forskis, a gargoyle who works for him.

Rating

The game pre-dates the ESRB, and as such, was not rated by them. The game credits do include the warning "Voluntarily rated MP-13 (For Mature Players)", but this is not necessarily intended to be a serious rating, as it is more likely a parody of MPAA film ratings. The game credits have been made to look as movie-like as possible, with all of the standard disclaimers and elements found in movie end credits. (The credits, notoriously, also included the mention that a soundtrack CD is available from Origin, while it actually wasn't until many years later; Ultima VII Part 2: Serpent Isle credits actually said "Soundtrack CD NOT available from Origin, so don't ask!")

When it was later released on CD as the "Complete Ultima VII" it was rated T for Teen by the ESRB for "Animated Blood and Gore, Animated Violence".

Forge of Virtue expansion on Exult

Forge of Virtue expansion on Exult

Forge of Virtue expansion

Forge of Virtue was an expansion pack that adds a quest to Ultima VII in which the Avatar must pass a series of tests to revalidate himself in the three principles of Truth, Love, and Courage, and destroy the last remnants of Exodus.

The player is rewarded with a powerful weapon, The Black Sword. The Avatar also gains maximum strength, intelligence, and dexterity in the course of the tests, and Lord British grants the player double strength on top of that.

In later releases of Ultima VII this add-on was always included.

Part Two: Serpent Isle

Ultima VII
Información general
Desarrollador	Origin Systems
Distribuidor	Electronic Arts
Diseñador	Richard Garriott
Compositor	Dana Karl Glover
Datos del juego
Género	videojuego de rol y videojuego con personajes LGBT
Modos de juego	un jugador
Datos del software
Plataformas	DOS y Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Datos del hardware
Formato	CD-ROM y cartucho
Dispositivos de entrada	teclado
Desarrollo
Lanzamiento	WW16 de abril de 1992
Ultima
Ultima VI	Ultima VII	Ultima VII Part Two: Serpent Isle

Ultima VII Part Two: Serpent Isle was released in 1993. While the Avatar destroys the Black Moongate that the Guardian was coming through, Batlin flees to Serpent Isle. The Warriors of Destiny pursue the rogue fanatic and find a strange land that has many very different customs than Britannia: a large, icy island, only lately recolonized by men, with many remains of an ancient culture where serpents played a central role.

It is speculated that the differences between Britannia and Serpent Isle were meant to parallel the differences between the United Kingdom and the United States. The residents of Serpent Isle who are familiar with their history harbor an intense hatred for Lord British and the Virtues, believing them to be oppressive. In addition, the ancient remnants of the Ophidian culture (largely ignored by the population) seem to echo the plight of Native Americans in the United States.

This is the first game in the series to take place outside Britannia as it has been known since Ultima IV. It is also more linear than the earlier parts — unlike the earlier games where the order in which sub-quests were completed was of little concern; the new approach makes it possible to give the game a more carefully plotted storyline, while at the same time somewhat limiting the players choice.

Since most of the game's code was recycled from The Black Gate, it was decided not to call it Ultima VIII; Richard Garriott had stated in interviews around 1988 that no two Ultimas shared the same source code, unlike the then-competing The Bard's Tale series, and he probably felt bound by this statement.

The original plot of the game was significantly different from the released game, mostly attributed to the fact that Electronic Arts put schedule pressures on Origin and some parts had to be cut to meet the deadline. Most of the major changes occur on the latter half of the game. Some major plot holes were also introduced due to the pushed-ahead release schedule. In cutting material to meet EA's deadline, many bugs were introduced, and many features of the game were incomplete or unused. Many 'dead ends' were also created in the complete, working portion of the game. Due to Serpent Isle's more linear approach, these 'dead ends' often forced the player to go back to a long-ago saved point or simply start over. To the disappointment of many fans, Serpent Isle marks the beginning of larger influence of Electronic Arts on the series.

The Silver Seed expansion

The Silver Seed expansion adds the Silver Seed story arc to the game, in which the party visits a subterranean keep in the ancient civilization of Serpent Isle (probably at some time in the past, but this is not known for sure). Powerful magic items, including a keyring, a ring of unlimited reagents, and an enchanted belt can be found in this area and in nearby dungeons. In later releases of the game, the expansion pack was included, and released as 'The Complete Ultima VII'.

Technical issues

Both parts of Ultima VII used a non-standard DOS memory management extension, called Voodoo Memory Manager. This was not a typical DOS extender; while DOS extenders typically provide protected mode features, Voodoo merely provided flat memory model for real mode. This setup was quite quirky; a very non-standard DOS extended memory setup was needed to play the game.

Later, when DOS started to fall into disuse, Voodoo started to become somewhat of a stress test for DOS compatibility. Notably, Windows 95 and later have severe problems cooperating with the games. Modern Windows releases are completely incompatible with the game.

Some fans of the game have worked on improving the situation. Currently, there are several ways of playing the game:

• Under Windows 9x, the game can be run in DOS mode with minimal startup options, or under Windows itself with user-developed patches.
• Under Windows NT, the game can be run with user-developed patches.
• The game is playable in DOS emulators such as DOSBox.
• Exult is a complete, free reimplementation of the original Ultima VII game engine under which the games can be played on modern computers and various operating systems. While the added features produce a game experience that isn't completely 'authentic', Exult has become the preferred method of playing Ultima VII on modern computers.

Releases of the games

The various parts of Ultima VII have been published in at least the following forms:

• Ultima VII: The Black Gate (1992) The original release, available on 5.25" and 3.5" floppies.
• Ultima VII: Forge of Virtue (1992) The original release, available on 5.25" and 3.5" floppies.
• Ultima VII Part Two: Serpent Isle (1993) The original release, available on 5.25" and 3.5" floppies.
• Ultima VII Part Two: The Silver Seed (1993) The original release, available on 5.25" and 3.5" floppies.
• Ultima VII: Complete Edition (1993) Has both games and both expansion disks, available on 3.5" floppies only.
• The Complete Ultima VII (1994) Has both games and both expansion disks, on CD-ROM.
• Electronic Arts CD-ROM Classics: The Complete Ultima VII (1994) Budget release that has both games and both expansion disks, on CD-ROM. No printed documentation or trinkets; all documentation is on CD-ROM in PDF format.
• Ultima: The Black Gate (1994) The original SNES version.
• Electronic Arts CD-ROM Classics: The Complete Ultima VII (1996) Same as the 1994 release, but with gold-edged box.

In addition, it has been published as part of collections:

• Ultima Collection (1996) Contains all cardinal Ultima games between Ultima I and Ultima VIII, and also Akalabeth.
• Electronic Arts Top Ten Pak (?) Includes Ultima VII: The Black Gate.

Super Nintendo version

FCI / Pony Canyon published the SNES version of Ultima VII, simply titled Ultima: The Black Gate, which was created by a small team inside Origin Systems.

This version was largely different from original since the PC version of the game was a then-huge twenty megabytes, yet this translation could use only one megabyte of memory for all of the game data and program. The maps and many usable items and plotlines had to be redesigned from scratch, and the game program had to be rewritten entirely in assembly language.

The game was largely real-time action, similar to The Legend of Zelda series. The 'party' system was scrapped; instead, the Avatar journeyed alone. Also, the story was largely changed due to Nintendo of America's censorship policies: instead of murders, the Avatar is asked to investigate kidnappings.

This version is almost universally considered inferior to the PC version.

PSP version

In August 2006, Gamespot reported that Electronic Arts would be porting Ultima: The Black Gate (presumably a port of the SNES version) to the PlayStation Portable as part of a 14-game compilation, EA Replay. It is slated for release in the United States on October 3, 2006. [1]

Fan projects and remakes

Exult is at the forefront of fan projects today, in that it enables Ultima VII to be played on modern machines and across different operating systems.

Exult's array of tools have enabled fans to take the game apart and modify it, to an extent. This enabled various fan translation projects: Serpent Isle has been completely translated to French, Spanish and Korean, while translation of Black Gate and its expansion Forge of Virtue is underway. Some Italian fans are working on the Italian translation of both games (including the expansions). The Russian translation of Black Gate has been completed. Exult contributors are working on several side-projects, which include attempts to make the Serpent Isle paper doll graphics available in Black Gate, and to fix some of the bugs and design flaws found in Serpent Isle, which were originally left in due to the rushed release.

There have been a few projects to make Ultima VII fan remakes in other game engines, but so far the majority of these projects have not been successful.

External links

• Bootstrike's U7 pages
• The Collectible Ultima: Ultima VII, information on various releases of the game and included material
• A Fistful of Ultima VII and Cosmic Balancing Act - Doug the Eagle Dragon's anti-walkthroughs and humorous findings.
• The Black Gate wiki guide at StrategyWiki
• Serpent Isle wiki guide at StrategyWiki
• The Fellowship and The Church of Scientology Compared
• Running Ultima VII/Serpent Gate in Windows.
• Serpent Isle in French
• Spanish Ultima VII: Forge of Virtue translation can be found from this site; so far only a weblog with progress reports and betas, no static page as such.
• The Conquest of Origin Background information on the Origin Systems / Electronic Arts conflict and takeover.
• U7-Wizard Map and scenery editor for Ultima VII
• Ultima Babylon An Italian fansite dedicated to Ultima VII. Home of the Ultima VII Italian translation.
• Dr. Cat's Lair Ultima VII in Russian