// KOTAKU — GAMING
The History of Ultima VII, One Of The Greatest RPGs Ever Made
In a series full of incredible games, Ultima VII: The Black Gate is still considered one of the greatest RPGs of all time. Released in 1992 from Origin Systems, it often makes many “best of PC” gaming lists and is cited by many developers, including Todd Howard (Bethesda, Fallout 3) and Swen Vincke (Larian Studios, Baldur’s Gate 3), as a big influence. I played it a few years ago and was completely blown away. It had a powerful story with characters and themes that I still think about. It also was a technical achievement, featuring an open world without any loading screens separating the different areas. You can go from town to overworld to dungeon and then back to overworld without any transition screens.
The Ultima games usually start with the avatar meeting Lord British who assigns them a task, whether it’s to rid the world of Exodus or to become the avatar. Black Gate’s journey starts with a red being called the Guardian taunting the Avatar. Then they’re teleported to the city of Trinsic, only to find out 200 years has passed since his last visit and someone has been murdered in a brutal quartering. Nearby, an innocent Gargoyle has also been killed for no apparent reason. There’s blood everywhere. The townspeople are in shock. What in the world had happened to Britannia?
I asked Ultima creator and director, Richard Garriott aka Lord British, about the themes behind the game. He told me via email, “In each Ultima game since Ultima IV, I have focused on real world social issues I see in the world at the time. Ultima IV was the inner battle to forge a self of virtue. Ultima V on centers on the danger of moral absolutism, religious fundamentalism, and the weaponization of virtue by a totalitarian state. Ultima VI centered on racism, xenophobia and the subjective nature of reality. With Ultima VII, I was ready to reintroduce actual malevolent Evil. But The Guardian needed to be unlike most game bad guys who wait for you in the final level. I wanted the guardian to earn your spite. He needed to be actively against you. His followers and principles needed to be seductively compelling. Thus I crafted a competitive belief system, which at its core had ulterior motives, but was designed to be as attractive as possible. (I think this about a variety of actual modern sects.) Don’t forget, every Ultima speaks to ‘current events’ in some way.”
One of the most fascinating elements of the game is how it merges genres. At times, I forgot this was a fantasy game as it felt more like a murder mystery. Once you take control of the avatar, you can investigate the crime scene and question potential witnesses. Do you want to find out more about what happened to the victims in Trinsic? Go ahead. Or do you want to just explore the world and forget about the crimes? You can do that too.
I exchanged emails with Ultima VII’s lead writer, Raymond Benson, to find out more about the game’s story. In his early career, Benson had spent over a decade in New York doing theatre (directing, composing music for shows off-off and off-Broadway), writing (“The James Bond Bedside Companion” and other odds and ends), writing a pencil/paper role-playing game module for Victory Games’ James Bond 007 Role-Playing Game (“You Only Live Twice II—Back of Beyond”), and also some computer game designing/writing too (Mindscape’s Stephen King’s The Mist, A View to a Kill, and Goldfinger). He joined Origin after moving back to Austin, Texas. “My wife and I had lived in Austin in the 70s when we were both attending the University of Texas at Austin and loved the town. After a fall semester of taking a course in court reporting, which I did not take to (although I was good at it), I saw the ad in the Austin newspaper wanting ‘writers’ for a computer game company. It turned out to be Origin Systems. I applied and got the job. After a brief introductory assignment of editing the dialogue for their game Martian Dreams (a spinoff in the Worlds of Ultima series), Richard Garriott