THE KING MAY HAVE LEFT THE BUILDING, BUT HIS SUBJECTS TOIL ON [Author: Lum the Mad]

Ultima Online: Deutschland (which, if you couldn’t guess, is a German UO site) has an interview up with one of the guys behind “Ultima V: Lazarus“, a project to redo Ultima V using the Dungeon Siege engine. Um, OK. Stranger things have happened lately (reference the previous story, for a quick example).

Well, after I finished playing Ultima IX, I knew that the series was over. Ultima is my all-time favorite series of games, so I decided to remake one of the older ones and help keep the series alive. We’re doing Ultima V specifically, rather than, say, IV or VI, for three basic reasons: First, U5 is old enough that its technology is completely obsolete. Ultima VI-IX are still “playable” with today’s computers, but V and those that came before it are very outdated. Second, no one has ever created any patches or upgrades for it. Ultimas I, III, and IV have all at least been patched, if not completely remade. Finally, I feel that Ultima V has the greatest potential for expansion of all the early Ultima games-its story is rich, its characters are interesting, and its environments are begging to be seen in modern graphics. We now have the technology to bring to life this gaming classic, and that’s what we’re going to do! 🙂