Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss

Ultima Underworld is a role-playing video game (RPG) that takes place from a first-person perspective in a three-dimensional environment. An automatically filling map, to which the player may add notes, records what the player has seen above a minimum level of brightness. Weapons deteriorate with use, and the player character must eat and rest; light sources burn out unless extinguished before sleeping. ==Plot==

Setting Ultima Underworld is set in Britannia, the fantasy world of the Ultima series. Specifically, the game takes place inside a large, underground dungeon called the Great Stygian Abyss. The dungeon's entrance lies on the Isle of the Avatar, an island ruled by Baron Almric. The Abyss first appeared in Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar, in which it contains the player's final goal, the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom. Ultima Underworld is set after the events of Ultima VI: The False Prophet; in the time between the two games, a man named Cabirus attempted to create a utopian colony inside the Abyss. The eight settlements of the Ultima series each embody one of eight virtues, and Cabirus wished to create a ninth that embodied all virtues. To achieve this, he united diverse cultures and races in peaceful co-existence and planned to promote harmony by giving each group one of eight virtue-imbued magical artifacts. However, he died before distributing the artifacts, and left no instructions for doing so. As a result, the colony collapsed into anarchy and war, and the artifacts were lost. Story Before the beginning of the game, the Abyss-dwelling wizard brothers Garamon and Tyball accidentally summon a demon, the Slasher of Veils, while experimenting with inter-dimensional travel. Garamon is used as bait to lure the demon into a room imbued with virtue. However, the demon offers Tyball great power if he betrays Garamon. Tyball agrees, but the betrayal fails; Garamon is killed, but seals the demon inside the room. Because he lacks virtue, Tyball cannot re-enter by himself, and plans to sacrifice Baron Almric's daughter, Arial, at the doorway to gain entrance. In the game's introduction, the ghost of Garamon haunts the Avatar's dreams with warnings of a great danger in Britannia. where he watches Tyball kidnap Arial. Tyball escapes, leaving the Avatar to be caught by the Baron's guards. The guards take him to the Baron, who banishes him to the Great Stygian Abyss to rescue Arial. After the introduction, the Avatar explores the dungeon and finds remnants of Cabirus's colony. However, as he dies, Tyball reveals that he had decided to contain the Slasher of Veils, whose prison he had been weakening, within Arial as a way to prevent it from destroying the world. Arial asks the Avatar to prevent the Slasher of Veils from being unleashed, and magically teleports back to the surface to evacuate its inhabitants. With help from Garamon's ghost, the Avatar gathers the eight talismans of Cabirus and throws them in the volcano at the base of the Abyss; Garamon's spirit uses the energy they release to open a portal and send the Slasher of Veils into another dimension. The Avatar is sucked through the portal into a chaotic alternate dimension, but escapes back to the Isle of the Avatar and makes it on board the Baron's ship as the volcano erupts. As the game ends, Garamon's spirit reveals that he teleported the inhabitants of the Abyss to another cave. ==Development==

Ultima Underworld was conceived in 1989 by Origin Systems employee Paul Neurath. He had just completed work on Space Rogue, a hybrid title that features sequences both of 2D tile-based role-playing and of 3D space flight simulation. Neurath had enjoyed role-playing video games like Wizardry, but found that their simple, abstract visuals were an obstacle to the suspension of disbelief. That spring, Neurath founded the company Blue Sky Productions in Salem, New Hampshire, with the intention to create Underworld. The team demonstrated it at the June 1990 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and impressed Origin Systems. Origin producer Warren Spector later said, "I remember Paul showing me that demo ... at CES and being totally floored by it. None of us had ever seen anything like it." The team abandoned the Space Rogue engine and created a new one that could display a believable 3D world—one with varying heights and texture-mapped floors and ceilings. Neurath later said, "Warren understood immediately what we were trying to accomplish with the game, and became our biggest champion within Origin. Had not Warren stepped in this role at that stage, I'm not sure Ultima Underworld would have ever seen the light of day." and Spector stayed at the studio for roughly a month and a half, according to Church. The game was also the first indoor, real-time, 3D first-person game to not only allow the player to look up and down, but also tilt the view side to side (for example, while swimming), as well as the ability to jump. Doug Church later downplayed the importance of the game's technology, stating that technological advancement "is somewhat inevitable in our field ... [and] sadly, as an industry we seem to know much less about design, and how to continue to extend and grow design capabilities". Instead, he claimed that Ultima Underworlds most important achievement was its incorporation of simulation elements into a role-playing game. ==Reception==

Ultima Underworld was not an immediate commercial success, which caused Origin to decrease its marketing support. with praise for its 3D presentation and automapping feature. and was nominated for an award at the Game Developers Conference. ACE called Ultima Underworld "the next true evolutionary step in the RPG genre", and noted that its simulation-style dungeon was "frighteningly realistic". The magazine thought that the game's sprite character models "detract from the dense atmosphere a bit", but ended the review by stating, "If you've got a PC, then you've got to have Ultima Underworld." Dragon Magazine opined that "to say this is the best dungeon game we've ever played is quite an understatement," and it "will leave you wondering how other game entertainments can ever stack up against the new standards Abyss sets." Computer Gaming Worlds Allen Greenberg in 1992 described it as "an ambitious project" but "not without its share of problems." He praised the game's "enjoyable story and well-crafted puzzles", but disliked its "robotic" controls and "confusing" perspectives, and stated that "far more impressive sounds and pictures have been produced for other dungeon games". He summarized the game as "an enjoyable challenge with a unique game-playing engine to back it up." Scorpia was also positive, stating that despite flaws "Ultima Underworld is an impressive first product. The meticulous construction of a real-world dungeon environment is outstanding. [It] may be a dungeon trek, but it is certainly the dungeon trek of the future". In 1993 she praised the "superb graphics" of "a definite must for game players". The magazine later awarded the game "Role-Playing Game of the Year". Computer Shopper enjoyed its storyline and characters, and believed that the game "makes you feel as if you've entered a virtual reality". Despite describing its interface as "not truly intuitive", the reviewer finished by calling the game "addictive" and "a fine value". The Chicago Tribune awarded it Best Game of the Year, and called it "an amazing triumph of the imagination" and "the creme de la creme of dungeon epics". Jim Trunzo reviewed Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss in White Wolf #32 (July/Aug., 1992), rating it a 5 out of 5 and stated that "Ultima Underworld is simply the kind of product that you need to experience to fully understand where Origin has taken fantasy gaming." The game was also well received by non-English publications. The Swedish Datormagazin considered the game to be "in a class by itself". In Germany, Power Play praised its "technical perfection" and "excellent" story, while Play Time lauded its graphical and aural presentation, and awarded it Game of the Month. Ultima Underworld was inducted into many hall of fame lists, including those compiled by GameSpy, IGN and Computer Gaming World. PC Gamer US ranked the game and its sequel 20th on their 50 Best Games Ever list from 1997, citing "strong character interaction, thoughtful puzzles, unprecedented control, and genuine roleplaying in ways that have yet to be duplicated". In 2004, readers of Retro Gamer voted Ultima Underworld as the 62nd top retro game: the staff called it "easily one of the best entries in the long-running Ultima series." In 1998, PC Gamer declared it the 18th-best computer game ever released, and the editors called it "Light-years ahead of their time, and still regarded as some of the best roleplaying games ever created". A poll conducted in May 2023 by GQ among a team of video game journalists listed it as the 95th-best video game of all time. ==Legacy==

Ultima Underworld has been cited as the first RPG to feature first-person action in a 3D environment, Rival 3D games appeared; Legends of Valour advertised "Ultima Underworld, move over!" Gamasutra posited that "all 3D RPG titles from Morrowind to World of Warcraft share Ultima Underworld as a common ancestor, both graphically and spiritually ... [and] for better or for worse, Underworld moved the text-based RPG out of the realm of imagination and into the third dimension". Ultima Underworld is considered the first example of an immersive sim, a genre that combines elements from other genres to create a game with strong player agency and emergent gameplay, and has influenced many games since its release. The game's influence has been found in BioShock (2007), and that game's designer, Ken Levine, has stated that "all the things that I wanted to do and all the games that I ended up working on came out of the inspiration I took from [Ultima Underworld]." Gears of War designer Cliff Bleszinski also cited it as an early influence, stating that it had "far more impact on me than Doom". Other games influenced by Ultima Underworld include The Elder Scrolls: Arena, Deus Ex, Deus Ex: Invisible War, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, Half-Life, and Half-Life 2. Toby Gard stated that, when designing Tomb Raider, he "was a big fan of ... Ultima Underworld and I wanted to mix that type of game with the sort of polygon characters that were just being showcased in Virtua Fighter." Ultima Underworld was also the basis for Looking Glass Technologies' later System Shock. However, Doug Church has said that John Carmack saw the game's summer 1990 software convention demo, and recalled a comment from Carmack that he could write a faster texture mapper. Paul Neurath has recounted the incident similarly, with both Carmack and Romero present. Despite the technology developed for Ultima Underworld, Origin opted to continue using traditional top-down, 2D graphics for future mainline Ultima games. On March 14, 1997, a 3D remake of the game (published by Electronic Arts Victor) was released exclusively in Japan for the PlayStation by Infinity Entertainment. All of the creatures and NPCs were recreated using polygon models; however, the items and environments use their original textures. The HUD and inventory were reworked to allow the game to be displayed in fullscreen. Additionally, the character were redrawn in an anime style to make them more appealing to the Japanese market. Sound effects were added and all of the music was remixed (with most of it slightly resembling the original music). New ending and introduction videos were also added. In the early 2000s, Paul Neurath approached EA to discuss a port of Ultima Underworld to the Pocket PC. EA rejected the suggestion, but allowed him to look for possible developers; Neurath found that ZIO Interactive enthusiastically supported the idea, and EA eventually licensed the rights to the company. Doug Church and Floodgate Entertainment assisted with portions of its Pocket PC development, and the port was released in 2002. GOG.com released an emulated version in June 2011 for Windows and in October 2012 for Mac OS X. In 2015, Otherside Entertainment, a new developer founded by Paul Neurath and other Looking Glass and Irrational veterans, announced a new entry in the series, entitled Underworld Ascendant. The new title is an officially licensed part of the series set in the Stygian Abyss, but this licensing agreement does not extend to the Ultima name or greater IP, effectively orphaning Underworld from the Ultima series. ==References==