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Ultima III: Exodus Developer: Origin Systems Publisher: Origin Systems Year: 1983 There's no question that Richard Garriott's Ultima series is one of the most influential in all of PC gaming. Not only did the long-running series help establish the conventions of the successful and popular computer role-playing genre, but it also served as the flagship product of Origin Systems. Origin was one of the top game developers and publishers through the '80s and '90s, and it created many critically acclaimed games in that time. All these games were gauged against the relative quality and success of Ultima, because for at least 15 years, Ultima stood as one of the finest examples of technologically advanced and highly original game design. Although Ultima remained prominent well into the '90s, the single most influential game in the series has to be Ultima III: Exodus, which was the first Ultima that put you in command of a party of characters instead of just one hero. It was the first computer role-playing epic. The game took place in the world of Sosaria, which later came to be known as Britannia. Britannia was one of the first virtually seamless, fully realized gameworlds ever created for a computer game. While the Ultima series was originally influenced by the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons pen-and-paper role-playing game, Ultima III was the first of the Ultimas that was clearly its own cohesive and original work of fiction. It was also the first Ultima to feature tactical, turn-based combat.
Ultima III is commonly considered the most hardcore, the most complicated of all the Ultima games. You create a party of four different characters, and then you have to keep track of each of them individually over the course of the game. The four characters would ideally balance each other out with their professions, but in the end, each of your heroes is an individual - each character even has his own stash of food and his own stash of gold. The subsequent Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar is often credited as the best game in the series because it introduced the virtuous Avatar as the game's protagonist. Plus, it had an especially memorable story and supporting characters. But Ultima III clearly paved the way for its successor, particularly because its relative commercial success made the even more ambitious Ultima IV a possibility. Arguably, Ultima III also inspired all other party-based isometric role-playing games to date: Popular modern role-playing games like Baldur's Gate can be traced back to Ultima III, as a lot of the same conventions for role-playing games are still being used years later.
Ultima VII was split up into two distinct chapters, and the series finally ended with last year's Ultima IX: Ascension - so there were ten games in the Ultima series proper. Each game was very different, but the popular favorites in the series were all derived from the foundation established by Ultima III. That is, Ultimas IV through VII - five of the best RPGs of all time - all maintained a fairly consistent scale, style, and play mechanics. These elements all came from Ultima III, which was highly acclaimed in its time for these same reasons and is still held in the highest regard by most everyone who played it.
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