Arx Fatalis Preview
Is this the spiritual successor to Ultima Underworld? Read our impressions and find out.
Ultima Underworld. Say those two words and watch the eyes of a role-playing game veteran light up. The Looking Glass classic and its sequel from the early 1990s redefined fantasy role playing, and for some, it remains the pinnacle of the genre. A first-person perspective and three-dimensional depth moved gameplay to a level that had the capacity to amaze people with its complexity. In an era when Doom represented the best that gaming could offer in terms of interactivity with a 3D world, the Ultima Underworld series let you battle monsters, cast spells, solve puzzles, and even leap chasms.
Arx Fatalis. Say those two words, and you won't get much of a reaction from the old-timers. At least for now--give Arkane Studios another month, and the title of its first game might wind up on the lips of both nostalgic role players and those who don't care about the lineage of their latest fave, as long as the game itself is good. The name should have more meaning for the former, however, as Arx Fatalis is being constructed as sort of an unofficial sequel to the Ultima Underworld games. Nearly everything that people fondly remember about those long-ago originals has been resurrected, from the first-person camera to the dank underground setting and charnel house atmosphere.
"We're fans of the Ultima Underworld and the [original] Ultima series, so yes, you'll find a lot of similarities," explained Raphael Colantonio, CEO of Arkane Studios. "In fact, fans of these games will find some Easter eggs in homage to these games as well. Originally, we even thought of getting the Ultima Underworld license for the game, so we contacted Paul Neurath, former founder of Looking Glass, who was willing to help us in that regard. But then things started getting more complicated on the Electronic Arts [EA acquired the rights to the Ultima games when it purchased the series' original publisher, Origin Systems] side of the license..."
Judging from a demo build that we've been looking at, Arkane is doing a good job of re-creating that gloomy Ultima Underworld charm. The dark ambience starts with the plot, which mirrors that of the original in important ways yet takes divergent paths in enough places so that gamers avoid feeling déjà vu. Most importantly, you're not a convict struggling to survive in a cavernous prison that's the medieval equivalent of the Big Apple in Escape From New York. You play a lone human adventurer on a world where the disappearance of the sun has forced residents of the city-kingdom of Arx to move underground to the former dwarven mines. This new take on city planning worked for a while, but the close-quarters existence soon led to a renewal of hostilities between humans and their old enemies, such as goblins, trolls, and ratmen. In the middle of this conflict, you awaken in a goblin jail cell (OK, so perhaps we're not that far removed from the prison theme of Ultima Underworld) with no memory of your identity, although your cell mate gives you the name of Nam Shagaar, which is local lingo for "John Doe."
From these humble beginnings, you move on to a heroic career and save civilization from stinky evil. Your primary goal is the destruction of the cult of Akbaa, a secretive organization that seeks to return the god of destruction and chaos to the world. If you succeed, you just might be able to discover a way of bringing back the sun. If you fail, you'll be living in a world where Elton John will never need to sing "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me."
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- GameSpot Score8.4great
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Arx Fatalis Review
With Arx Fatalis, Arkane Studios intended to pay homage to the classic early-'90s first-person role-playing game Ultima Underworld, but it has done much more than just imitate that game.
- Nov 22, 2002
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- JoWooD Entertainment AG
- Arkane Studios
- Role-Playing
- Release: Nov 11, 2002
- ESRB: Mature
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