Ultima VI: The False Prophet

Ultima VI: The False Prophet
Studio	Origin Systems
Publisher	Origin Systems
Senior Developer	Richard Garriott Warren Spector
composer	Todd Porter Herman Miller
platform	DOS , Amiga , Atari ST , Commodore 64 , FM Towns , SNES , PC-9801 , X68000
genre	role playing game
Game mode	Single player

Ultima VI: The False Prophet (Eng. Ultima VI: The False Prophet) is the sixth part of the Ultima - RPG series. It was the last game of the "Age of Enlightenment" trilogy (Eng. "Age of Enlightenment"). It was developed by Origin Systems and published in 1990.

plot

A few years after Lord British returned to his throne after the events of Ultima V, the Avatar is captured and, tied to an altar, is to be offered as an offering by red-skinned, devilish creatures: the gargoyles . Just in time, three of the Avatar's companions, Shamino, Dupre and Iolo, can free him and also get hold of a sacred text that a gargoyle priest was holding in his hands.

The group escapes, pursued by three gargoyles, through a moon gate into the castle of Britannia. The game begins with the player battling the Gargoyles in Lord British's throne room. After the fight, the Avatar learns that the Shrines of Virtue have been occupied by the gargoyles and he sets out to free the shrines and save Britannia from the intruders.

Only later in the game does the avatar find out that the situation from the Gargoyles' point of view is different than it initially appeared. In fact, they are by no means wild and murderous creatures, but very caring beings who even have and live their own value system. The fight against the gargoyles gives way to efforts to make peace with them.

Gameplay

In this game, for the first time in the Ultima series, the use of different scalings for objects was dispensed with. In earlier games in the series, castles, dungeons and even entire cities were represented by a single symbol, which opened up as a completely new map after entering. Ultima VI uses only a single, constant scaling throughout the game. On the one hand, this means that the flow of the game is uninterrupted; on the other hand, the dungeons now also have the pseudo-isometric top view, like the rest of the game world (these were to be explored from the first person perspective in the games Ultima I to V ). The game retained the tile graphics system and the screen structure of the three predecessors, but revised the appearance and depth of detail of the graphics in order to be able to fully exploit the possibilities of the recently released VGA graphics cards for PCs . For example, portraits of non-player characters were shown when you spoke to them; something that was unimaginable on the classic Apple II .

development

The Ultima series was initially developed for and for the Apple II series. Around 1990 the market for 8-bit computers, such as the Apple II, was already in decline and the plans for the sixth part of the Ultima series also exceeded the possibilities of 8-bit hardware. Consequently, Ultima VI was the first part of the series that was no longer ported or available for the Apple II.

It was thus one of the first major computer games that was clearly geared towards the PC system segment with its VGA graphics and mouse control, while other game developers still focused on the Amiga system. The game also supported sound cards for the background music; something that at that point was far from being taken for granted. The other sound effects, such as sword sound, explosions and the like, continued to be played through the PC loudspeaker . The Amiga version itself was a simple port of the PC version. Due to the lack of reprogramming, the game ran very slowly and was generally referred to as "unplayable" on the first and second generation Amiga devices without an acceleration card. The only 8-bit computer system to which the game was ported was the Commodore 64 , which was still very successful at the time . The C64 version differs significantly from the PC version because of the high hardware requirements of the original: both aesthetics had to be saved (the portraits of the NPCs are missing) and the gameplay itself: there are no horses, magic stones have no function and many of the tasks had to be simplified and dialogues shortened. It is therefore seen as the worst ultimate for the C64.

Ultima VI has also been ported for the FM Towns platform, which is very popular in Japan . This version is particularly noteworthy because it is the only one that has been completely set to music. The CD-ROM contained both the English and Japanese language versions. This version is also remarkable because the voices were mostly spoken by the Origin staff on which the characters of the game are based (with Richard Garriott as Lord British , Greg Dykes as Dupre etc.)

Fan remakes

A fan - remake of Ultima VI , which on the engine of Dungeon Siege touches, The Ultima 6 Project (aka Archon), was completed on July 5 of 2010. In February 2013 an error-corrected version 1.1. which is not compatible with version 1.0. A German translation of the game was completed in August 2014 and made available for download.

Another remake, based on the Exult engine, uses the graphics from Ultima VII . Ultima 6 Online is a multiplayer online version of Ultima VI .

In addition, Nuvie is an open source project of a remake, which aims to provide its own engine to make Ultima VI, as well as the technically similar Martian Dreams and Savage Empire, playable on modern computers.

Screenshot of the start screen of Ultima VI in the Germanized version

Translations

The False Prophet was officially published exclusively in English, possibly with translated instructions. In addition to the official version, there are various translations created by the community of players, including in Spanish and Italian. For this purpose, auxiliary programs were used which enable the decompilation, modification and recompilation of the dialog files used by the game. Such unofficial translations also exist for Ultima VII: The Black Gate and Ultima VII Part 2: Serpent Isle .

To coincide with the 25th anniversary of the publication of Ultima VI, a language patch was released for the first time in August 2015, which makes the game playable in German. Again, this is a translation created by a member of the gaming community. The German language patch for Ultima VI follows the rules of the new German spelling.

Web links

• Ultima VI: The False Prophet at MobyGames (English)
• Ultima VI: The False Prophet (English)
• Ultima VI on the pages of the Ultima Codex (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Cf. " The Virtues of the Gargoyles " on the pages of the Ultima Codex (eng.)
2. ↑ Description of the FM Towns version ( Memento from June 15, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) (eng.)
3. ^ The Ultima 6 Project
4. ↑ Download page of the German language patch
5. ↑ Ultima 6 Online
6. ↑ Ultima 6 online overview
7. ↑ Nuvie
8. ↑ Spanish language patch for Ultima VI  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
9. ↑ Italian language patch for Ultima VI
10. ↑ German language patch for Ultima VI