Ultima IX - Ascension

History: The development of the ninth part of the series took several years and was full of setbacks. First attempts to create another action game in the Pagan style have been trashed as well as the plans to let the Avatar travel to the homeland of the Guardian. When Electronic Arts decided that Ultima 9 will use a 3D engine in the "Tombraider" style, the programming team had to rewrite the story once more since the party concept was difficult to implement with this engine. Ultima 9 was the unwanted bastard child of Electronic Arts, the management was interested mostly in profitable Online games and they set up a deadline for Lord British within the program must be released or it would not be released at all. This lead to a rushed release of the american version which was full of bugs and disappointed many fans, although Origin created several bugfix patches. The versions for other languages which appeared several months later are a little better, but still buggy. It was obvious that Lord British would have needed several months more, he was also forced to cancel large parts of the conversations and almost all NPC scheduling.

Strangely enough, after leaving Pagan you begin the game in your house on Earth.

But the gypsy woman from Ultima 4 helps you to get back to Britannia after creating your character.

Background: Ultima 9 returns to the problem of corruption of virtues which was already present in Ultima 5. Even the evil Lord Blackthorn returns in this game and works closely together with the Guardian. While the Avatar has been exiled to Pagan, the Guardian has completed his invasion plans and set up eight gigantic columns in Britannia. They corrupt the eight virtues and people have begun to do evil things in the name of good. The Avatar must restore the eight shrines of virtue and disable all columns before he can finally meet the Guardian in the last confrontation. The game has a very linear plot, usually you can visit the locations in Britannia only in a certain order. Another thing which disappointed the fans is that there are many plot inconsistencies and only few references to earlier Ultimas, a fan has released a patch which changes the dialogues in the game but this will lead to the loss of the digitized speech.

The moongate back to Britannia...

...where the Guardian has prepared a warm welcome for you. One of several precalculated movie scenes.

Recommended Version: This is the only Windows-specific Ultima while the other parts are all DOS. It also requires a fast cpu 266Mhz+ and a 3D graphic card. This game is huge, it comes on two CDs which can be copied to the hard disk if there is enough space on it. Most space is required by certain precalculated movie sequences which appear in cutscenes during the game and by the speech files. Yes, not only the Guardian but every NPC in this game talks. The original version contains cloth map and Tarot cards, there also has been a deluxe version of the Ultima 1-9 saga available called the Dragon Edition. There are a few fanmade remakes in the works, which also make changes to the storyline. The most promising remake is called Redemption and uses the Morrowind engine. Well, personally I think the Ascension game and story are not so bad and I would prefer it if the authors would invest their work in a sequel instead.

Meeting an old friend in the ruins of New Magincia.

The city of Britain.

Statistics:

Single-player game
38 different magic spells
Dungeons/Outdoors/Buildings 3D
On-Screen-mapping: Yes (No in dungeons)

The magical city of Moonglow.

Fighting a dragon in the dungeon of Destard.

Morale: Ultima 9 deals with the problem of gradual corruption of virtues like Ultima 5, but the corruption in U5 is mostly imposed by the government while in Ultima 9 it comes from within. The people are still good people but they do evil things and worst of all: they do it in the name of the virtues which they follow. The city of compassion which sends their old and sick people to a ghetto, the city of honesty where everyone cheats everyone, the city of honor where no one takes responsibility for his actions and so on. It is great fun and very educational to set things right again. The end of the game was inspired by the buddhistic Yin Yang: The Avatar discovers that the Guardian represents his dark antithesis and both finally merge to save the world, thus effectively ending the Age of the Avatar.

Britannia