Ultima III: Exodus can be seen as something of a landmark for the Ultima series and Richard Garriott himself, in retrospective terms at least. Released in 1983, Ultima III was the first game to be published by the then fledgling Origin Systems.

Origin Systems was the company founded by Garriott, his brother Robert, his father Owen and his friend Chuck Bueche. The company was founded mainly as a response to the fact that Garriott had faced a lot of difficulty recovering royalties for his previous game from distribution companies. In the early days of the industry it was often hard to track down which companies were issuing a specific game, let alone calculate sales numbers and the like. The fact was, more or less, that companies could release whatever IP they liked with very little comeback for the small-time creators. Origin Systems was Garriott’s solution to this issue, allowing him to more closely monitor and regulate distribution and rights.

Why is this important? Well, leaving aside the fact it was Garriott’s first major step down the path of serious commercialisation that would lead to the progressive growth of the franchise and his eventual loss of control over the series, the creation of Origin Systems has a significant aesthetic and sentimental value to long-time Ultima Fans. The best-loved of the series, the iconic mainstream titles that defined the Ultima games and RPGs in general were all released under the Origin Systems banner. For many of us the games were key childhood memories, things we will remember for the rest of our lives and Origin Systems and their logo are intrinsically tied to that. To many the old Origin Systems iconography embodies Ultima at its most pure; it’s most true, especially given later developments.

 

 

Regardless of this piece of historical trivia, Ultima III was an important watershed in the series. Make or break is a term often thrown around loosely, but it applies to Ultima III particularly aptly. Following the inspired but supremely flawed Ultima II, Exodus needed to reaffirm faith in the series. More troubled game quality or a failure to address fractured quest structure could potentially alienate a gaming public who were already proving relatively fickle, even in the industry’s infancy.

Put simply, Ultima III: Exodus had to deliver.

And boy, oh boy, did it.

Upon release, Exodus boasted revolutionary visuals, being the first RPG to display animated characters. This alone was enough to turn heads and, in the inspirational spirit of the series, is credited as being a significant direct influence on none other than the first Final Fantasy game. Not a bad start.

Oh, and yes that’s right I said characters, plural. Ultima III was the first in the series to introduce a party mechanic. While somewhat different to the way the party system manifested in later games and go on to become a staple of the game, Exodus’ take on the mechanic at least can be highlighted as the starting point of this aspect. It must also be pointed out this was something new and exciting at the time and certainly a big change for the thus-far solo protagonist Ultima series.

As with previous games the character stats were generated (that particular feature was yet to be shaken off) and there were a number of character classes to pick from. Nothing to exciting or new, but still an important feature in developing immersion and buy in from the player, something no RPG can do without. This was further enhanced by the deceptively important fact that characters levelled individually. This engendered each potentially generic character with a genuine feel of individuality and personality. Clearly differentiating each character was rather ahead of its time, with even many modern games failing to heed this important immersion factor.

 

 

Oh, and the bloody food requirement was still there. Joy of joys! Oh Richard Garriott, you were an evil bastard sometimes.

The narrative side of things also saw a number of welcome changes. First of all the game was once again set in Sosaria, ditching the somewhat incongruous setting of time-travelling Earth. This is coupled with the apparently more traditional storyline structure. Rounding off what can be seen as the ‘Pre-Avatar’ trilogy, Ultima III finds the player combatting the eponymous Exodus.

Ah, yes, Exodus, that fresh slice of the seemingly requisite insanity that every Ultima game seems to have. Exodus, you see, was the lovechild of the previous two games’ antagonists, Mondain and Minax, who has now taken up the mantle of ‘his’ parents. I put ‘his’ in quote marks because little description is really given to Exodus or the form it takes, being described as neither human nor machine’. While this may conjure images of a Robocop/T1000 type cyborg/robot (and how damn awesome would that have been people?) this doesn’t manifest in quite as… dramatic… a way.

What it actually means is that the ending of the game is about as untraditional and atypical as can be, with no real end boss encounter. What it actually requires is for the player to have done extensive detective work throughout the game, acting upon clues and leads to track down the right cards so that when the endgame is reached they can be used…. Are you ready for it?…. to feed them into a computer to overload Exodus, who appears to be a computer system akin to a low tech Skynet. Now, before you all shout ‘Letdown!’, I must confess I think this is a stroke of genius. While, yes, a dramatic showdown with an ultimate evil is a cathartic and satisfying conclusion to a story, it’s one that is somehow underwhelming and almost undermines the whole process of the game’s build up. When you think of it, if the ultimate bad guy can be defeated by, essentially, jabbing him with a pointy stick, it rather makes the last 20 hours you spent jabbing orks with the same pointy stick somewhat redundant. With Ultima III’s more cerebral ending you have a payoff for your efforts throughout the build-up. All your following up on leads and donkeywork actually feel necessary, that you could not have achieved your victory without them.

 

 

That was the true success of Ultima III: Exodus; it showed that there was more to the fantasy RPG than just the standard ultimate boss showdown mechanic. It proved that games could support a more sophisticated narrative than the traditional stock adventure. It set the tone for nuanced and challenging narrative structures in subsequent stories, both in the series and the genre as a whole.

If the Ultima series needed a solid game for its third instalment it got it and then some. Not so much as a step forward as a leap, Ultima III was a fitting conclusion to the Pre-Avatar trilogy of games and set foundation for the next trilogy to begin.

Join me next time for the beginning of the Ultima games proper; Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar.

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