
Publisher | Origin Systems |
Developer | Blue Sky Productions |
Release date | 1992 |
Genre | Role Playing Game |
Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss takes place inside the Great Stygian Abyss: a large cave system that contains the remnants of a failed utopian civilization. The player character is the Avatar, a being tasked with rescuing a baron’s kidnapped daughter.
Ultima Underworld has been hailed as the first role-playing game to feature first-person action in a 3D environment, and it introduced technological innovations such as allowing the player to look both up and down. The player adventures through the game’s setting of a large multi-level dungeon, progressing in a non-linear fashion, meaning areas may be explored, and puzzles and quests finished, in any order.
The developers intended Ultima Underworld to be a realistic and interactive “dungeon simulation”, rather than a straightforward role-playing video game. For example, many objects in the game have no actual use, while a lit torch may be used on corn to create popcorn. Weapons deteriorate with use, and the player character must eat and rest; light sources burn out unless extinguished before sleeping.
- Towards the end of the game you can learn a spell that will destroy all life. If you cast it, all other creatures, items, doors and even stairways are destroyed, leaving only the walls, floors and ceilings.
- Despite the mispronunciation of “Stygian” during the introduction, the correct pronunciation is stij-ee-uhn.
- Blue Sky Productions shortly after changed its name to Looking Glass Studios.
There was a project called Underworld Adventures that has been in development for many years but this project is considered dead or very inactive and incomplete.
- Walkthrough (credit: ultimacodex.com)
- Text & screenshots: Arete and RedAvatar
- Video: Major Thriftwood
- Box art: MobyGames & RedAvatar
- Documents: xxx