Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss

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.

TRIVIA

REMAKE

WALKTHROUGH

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.