Ultima VIII: Pagan



Ultima VIII: Pagan is the ninth installment of the main series and the thirteenth in the entire series, if the Worlds of Ultima games and Ultima Underworld I and II are counted. It was released and published by Origin for the IBM-PC in 1994. It is part of the "Age of Armageddon" saga.

Gameplay
While technically, the game is well-developed compared to Ultima VII Part Two, with full digital sound and better music, even more realistic graphics and a simple physics engine, the gameplay did not sit well with many of the fans of the series. The Avatar is again alone, with no party. The game is much more action-oriented than the other Ultimas. The world is smaller, with fewer characters, there are no portraits and less dialogue. The whole jumping-issue even caused Origin to write a patch. However, the positive aspect of the game is the story. The story is very mature, and deals with the dilemma that in order to escape, the Avatar, and therefore the player, has to accept that some evil things have to be done for the greater good.

The Story
The Avatar is abducted by the Guardian at the end of Ultima VII Part Two and brought to this world, Pagan. Declaring that the Avatar would never manage to escape from it, the Guardian gloats that Britannia would be his very soon, then drops the Avatar into the sea.

Pagan is an inhospitable world. The Guardian had mostly destroyed it many centuries ago with four of his underlings, Elemental Titans. But the people have no idea that the Guardian is responsible together with the Titans and actually see them as saviours! The Avatar learns that the four Titans hold an iron grip over the world. In order to escape, he learns all the magic schools, after consulting the Gods of Old. Gathering five special pieces of Blackrock, the Avatar uses them to destroy the Titans and unlock enormous powers in himself. Using the fragments, a Black Gate opens, allowing him to return to Britannia.

Upon arriving in Britannia however, he is shocked to see that the Guardian seems to have already conquered the land.

Development
Ultima VIII: Pagan was exclusively produced for the IBM-PC, therefore other official ports of the game do not exist.

Richard Garriott admitted that it had been bad for the game to be on a deadline, with three months too few to finish it. Many elements from the original plot had been cut from the final product, to rush the game out on deadline. This caused several dead ends, plot threads being incomplete etc. See Plot Cuts in Ultima VIII.

An enhanced CD-ROM edition was also in the works. It was planned to provide, among other features, full recorded speech for every character. In the end it was cancelled for same reason as The Lost Vale (see below).

Music
The soundtrack for Ultima VIII was composed by Nenad Vugrinec (credited as Neno Vugrinec), a previous musical collaborator on Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi, Strike Commander, and Wing Commander: Privateer (the former two of which saw him working with Ultima VII and Ultima VII Part Two lead composer, Dana Glover). It is Vugrinec's only musical contribution to an Ultima title.

For the eighth chapter, the Roland MT-32 platform favored by Origin in previous years was retired and music was instead scored under the relatively new General MIDI standard, with MPU-401 compliant devices such as the Roland Sound Canvas series intended to be the ideal playback medium. With the introduction of recorded performances by a live orchestra in Ultima IX, it is the last Ultima to make use of the MIDI specification.

Underscoring the grim atmosphere pervading the game, Vugrinec's compositions for Pagan are a distinct stylistic departure for the series, abandoning minstrelsy and chamber music in favor of dissonant, minor-key arrangements for strings and choir, punctuated by a prevalent use of timpani and tubular bells. These characteristics lend the score an ominous and frequently eerie quality akin to what might be heard in a horror film, such as The Omen. With this arguably more cinematic approach, individual pieces also often span up to several minutes, in contrast with the comparatively brief themes of previous installments.

As a reflection of the Avatar's isolation from Lord British's kingdom in the title's desolate, unfamiliar world, the soundtrack of Ultima VIII is the only in the series to omit "Rule Britannia," and the first since Ultima IV in which "Stones" does not appear.

A medley of select themes from the game appears on Origin Soundtrack Series Volume 3, while others were also later used in Ultima Online.

Translations
Ultima VIII was translated to several languages, including German, French and Spanish. For more details, see Translations of Ultima VIII.

Release
Ultima VIII was the most successful game in the series in term of sales, and was later included in the Ultima Collection (1998).

Included with the game
The release of Ultima VIII included these things with the game:
 * The book The Chronicle of Pagan
 * A cloth map of Pagan in Ultima VIII
 * A Pentagram Coin

Speech Pack
Ultima VIII included a limited amount of spoken dialogue, however, due to the size constraints of floppy discs, this speech was not included on the floppy disc version of the game. A disc advertised as the Speech Pack was sold separately; however, because it was expensive and added little to the game, it sold poorly. The CD-ROM version of Ultima VIII came with speech already in it and wasn't significantly more expensive than the floppy disc version, making the Speech Pack's value even more questionable.

The Lost Vale
It was planned that there would be a add-in disk for Ultima VIII, The Lost Vale. The big doors found on the Plateau in Pagan were planned to be the entrance. However, Electronic Arts, disappointed with the poor sales of Ultima VIII, pulled the plug on the project. Only some screenshots and the box design survived.

Upgrades
Ultima VIII is very difficult to run on modern computers. Some fan-made upgrades try to address this problem.

Pentagram
Pentagram, a project still in development, is attempting to solve all the problems Ultima VIII has to be played on modern systems. This would make the game fully playable under various operating systems, namely Windows, GNU/Linux and MacOS X.

Ultima 8 for Windows
Ron Windeyer (aka Gaseous Dragon) has written a utility to run Ultima VIII on Windows operating systems. See his website for more information.

More game related information

 * For bugs in this game, see Ultima VIII Bugs.
 * For cheating in this game, see Cheating in Ultima VIII.
 * For easter eggs and real-life references in this game, see Ultima VIII Real-life references and easter eggs.
 * For a Walkthrough, see Ultima VIII Walkthrough.
 * For technical details, see World Model of Ultima VIII.
 * For calendar information, see Pagan Calendar.
 * For detailed equipment information, see Weapon Values and Armour Values.
 * For monster data, see Ultima VIII Monster Data

Trivia

 * The Pentagram on the cover and in the game offended some religious people, forcing Origin to add some lines concerning this to the documentation.
 * The last game to give completition certificates after winning the game. The certificate hints that originally, the Avatar didn't return to Britannia in the end.
 * A line at the end of the walkthrough in Pentology tells that the Avatar steps through the Black Obelisk into the homeworld of the Guardian, at the time of U8's release.