• sugar_in_your_tea
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    3 days ago

    Well, pretty much everything in Ultima was either innovated or popularized there. It came out in 1980, there really wasn’t a lot before it with any kind of complexity.

    • RowRowRowYourBot
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      2 days ago

      What do you think specifically because I can’t think of anything they did first with Ultima I?

      • sugar_in_your_tea
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        2 days ago

        Mostly the open world.

        III was a bit more influential with:

        • tiled graphics
        • party combat (Wizardry also had it)
        • time travel

        But each game from the Ultima series was additive, and Ultima also pulled from Akalabeth, so it’s hard to pick a specific game to be “most influential.” Is it Ultima I because it started the series that largely standardized CRPGs? Or is it Akalabeth because its success led to Ultima?

        • RowRowRowYourBot
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          2 days ago

          And that’s why I had a problem with this from the start as Ultima 1 really wasn’t that ground breaking compared to others but by 4 you have an unspoken karmic system that tracks level advancement that blew my mind as a kid once I realized that was a thing.

          Ultima absolutely pushed significant boundaries but I have a hard time saying it was more influential than tetris.