Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss

1992 · Action RPG · PC/DOS

Overview

Ultima Underworld (1992) is the first-person role-playing game from the studio that became Looking Glass, set in a texture-mapped 3D dungeon. It is considered the first immersive sim.

Deep Dive

The Avatar is sent into the Great Stygian Abyss, a dungeon beneath Britannia that holds the remains of a failed utopian colony, to rescue Baron Almric's daughter Arial from her kidnapper, Tyball. The dungeon is a real-time 3D space with texture-mapped walls, floors and ceilings, sloped surfaces and varied heights, and the player can look up and down, jump and swim. Combat is in real time, an automap records the explored levels, and over forty spells are cast by combining runestones.

Developer Story

Paul Neurath conceived the game in 1989, and Blue Sky Productions began work in May 1990 with Doug Church as programmer and later project leader and Chris Green writing the texture-mapping code. The budget grew from a $30,000 advance to $400,000. Origin Systems released it on 21 March 1992, and it sold nearly 500,000 copies.

Did You Know?

Its engine became the basis for System Shock.
It is cited as an influence on Deus Ex, Half-Life, BioShock, The Elder Scrolls: Arena and Tomb Raider.
It won the 1992 Origins Award for Best Fantasy or Science Fiction Computer Game.