DOS

Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny

Trivia

Some original boxed versions of the game came with a cloth map of the world.

Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny has been remade by fans in 2005 using the Dungeon Siege engine. It is a highly ambitious attempt to reconstruct the original title, including an enhanced plot, and adds strategy elements and updates conversational mechanisms to resemble modern game dialog systems.

In the Apple II version of the game (and possibly others, though not the DOS version), yelling FLIPFLOP outdoors would cause each tile on the screen to invert itself, top to bottom. This is quite bizarre -- check the screenshots page to see it in action.

Yelling it again will restore the tiles to their normal status.

Contrary to popular belief, the Commodore 64 version did not have any music. The music was only available to those who had a Commodore 128 and started the game in Commodore 128 mode. Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny was one of very few games that gave particular attention to the Commodore 128.

The name of captain Johne's ship is Ararat. According to the Bible, that is also the name of the mountain where Noah's ark landed after the flood. Quite an appropriate name for a ship that's run ashore.

There has long been animosity between EA and Origin. Just dig through the Ultima V binaries. Ultima V had a list of swear words that, when used in conversation, would result in the response 'With language like that how didst thou become an Avatar?!'. In this swear word list in the binaries were the usual 4 letter words as well as 'Electronic Arts'.

Contributed by Sciere (119181) on Feb 24, 2004.

ORIGIN founder Richard Garriott has always had a bit of a grudge against Trip Hawkins, co-founder of Electronic Arts, because he didn't like their treatment as an EA affiliated label. Not only did he name a mausoleum after him (Pirt Snikwah backwards) in his Britannia Manor (a house in Austin, Texas, designed and used for creepy real-life RPG's), but, more related, he also made him appear in Ultima V as shipwright Hawkins.

Contributed by Sciere (119181) on Feb 24, 2004.

Although the game is the sequel to Ultima 4, it doesn't have the a class identity system like Ultima 4 does. It only had four classes: Avatar (you), Warrior, Bard and Wizard. Ultima 4 had a more classic class system (ranger, magician, and so on).

There is no music in PC version, but there exist a freeware patch that adds all the glorious music from C-64/Apple versions to play properly with the PC version as MIDI.

"To me, Ultima isn't just a collection of quests to solve, but an entire world in its own right, with new people, places, and experiences around every corner...I try to create a detailed, living environment where the game's story seems natural and involving, never artificially contrived or out of place."

--Richard Garriot, author of the Ultima series, Austin TX (from the Ultima V page in the 1988 Broderbund catalog)

Contributed by PCGamer77 (3025) on Jan 22, 2001.

In the stable near Iolo's Hut, you'll find Smith (a talking horse). If you talk with him, he'll give you a "very important clue" -- however, the clue is for Ultima 4. Apparently, the Ultima 4 design team forgot to include the clue so they put it in Ultima 5 as a joke. This tradition has since carried on throughout subsequent Ultimas.

Original boxes of Ultima V included a symbol stamped coin representing The Codex from within the Warrior of Destiny' plot.

Contributed by rstevenson (813) on Jun 22, 2000.

Many of the people in Ultima 5 are constructed from other Origin employees or friends of Richard Garriot - one example is Christopher in West Britanny, modeled after Chris Roberts of Times of Lore and Wing Commander fame.