Ultima VI: The False Prophet

aka: Ultima VI: Attack of the Blue Meanies, Ultima VI: Itsuwari no Yogensha, Ultima: The False Prophet
Moby ID: 104
DOS Specs
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Description official descriptions

Several years after having restored Lord British to his rightful position as the monarch of Britannia, the Avatar is captured by demon-like creatures and placed on a sacrificial altar. His friends Iolo, Shamino and Dupre appear just in time to save him. In the Britannia castle, the Avatar learns that his abductors were gargoyles, a race of enigmatic creatures who have recently invaded Britannia and occupied the shrines of Virtue. As the Avatar embarks on a quest to liberate Britannia, he begins to gain insight into the gargoyles' true motives, and realizes that it is his duty to achieve peace and understanding between the two races.

Ultima VI is notable for having a fully continuous world. There is no "world map" in the game; all the locations are seamlessly connected to each other, turning the game world into an open environment. Compared to the previous installments in the series, the game focuses more on quests and exploration rather than on combat. The latter no longer involves separate screens; battles occur during exploration, without any transitions. The turn-based system from the previous games has been preserved.

The interface has been re-designed, the original key-bound commands co-existing with selectable command icons and mouse-based interaction. The game world is more detailed than in the previous games, with a large number of various objects that can be manipulated or added to the inventory. Conversations are more extended, with a wider selection of topics, including many personal ones unique to specific characters. The player is also able to conduct extensive conversations with the Avatar's companions, as well as split the party and control the characters separately. Some important topics may be highlighted during text display, to facilitate further dialogue, which requires the player to type the desired conversation topics.

Like in the predecessors, the player is free to explore the game world from the beginning of the game, and visit locations in any order. Following the main quest and obtaining specific items and information is necessary to complete the story; however, the player can also opt to bypass a large part of it by using previous knowledge of the game or outside help. The FM Towns version has full voice acting for all the conversations, in English and in Japanese.

Spellings

  • ウルティマVI 偽りの予言者 - Japanese spelling
  • 創世紀6 - Chinese spelling (traditional)

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Credits (DOS version)

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Reviews

Critics

Average score: 86% (based on 36 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.8 out of 5 (based on 115 ratings with 7 reviews)

The last of the good Ultimas.

The Good
This was a good game, but a definite let down from Ultima V. For me, the good Ultimas began with IV and ended with VI. I to III are kinda interesting as historical footnotes while VII to IX are modern nightmares.

If you can't tell yet, I'm an Ultima fan (or was). Heck, I can read 'em runic symbols faster than you can say, "Abracadabra!" Beginning with IV, Ultima worked its magic on me. I really was made to feel like an avatar on a noble quest when I was playing IV and V. But while VI's sound and graphics were superior to V's on an absolute level, the combined effect did not draw me into the world of Britannia as much as V (or even IV). I don't know what happened from V to VI, but VI became just another RPG. Good, but not great.

The Bad
For the first time since Ultima IV, the charm of Ultima was broken.

The Bottom Line
Read my review for Ultima V, it's all there.

DOS · by Yeah Right (50) · 2000

To be very impressed! To think it is great!

The Good
Since Ultima IV the series had been firmly following an established tradition of gameplay and creative ideas. Ultima VI once again delivers a meaningful story that is accompanied by flexible, versatile gameplay, and is set in a world that is even more detailed than it was in the previous game.

The interactivity level is higher than ever - there are tons of objects everywhere, which you can manipulate the way you like. Ultima V already had great interactivity, but Ultima VI allows you even more - you can drop objects anywhere you like, and all of them are visible now. There are infinitely more types of objects now - every room is highly detailed, with an enormous amount of stuff to collect.

The gameplay is extremely flexible. Your party is now visible on screen, and each party member can be put in a solo mode and walk around on his own. This feature allows such refinements as having a mouse in your party, putting her in solo mode and letting her explore various mouse holes.

One of the most famous innovations of Ultima VI is its concept of a continuous game world. In previous Ultima games (and other RPGs), the characters were required to walk on a "world map" and access locations (such as towns) that were represented as icons. In Ultima VI there is no such "world map"- or, better to say, the whole world is now a huge world map. There are no "locations" to enter - you walk around just as you would in a real world, with everything being proportional in size. When you leave a town, you don't access a different level, but remain on the same screen that just keep scrolling with you in whatever direction you decide to go. This makes Ultima VI look like an adventure game, only with a game world that is hundred times larger. It is truly amazing how all this was possible to achieve in the early nineties.

Graphically, Ultima VI is stunning, although it was to be expected with the introduction of VGA graphics. The most important graphical addition are character portraits, which are wonderfully designed, adding so much to the atmosphere of the game and the credibility of its world. By the way, this is also the first PC Ultima to have music.

The characters are way more realistic and appealing in Ultima VI than they were in previous Ultimas, not only thanks to the graphic enhancement. The dialogues are much more complex, more varied, and more natural. You can simply stay around and chat with people, talk about their personal affairs, family, business, their town, the current war between humans and gargoyles, etc. In particular, your party members are now more interesting. In previous Ultimas they were accompanying you silently, and once a party member joined you, you couldn't communicate with him in any way. In Ultima VI, not only all your party members are visible on screen and are able to act on their own, but you also can talk to them at any time. They also react individually to your conversations with NPCs. Sometimes they would recognize a friend and exchange a couple of phrases with him. They will sometimes comment upon your actions and show interest in what you do.

Britannia is generally much more believable in Ultima VI than in earlier Ultimas. Towns are much larger and have, beside the obligatory stores and taverns, many other kinds of buildings populated by weavers, farmers, bakers, and other people. This is really a fantastic feature that very few games have. In most games, designers don't pay much attention to characters that don't bear any importance to the game.

Ultima VI is also more user-friendly than its predecessors. The interface is simple and convenient (although still far from the intuitive interface of the next game), and commands can be executed by both keyboard and mouse. Combat system is a bit different now - there are no battle fields, and your party members can also be controlled by AI (although it is still best to control them, since they do stupid things sometimes). In conversations with people, some important keywords are highlighted with red, which makes it easier to track down keywords for further usage. Inventory management is very comfortable, and many old one-letter keyboard commands are now replaced by the handy command "Use".

Ultima VI is very open-ended. A large portion of what seems to be the main plot is in fact just a huge side quest which is not necessary to complete in order to finish the game. There are tons of optional locations, and the obligatory battles are reduced to the point of being non-existent. It is possible to finish Ultima VI without fighting at all. In the very few dungeon-like locations which are necessary to visit (like Sutek's dungeon), you can simply run away from monsters. You start at level 3, and although you can fight a lot, gain experience, level up, and have access to powerful spells, it is not required. I finished the game at level 4, and I found out that, strictly speaking, no leveling up was necessary - I used invisibility potions and rings in tough situations, ran away where I could, and finished the game with minimal damage done to my fellow creatures.

The Bad
Like its two predecessors, Ultima VI is extremely demanding. You can spend months just wandering around aimlessly through the huge game world, unable to find the right clues and getting stuck at every corner. Ultima VI is not difficult combat-wise, and is also more user-friendly than the previous Ultimas, which makes it overall easier than its predecessor, but the abundance of items to find, people to talk to, secret areas to explore, and quests to complete is enough to confuse even an experienced player.

My biggest problem with this game is the way it is structured. Truth has to be told: following the main quest - which is the only way to complete the game - is a rather tedious affair. They have gone too far with the amount of small tasks you have to complete in order to finally advance the story line. The biggest portion of the game basically consists of traveling from place to place and performing menial tasks for stupid town inhabitants. Some of those quests are interesting, but overall, the story is not very focused, and all you are left with are annoying errands that seem to have no end. You can skip some of them, but in order to do that, you have to consult a walkthrough. Otherwise, there are no clues available, so everything must be done through wandering and talking. The main story is pushed backwards and becomes a mere background for the small tasks you are forced to perform.

The Bottom Line
Ultima VI is a ground-breaking game, with more layers of interactivity and more believable world than ever before. Together with its predecessor, it was way ahead of its time and defined the high principles of Western role-playing long before other RPGs dared to compete with it in content and depth of gameplay.

DOS · by Unicorn Lynx (181788) · 2011

The first one I ever played, and the one I remember most fondly

The Good
For starters, I liked the plot a great deal. The premise of "you messed this up, now you get to fix it" was one I had not seen before in a computer game, and not one I could easily provide another title for. The graphics were pretty decent for the time, and I liked the fact that you could pick your Avatar's face. I also noticed that it didn't matter whether or not you played as a man or woman, you'd have people hitting on you no matter what! At first, I was very annoyed with the fact that you seemed to be so poor for the first part of the game, and that you had to be so moral--you couldn't open other's possessions, take their gold, etc.--but I had no idea what Ultima or the Avatar was all about, so I didn't understand why it wasn't following the standard adventure game/RPG rule of "Take everything that's not nailed down!" After a while, though, since there are so many things that can be sold in this game--boots, armor, weapons--and the fact that you don't have to buy reagents because you can find them all somewhere in the game made the task of raising money so much easier! I stopped resenting the "enforced morality", and even enjoyed being able to act like a moral person and have my efforts rewarded. I also ended up feeling very sorry for the gargoyles. There are also some in-game cheats, but I took very little advantage of them--this game was a joy to play without them. I also liked the fact that everybody could feed themselves--as long as you had food. It seemed really idiotic to have people that couldn't feed themselves in Ultima 7, and it was even more annoying hearing them complain all the time. I loved the idea of being able to solo characters--you didn't have to have them leave, you could just leave them somewhere while your Avatar went off and did something dangerous. Being both mouse-driven and text-driven gave this Ultima more latitude in terms of what you asked people, but being simple and basic when needing to perform actions.

The Bad
Being new to the Ultima series, I didn't understand the rudeness of some of the characters. I remember specifically the leader in Yew. When I asked her for the word I needed for the shrine, her response was really rude--something along the lines of "You should remember this, you're the Avatar. What the heck is wrong with you?" and when she finally gave it to me, it seemed really begrudgingly. There were also some characters, like Julia, who got rude if you asked her to leave the party--so I stopped asking her to join! The interface was a bit hard to master, but once I got it, it was fine.

The Bottom Line
Somewhere between the older Ultimas and the newer ones, this game is both mouse-driven and text-driven. This one is not to be missed, for it has a complex plot and plenty of roaming area. I think this game showed off the Avatar's morality quite well. This game, which introduced me to the series, is the reason why I went back and played--or tried to play--some of the others. One of these days I'll get through the series, and this game is the reason why I'll be doing it!

DOS · by OceansDaughter (106) · 2002

[ View all 7 player reviews ]

Discussion

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Trivia

Dialogues

In dialogs, key words can be identified for as they were highlighted in the text. However, this was only possible for EGA (and later) graphics. In CGA graphics (or similar) key words were not highlighted, thus adding additional difficulty in guessing which the key words were.

Extras

The game came with a map of Britannia printed not on paper, but on cloth. The quality of this material enhanced the realism of the world you got into when playing this game. A "moonstone" also came with the package. It was a smooth, black stone.

FM-Towns version

The FM-Towns version of Ultima VI has full voice acting, both in English and in Japanese. The English voices were mostly provided by the designers, programmers and family members of Origin, including Richard Garriott in the role of Lord British.

Innovation music board

One of the only games to support the Innovation ("SID" chip) music board.

Intro

In the game's introduction, the time displayed on the VCR is taken from your computer's system clock - in other words, it displays the correct time in-game. Also, you can change the channels using your numeric keypad.

Pacifist walkthrough

Of the Ultima games, VI is the only one which allows you to win without a single fight, no cheating necessary. The Moonstone that you start off with transports you to different places in the game, so that all is required to finish are a few jumps to characters crucial to winning the game, and saying the right dialogue words to them. Learning the places and those words without outside-game knowledge(from a previous play or walkthrough), however, requires completing the rest of the game.

References

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 VI as pirate Hawkins. Captain Hawkins is portrayed as a cruel man who was eventually murdered by his crew and his tombstone says "Here lies Captain Hawkins. He died a hard death and he deserved it." A few members of his crew are also named after EA employees: Alastor Gordon (Bing Gordon), Bonn (Stewart Bonn) and Old Ybarra (Joe Ybarra).

Re-release

In 1992, Origin re-released this game and chose GT Interactive as the distributor. It came in a smaller box and contained a paper map and Compendium book.

Seggallion

One of Avatar's possible companions, a knight named Seggallion, is in fact an important character in Origin's earlier RPG, Knights of Legend. In that game, the player's main objective was to rescue the imprisoned Seggallion from the evil lord Pildar. Seggallion tells Avatar that he is from the parallel world Ashtalarea (which is the world in which the events of Knights of Legend take place). He further explains that he accidentally stepped into a moongate and was teleported to Britannia.

SNES version

There are a few changes in the SNES version: * The character creation was completely removed. * There are many changes in dialogues and text, mostly replacing or removing all black humour, vulgar language or just words Nintendo doesn't like. * All blood effects were removed. * Killed enemies disappear instantly, dropping their inventory on the ground. * Civilians can't be attacked. * The magic spells "Trap", "Summon", "Slime" and "Eclipse" were removed.

A detailed list of changes can be found on schnittberichte.com (German).

Special Edition

As Ultima VI was published in 1990, ten years after the original Ultima (on the Apple II), Origin sold a special edition of the game to players who pre-ordered it directly from them. The special edition box was autographed by Lord British and included an audiocassette interview with him. There was also a contest in which players whose box contained a metal rune instead of the usual moonstone could have their name appear in a future Ultima.

Ultima 6 Online

An unofficial MMORPG, Ultima 6 Online or U6O, has been developed and released permitting free party-based multiplayer realtime adventuring (with spells, quests and scripted NPCs) in Ultima 6's distinct flavour of the world of Britannia (from its geography down to the look and feel of the sprites). Check out http://ultimasixonline.thezogcabal.com/ to investigate the server status, download the latest version of the client and see which players are currently online!

The Ultima 6 Project

On July 5, 2010, a group of Ultima fans, Team Archon, released The Ultima 6 Project, a remake of the original Ultima VI: The False Prophet as a Dungeon Siege mod. Not only a graphical update, the project also adds an alternative plot, an in-game journal and compendium, and a dialog system similar to the ones of Ultima VII and VIII.

A link to the project's page can be found in the related links section.

Awards

  • Commodore Format
    • January 1992 (Issue 16) - Cf's all time Top Ten Essential Mega Games* Computer Gaming World
    • April 1992 (Issue #93) – Introduced into the Hall of Fame
    • November 1996 (15th Anniversary issue) - #44 on the 150 Best Games of All Time list
  • Power Play
    • Issue 01/1991 - Best RPG in 1990 (DOS version)

Information also contributed by Adam Baratz, Alaedrain, Indra was here, James Hofmann, Jeanne, Nathan Taylor, Olivier Masse, PCGamer77, Pseudo_Intellectual, Rabbi Guru, Sciere and Ye Old Infocomme Shoppe

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Related Sites +

  • Nuvie
    If you have an original copy of "Ultima VI: The False Prophet", you can use Nuvie to run it on modern systems.
  • The Ultima 6 Project
    Homepage of the remake of Ultima VI with the Dungeon Siege engine.
  • Ultima Dragons
    An Ultima fan group; this is their main website

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Aaron Grier.

Atari ST added by ZZip. Sharp X68000, FM Towns added by Terok Nor. PC-98 added by Unicorn Lynx. SNES, Amiga, Commodore 64 added by Jeanne. Windows added by eWarrior.

Additional contributors: Unicorn Lynx, Jeanne, Apogee IV, monkeyislandgirl, Pseudo_Intellectual, LepricahnsGold, mmasias, Paulus18950, Alaedrain, Patrick Bregger, FatherJack.

Game added May 2, 1999. Last modified February 13, 2024.