Ultima VII: The Black Gate

aka: Ultima 7, Ultima VII - Die schwarze Pforte, Ultima VII: La Porte Noire
Moby ID: 608
Add-on (official) Conversion (official) Included in

Description official descriptions

The Avatar sees a strange message on his computer screen. An unknown being who calls himself the Guardian claims that Britannia has entered a true age of enlightenment, and soon everyone, including the Avatar himself, shall bow before the new lord. At this moment, a moongate materializes, and the Avatar steps through it into Britannia. He emerges in the city of Trinsic, where his old friend Iolo tells him that two hundred years have passed since his last visit. A horrible ritualistic murder has just occurred - the body of the local blacksmith was found in the stables. The Avatar learns that a new organization known as the Fellowship has been recruiting more and more followers recently. The champion of Britannia must solve the murder and find out about the Fellowship's true purpose, while still pursued by the ominous warnings of the mysterious Guardian.

Ultima VII: The Black Gate features revamped graphics and controls. The traditional Ultima top-down view of the world now fills the entire screen, with other informational windows overlaid on top of it only when necessary. Both world interaction and dialogue are fully mouse-controlled. Objects can be physically interacted with by dragging them with the mouse. Objects can also be stacked upon each other, and some puzzles are based on this feature. Equipment screen utilizes a "paper doll" concept: equipped items are graphically displayed on the character. It is also possible to physically manipulate inventory items, arranging them within bags and other containers.

The tactical combat system of previous Ultima games has been replaced with a real-time system where only general strategies can be set and party members fight automatically, the player taking control of the Avatar alone. Combat pauses when the player accesses the inventory. Leveling up system is similar to the previous games, the Avatar's parameters increasing automatically once a sufficient amount of experience points has been accumulated. The Avatar and his companions must regularly eat in order to stay alive.

The game's world is vast, populated by many non-playable characters with their own schedules. There are more extensive dialogue trees and individual conversation topics compared to the series' previous installments. As in the earlier Ultima games, the player is free to explore Britannia from the beginning of the game; certain tasks must be accomplished in a specific order to conclude the story.

Spellings

  • 創世紀7:黑月之門 - Chinese spelling (traditional)

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (DOS version)

80 People · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 83% (based on 13 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.2 out of 5 (based on 98 ratings with 8 reviews)

A lush, vibrant medieval gameworld full of life, intrigue, and adventure

The Good
Ultima VII: The Black Gate follows in the rich tradition of the thirteen-title Ultima series. While the user interface of Ultima VI took up over half the screen, Ultima VII showcased the latest 486 technology of its day -- 1992 -- with lush, well-animated, full screen graphics. What really strikes me about this game, even today, is just how bright and colorful everything is. Along with some of the cheerier titles from Nintendo, Ultima VII sticks out as one of the most visually-pleasing games ever created, from the standpoint of color palette. Now, Ultima does have a day-night cycle, and there are miles of dungeons to crawl, so travelling without a torch may result in a dark, drab world. But hey, if it's night, you can bunk down on the nearest bed for however many hours you choose and wake up to a glorious sunlit morning.

Second most on my list of stand-out features of Ultima VII is the lively feel to the gameworld. Every one of the hundreds of NPCs in Britannia is programmed with a daily schedule. Britain's baker will go to work each morning and make his bread, in the evening head to the local watering hole for a pint of ale and some music, and retire to his home as the evening wears on. Oh yes, and you yourself can make bread: open the bag of flour, spread some on the table, add water to make a ball of dough, place it by the fire, wait a bit, and voila, one loaf of bread. The baker even pays you for your product, although trekking the wilderness looking for loot, or turning to a criminal life is far more profitable (and fun).

Further enhancing the real-life feel is exceptionally well-written NPC dialog. Characters are given real lives through dialog, instead of simply serving the plotline. And, unlike previous Ultimas, everything is mouse driven, so there's no more hunting for keywords; all the topics of conversation are laid out before you as you uncover them. The two basic topics that everyone will cover are Name and Job, which come to think of it are the two things that people in the real world and likely to ask you.

The grandest thing about Ultima VII though, is just how great it is to get out of the starting town, Trinsic, and explore the vast world of Britannia. Unlike the Elder Scrolls series, you cannot simply go wherever you please immediately. The main continent is large, but parts of it require long, winding, dangerous journey. Furthermore, there are dozens of islands that may only be reached by teleportation (which is hazardous and takes some time to figure out), by purchasing a ship (which takes a long time to afford), or by flying carpet (of which there is only one in the game, unlikely to be stumbled upon by a new player).

Monsters are varied and creative. There's your standard Ultima menagerie of gargoyles (most of whom are friendly), harpies, wolves, and then more fantastical creations like corpsers, who live underground and reveal only a biting tentacle, and headlesses, which, as the name suggests, are human in every respect except for missing one cranium. Just don't ask me how they eat or breathe.

Lastly, the plot of Ultima VII is a classic murder mystery, though the murders are particularly gruesome, and the ultimate cause of Britannia's strife is an otherworldly denizen called The Guardian. This red-skinned fellow constantly mocks and chides you throughout your adventure, with fully-functional voice acting that was groundbreaking for its time. The Guardian stands out in my mind as of the greatest villains in video game history, and your struggles with him continue for the rest of the Ultima VII-IX trilogy.

The Bad
I think that the real joy of playing through Ultima VII is the exploration. After you have discovered every cache, every secret door, every little nook of every little dungeon, what more will you do? The plot isn't really that compelling. It's alright, but you can lose track of what you need to be doing next. Or lose interest.

Combat isn't really anything special. It's more a matter of equipping your characters well, levelling them up before taking on the dragons, and playing prudently. Most of the battle is done automatically by your characters. Combat spells feel a bit inessential and may even do more harm than good. Delayed Blast... Armeggeddon? Yikes.

So in short, the gameplay is good but not great, in terms of the crucial game mechanic of fighting monsters (or people). To compare it with more interesting combat engines, we have Baldur's Gate (which is in itself problematic), or EverQuest (actually very rewarding when all goes well.) But in 1992 you wouldn't think to complain too much. You had Origin's other hit series for more visceral and engaging combat: Wing Commander.

The Bottom Line
Ultima VII: The Black Gate is an exceptionally well-put-together title from Origin, perhaps the best in their highly successful stable. Richard Garriott himself, the creator of the Ultima series, has stated that it is one of his two personal favorites, and the most masterfully-executed of the bunch. Thumbs way up, and moreso because it runs on modern machines thanks to shell program called Exult, created pro-bono by a group of dedicated fans.

This was an inspirational game for me back when I was 13... but in 2007 I could not in all honesty recommend it when the gaming industry has progressed so far, unless you are a real RPG fanatic, in which case you probably already know and love the Ultima franchise.

DOS · by Chris Wright (85) · 2011

The Ultimate Virtual Sandbox World Simulation Type Masterpiece

The Good
You could do anything. You could bake bread, make swords, get a job, etc. This game had amazing levels of detail. The story was great as well. The graphics were great for the time, though the animation was sorely lacking (2 frames of walking animation in each direction? please!) You aren't forced to follow up the main story as you play. Instead you can try your hand at solving one of the many subquests available for your play, which all had involved stories too instead of just being told to "kill foozle".

The Bad
The memory manager, Voodoo. Yeechh. Impossible to get running with sound - though the Ultima Collection CD fixed this.

The Bottom Line
The best Ultima in the series. A large immersive adventure game (yeah, it's not as much of a stat based game as the earlier Ultimas).

DOS · by wossname (203) · 2000

One of the buggiest games I have ever played

The Good
The graphics were nice. I think this is one of the most sinister of the Ultima games. Even to the point of being gruesome, it does have a certain mystery about it. A very long game, with a great variety of weapons and characters to join your party. There are some old faces here, but there are many new ones too. This game did give closure to the mystery behind Quenton's death, and brought back the town of Vesper, which had disappeared off the map and never returned. It's also sad to see what had become of the gargoyles after the events of Ultima 6.

The Bad
The bugs. I restarted this game five times before I realized the reason why the Enchant spell wouldn't work was because a bug in the game prevented it from working after I played the add-on, Forge of Virtue. This was playing as a male avatar; the female had her won set of problems. Walls would disappear at certain times of the game, and very odd things were happening all throughout the game. The voice of the Guardian was irritation--it made me jump every time I heard it. I wanted to turn it off, but then you miss out on parts of the game if you do. The music wasn't that great--the same pieces are heard in every Ultima, and I don't consider that a good thing. The constant clouds floating about made the game run slower--if they were supposed to add a sense of realism, well, they didn't--I don't walk slower when there are clouds overhead. I don't feel like this game series has really broke any new ground since Ultima 4--you're still the Avatar in good old Britannia.

The Bottom Line
If you like the Ultima games, you'll like this game as well. Beware the bugs, and when something happens that you think shouldn't, well, you have probably hit a bug. You might want to ask someone else who's played the game if that's what happened to them, or consult a walkthrough, but believe me, when the walls start disappearing or spells stop working, it's a bug, not part of the game.

DOS · by OceansDaughter (106) · 2002

[ View all 8 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Fame and fortune await! Or at least a footnote DJP Mom (11333) Mar 19, 2008

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Ultima VII appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Armageddon

There is a high level spell called Armageddon which kills every person in the game except for yourself and Lord British. If you go back and talk to him he will exclaim "What have you done!?!"

Credits

  • If you sit through the credits then another option will be available to view quotes humourous quotes from the development staff. At the end of this the butterfly from the intro floats onto the screen then blows up, followed by an evil cackle from the Guardian, apparently uttering gibberish. However, it is simply a sound sample that is played backwards. When reversed, The Guardian says "I am the Pagan Lord", apparently an early hint at the sequel. A recording is available at the Ultima Dragons FTP Archive.
  • As an interesting testament to the credibility of the Ultima VII end credits, EA , far far later, actually took "Voluntarily rated MP-13 (for Mature Players)" logo from the game credits and put that to the The Complete Ultima VII budget release box.

Dead people room

There is a room in the mountains east of cove (can only be accessed with the cheat) where all the people who have been killed go. Most of them are alive and well and you can even talk to them.

Experience points

In case you're wondering, completing mini quests DOES give you experience! For example, the first mini quest you receive in Paws (the Serpent Venom thief story) when completed, gives you and your companions (ie. Iolo and Spark) 75 experience points. Even the very small mini quests which only involve talking to people and conveying conversations to other people "may" give you and your companions experience points.

Exult

There is a project called Exult out there on the web that will allow you to play Ultima VII on a Win9x machine. The only catch is you have to have the original files. The creators of Exult had to work from the ground up to make the game playable, considering the original source code to Ultima VII is not available to the public.

Fellowship

The Fellowship was was largely inspired by many "new age" religions and cults of the time, but most notably it was inspired by the Church of Scientology. Garriott's main inspiration was reportedly the infamous TIME Magazine Scientology article of May 1991. Among other things, regular Fellowship members don't know what is happening in the higher levels of the cult hierarchy, which is typical to cults in general. Batlin's character is very obviously inspired by L. Ron Hubbard's persona. There is even a "personality test" in the game.

Interactivity

The game is famous for offering a high interactivity; almost every item in the game world can be used. The option to bake bread has become synonymous for this.

Lord British

If you manage to kill Lord British (the black rock is handy for this) you will find in his corpse (amongst other stuff) a lightning bolt which acts as a missile weapon and is how he casts spells if you fight him.

References: Electronic Arts

The game starts with the quote:

"Avatar! Know that Britannia has entered into a new age of enlightenment...Under my guidance, Britannia will flourish, and all the people will rejoice! And pay homage to their new... Guardian!".

The Guardian is a character inspired by the attempted takeover of Origin Systems in the early '90s and hints at EA. This links is proven while playing: the three items that power the evil generators in-game are a cube, a sphere and a tetrahedron, the former EA logo.

Richard Garriott also sneaked in a more subtle reference to Electronic Arts. Take a look at the characters Elizabeth and Abraham for example. Just take the first letters of their names. Elizabeth and Abraham have a high-ranked profile in the fellowship (e.g. EA in the publishing business) and go around and perform seemingly helpful tasks (like dragging the Avatar to the shelter in Paws for resurrection every time he dies), but in fact they are murderers and are in a conspiracy to bring a destructive powerful-being, the Guardian, into Britannia.

It's unsure if the reference goes that deep, but Origin originally thought that EA might help it gain more profit and reach more gamers, but EA's counter-productive strategies ended up destroying what made Ultima special and thereby reducing sales.

References: Star Trek

Certain residents of Serpent's Hold bear a striking resemblance to the crew of the USS Enterprise in the TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation, both in their names, their occupations, their characters and sometimes their appearance.

Here's a breakdown: * Lord John-Paul, Commander of the Keep - Jean-Luc Picard, Captain of the Enterprise * Sir Richter, second in command - Commander Riker * Sir Horffe, a Gargoyle raised by Human parents, Captain of the Guard - Lt. Worf, a Klingon raised by Human parents, Chief of Security * Sir Denton, a knight known for his ability to solve problems and puzzles, for being overly detailed in everything he says and for not being able to tell jokes that are funny, wears a full suit of armour all the time - Lt. Commander Data, the Android * Sir Jordan, a blind bowyer and tinkerer - Lt. Commander Geordi LaForge, the blind Chief Engineer * Lady Leigh, red-haired healer - Dr. Beverly Crusher, Chief Medical Officer * Lady Tory, adviser and empath - Counselor Deanna Troi

References

  • In a series cross-over, there is a farm near Britain where the farmer would tell you about a craft that fell from the sky and the big cat man who appeared from it. Sure enough, in his field there was a Kilrathi vessel. If you clicked on it, it would play the Kilrathi theme from Wing Commander II.
  • In Gilberto's house in Trinsic you can find a book titled Struck Commander, detailing the adventures of a band of mercenaries that ride flying carts. Much like in Origin's Strike Commander.

Sherry

In Ultima VII: The Black Gate, you meet Sherry the Mouse (in Ultima VI) for the last time. She's nursing kids at the Royal Nursery at Lord British's castle and cannot be recruited.

SNES port

A fairly simplified version of this game was ported to the Super Nintendo console system. Although the same basic graphics were used, the game engine was changed drastically to be even more action oriented. The console version removed the companion NPCs (although they did appear as characters in the different villages) and featured the Avatar only who you controlled in a run-and-slash manner Legend of Zelda style. A great deal of the environment interactivity was removed, and the plot was also sanitized as well (instead of the grisly blood soaked ritualistic murder which the PC version opens with, in the console version you are simply told that the blacksmith was "kidnapped"). More information can be found in its game entry.

Soundtrack

The credits sequence started to go more and more movie-like towards the end, with usual disclaimers ("any resemblance... is purely coincidental", "no animals were harmed"... etc), logos of the technologies being used (Voodoo logos etc), and finally, "Soundtrack CD available from Origin". That was only added as a gag to make the credits look absolutely movie-like, but (because the game obviously has some pretty good music) people started asking Origin about the soundtrack album. Ultima VII: Part Two - Serpent Isle had same sort of credit display - but with a text "Soundtrack CD NOT available from Origin, so don't ask!"

However, Origin did eventually release Origin Soundtrack Series volume 2, which contains some of the tunes from both of these games.

Voodoo memory manager

This game used what Origin called the "voodoo memory manager". What this really was, was no memory manager at all - not even a DOS extender. It used memory beyond the first megabyte directly by popping the processor into flat 32-bit mode; since DOS couldn't access that memory directly, it was used to cache resources (mostly graphics) to improve performance. Needless to say, this "memory manager" was completely incompatible with any real memory manager, including any variety of MS Windows.

Ultima VII: The Black Gate programmer and MobyGames contributor weregamer:

A few years and a couple of jobs later, when Windows 95 was in early beta, I was part of a program where MS engineers working on it met with developers of entertainment and animation software. The engineer we met proudly proclaimed their goal that 100% of DOS games would run under Windows 95 by the time it shipped - "DOS Mode" would not be necessary. I sadly had to burst her bubble by explaining the "voodoo memory manager". She had a hard time believing it - I guess she just hadn't realized just how hard game programmers worked to squeeze performance out of machines in the bad old days.

Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) – #3 Hardest Computer Game
  • GameStar (Germany)
    • Issue 12/1999 - #21 in the "100 Most Important PC Games of the Nineties" ranking
  • PC Games (Germany)
    • Issue 01/1993– #2 Best RPG in 1992

Information also contributed by Chris Martin, Fafnir, Indra was here, Itay Shahar, Ray Soderlund, Sciere, Terok Nor; weregamer, WWWWolf and Zovni

Analytics

MobyPro Early Access

Upgrade to MobyPro to view research rankings!

Related Games

Ultima: The Black Gate
Released 1994 on SNES
The Complete Ultima VII
Released 1994 on DOS, 2011 on Windows, 2013 on Macintosh
Ultima IX: Ascension
Released 1999 on Windows
Ultima
Released 1981 on Apple II, 1983 on Atari 8-bit
Ultima VI: The False Prophet
Released 1990 on DOS, 1992 on SNES, Windows...
Pagan: Ultima VIII
Released 1994 on DOS, 2012 on Windows, 2013 on Macintosh
Pagan: Ultima VIII
Released 1994 on DOS, 1995 on PC-98
Ultima Online: Mondain's Legacy
Released 2005 on Windows

Related Sites +

  • Bootstrike.com - Ultima VII: The Black Gate
    A dedicated site to the classic game - providing a host of walkthroughs, downloads and lots of cool add-ons and stuff.
  • Exult
    a project to allow people to play Ultima 7 on modern OSes such as Linux and Windows by reverse-engineering the game engine. You still need the original game to play.
  • Ganesh's Website
    Walkthroughs, tips, hints, cheats, trainers, backgrounds, wallpapers, desktop themes, music, mp3s, midi, hand-picked *very* funny jokes and much MUCH more! ALSO: U7 in Win9x, humor, lots of downloads!
  • UHS Hints for Ultima 7
    These hints will help you solve the game.
  • Ultima 7 in Windows
    Ron Windeyer has licked it! An exerpt .. "Thanks to a new and quite brilliant utility, Black Gate and Serpent Isle can be run effortlessly in Windows 95 and 98, with virtually any kind of sound card. With the latest addition (U7.DPMI) it is also compatible with Windows 2000, and possibly even Linux."

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 608
  • [ Please login / register to view all identifiers ]

Contribute

Are you familiar with this game? Help document and preserve this entry in video game history! If your contribution is approved, you will earn points and be credited as a contributor.

Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Terok Nor.

Additional contributors: Trixter, Alan Chan, Ola Sverre Bauge, G. Ganesh, Jeanne, phlux, Paulus18950, Patrick Bregger, FatherJack.

Game added December 22, 1999. Last modified February 13, 2024.