Prerelease:Ultima IX: Ascension

This page details prerelease information and/or media for Ultima IX: Ascension.

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Ultima IX: Ascension was meant to address several of the issues Pagan suffered and to conclude the Avatar Chronicles in a better way. However, a hasty change to a 3D engine meant the game had to reworked from scratch in about a year and half and resulted in a heavily rushed game. Because of the low sales of the game, the Ultima series was put on an indefinite hiatus.

Development History

After the disappointing performance of Ultima VIII: Pagan and its own rushed development, Richard Garriot started taking feedback from upset players. However, Ultima Online became a surprise hit during its beta phase and Origin moved most of the development team to work on that game.

Plot

The game was rewritten several times, with several plot details being changed.

Original Plot

The game would have originally started off after Pagan, where the player travels through the Guardian's homeworld.

Bobby White Plot

The game now started off in Britannia. As many of the cinematics were rendered during this point of development, a lot of the plot

Engine

Originally, Ultima IX would have used the same engine as Pagan, thus using an isometric perspective. However, a new 3D engine was created after a few months of development. In 1998, the engine only had software acceleration, thus meaning the team had to rush to get hardware acceleration included.