Ultima: Return, a title change and an announcement!

Greetings everyone!

You should also have noticed already that our website has been redesigned and… our project has undergone a small title change. So it’s time to bid farewell to “Ultima: Return to the Isle” and hello to “Ultima: Return”. While there are multiple reasons for this change, the main one however is quite simply that the game was already been called “Ultima: Return” informally for over two years now (notably serving as both our website address and twitter account) to the point where it just made sense to shorten the name.

As you can see things have quiet on the Ultima Return site for the last few months. Fear not, while the site has been quiet, work on the project has still been going on. I won’t lie and pretend everything went as smoothly as planned however: some areas are going better than other and while things have been progressing very well on the writing and coding front, worldbuilding has definitely been going slower and other domains like art have basically reached a stand still. This basically lead us to have to take some measure and reorganise the whole team – meaning we are now fewer that we used to, but nevertheless we are still are committed as ever to bring our project to you all even if it ends up taking more time than we’d hope.

But the big announcement is this: we have decided it is time to officially announce our first upcoming release which is currently being dubbed: “Ultima: Return – Prologue”. This is not the Chapter 1 of Return, but a shorter module that we begun working on slightly over a year ago. Initially conceived as some form of tech demo in order to showcase our gameplay systems and allows us to gain more experience in crafting our game, it has gradually evolved into a short module of its own to basically learn our craft before starting the biggest chunk of the game and offer Ultima fans something to enjoy.

So what will this Prologue be about?

Our Prologue will be taking place on Claw Isle, about twenty years after the original Serpent Isle. As most of you will recall, Claw Isle was inaccessible in the original Serpent Isle where it served solely as a cheating area. So we decided to make something out of it. We have somewhat rearranged the look of the isle for gameplay purpose (less mountains, but more jungles to explore), but in the end it remains where it was.

But what could there be on Claw Isle? That is what you will have to find out, as one of the few survivors of a Britannian ship who passed through the Serpent Pillars by accident and crashed on the mysterious isle. It should be noted that you will play a different character from the one in the maint game (which takes place a couple centuries after this), but while this module will offers what will mostly serves as a standalone story… it will introduce elements that will have a greater impact on the history of the Serpent Isle in the two centuries between this module and the main game, and will resonate and the main plot of the game as well.

We know better than to announce a release date however since there is still a lot of work to do before we reach this point. So we offer no dates and no promises, beside the fact that we’ll do our best to get it ready as soon as humanly possible!

And indeed I can only end this news by our usual pleas, because now more than ever: WE NEED YOU!

The truth is that some of our Team Members have gone AWOL and we were forced to let them go from the team, and so we need more that ever, new people to fill in the blanks and more. While the writing for the Prologue is mostly covered at this point, we definitely need more Worldbuilders and Dungeon Designers if we are to have any hope of meeting a reasonnable deadline. Artists would definitely be welcome as well, both for crafting Character Portraits and 3D Models because as it is unless we do get some talented artists, we will have no choice but to cut Portraits and Stills altogeter and limit ourselves with whatever models we might find within NWN2 and the community.

Of course we also won’t shy away from any help in other domains, as it is never too late to being preliminary work on Chapter 1.

Si if you feel you can contribute, but most importantly have the time to do so and feel motivated, please drop us a note!