Game 281: Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss (1992)

Ultima Underworld: The Stygian AbyssUnited StatesBlue Sky Productions (developer); Origin Systems (publisher)Released in1992 for DOS; 1993 for FM Towns and PC-98; 1997 for PlayStationDate Started: 15 February 2018You almost had to be there to understand what Ultima Underworld accomplished for the RPG genre. To fire it up after more than a decade of Wizardry, The Bard's Tale, and Might and Magic is to witness--instantly, not in increments--the death of abstraction as the primary paradigm of gameplay. Tiled movement is replaced with continuous movement. Fixed views in only four directions are replaced with angular views and the ability to look up and down. Artificially even and uniform "levels" are replaced with slopes and true three-dimensional spaces. Binary lighting is replaced with dynamic (and realistically dim) lighting. Simple textures are replaced with hand-crafted scenes. All objects, monsters, and NPCs with whom you can interact actually appear in the environment; there's no mo...