Ultima 1 Q & A. That’s right, U1.

In case you’ve been acting like a normal person and not reading gaming news every day, you might have missed the announcement that a team of people have assembled to produce a remake of Richard Garriot’s classic RPG Ultima 1. GA-RPG has had the chance to interview the art director, Soren Seeberg. Some spice:

Q: Tell us a little about this project, and how it got started? Why Ultima 1 and not one of the more popular titles like Ultima 4, 6, or 7?

A: Before starting the project Kasper (Telemachos) and I were dreaming of creating an RPG and had often been talking about all the neat features OUR RPG should include. We were toying with the idea of giving Ultima 1 yet another facelift. Later we decided to make a 100% remake. When we started the project we really wanted to limit the size of it to increase the chances of ever getting it done. Freeware titles have a really weird tendency not to reach the final milestone. Even though we wanted to keep the project small, we still wanted to create an Ultima game. Ultima 1 is simpler than it’s successors and that was certainly one of the criteria for choosing it. Another is that Ultima 1 is one of the first RPGs ever to be made and yet it contains a lot of the elements of a modern RPG. In my mind Ultima 1 marks the birth of the RPG-genre, as we know it today. It is situated in a large world; it has character building, quests and items. It’s all very simple of course, but it is there.

For what’s happening officially, e-parachute down to the official site for the project.