Ultima Forever to be an Ultima IV Remake

Judging by this piece from GameSpot, it looks like the recently-announced Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar is going to be a remake of the original Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar, although by making it a class-based free-to-play multiplayer title, it seems to me like calling it “remake” is a bit of a misnomer, for good or ill.

“It’s like reading Chaucer,” Barnett said in an interview with GameSpot. “The controls are deeply inadequate, the graphics are horrible, the input system is byzantine at best.” That’s why his team’s remaking it with modern trappings–updated graphics, multiplayer, and action-RPG combat–and they’re making it free-to-play.

…

Ultima Forever will feature the same set of virtues from its 1985 counterpart, but players will find new choices and consequences reflected in the game’s fully integrated multiplayer. “Virtue is how you treat other people, in lots of games that’s how you treat NPCs,” said lead designer Kate Flack. “We want to take that same idea of how you treat other people and then apply it to the players.”

She explained the game’s mentorship system, through which high-leveled characters temporarily reduce their level to help with less-experienced friends’ campaigns. Mentors grow in the virtue of sacrifice, for helping out on tasks beneath their heroic stature, and mentees grow in humility, for admitting they need help.

I guess the long-running rumor has just been confirmed true.