Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire

Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire is an RPG from 1990 by Origin Systems, a spin-off from the main Ultima series that uses the same game engine as Ultima VI but places the player in an entirely different setting focused on dinosaurs and prehistoric tribes, reminiscent of adventure novels about lost worlds. The main hero, the Avatar from the Ultima series, is mysteriously transported to a hidden valley full of volcanoes, dinosaurs and warring native tribes, where he tries to prevent an impending war and uncover the secret behind a sinister cult.

The game keeps the basic RPG mechanics of the Ultima series: free movement around the world, interaction with characters through dialogue trees, collecting items and solving puzzles. However, it swaps the established fantasy backdrop for a pseudo-historical, adventurous atmosphere inspired by stories of lost civilisations. Combat takes place in real time with the option to pause, and requires thoughtful leadership of an entire group of companions with different specialisations and abilities.

Savage Empire was praised above all as a refreshing change of setting within an otherwise fantasy-focused series and for its carefully crafted, thematically coherent world full of detail. Together with its successor Martian Dreams, it is among the most experimental spin-offs of the Ultima brand and is still remembered as proof that the Ultima VI engine could carry a setting and theme quite different from the one for which its creators originally designed it. The choice of a prehistoric setting also allowed the authors to cite adventure literature about lost civilisations with a certain detachment and a dash of humour, giving the game its own distinctive tone, different both from the serious mythology of the main Ultima series and from the fantasy clichés common in other RPGs of the day. Setting the game in a hidden, isolated valley also let the creators work with a smaller but more densely developed play space, which showed in more carefully laid-out locations and in the emphasis on relations among the individual native tribes, which the player could either pacify or, conversely, set against one another through their decisions.