Ultima Underworld

Skyrim has already been recognized here, so now let’s turn back the clock and acknowledge the game that brought about the advent of real-time, first-person exploration as we know it today. Sure, the ‘80s saw amazing first-person role-playing games like Wizardry, The Bard’s Tale, Alternate Reality, Dungeon Master, and others, all of which deserve recognition. But these games all had you hop from node to node rather than moving freely in a 3D environment, and most of them had turn-based combat. When Ultima Underworld came along in 1992, its free movement and real-time battles made you feel rooted in dank dungeons like no game before.

Ultima Underworld’s impact on games is undeniable. Developer Blue Sky Productions would soon become Looking Glass, and the technology and design principles the studio developed on this groundbreaking RPG would also be fundamental to some of its later games, including the influential System Shock and its sequel. Immersive sims and many role-playing games owe a huge debt to Underworld, one of the first to really conjure the “you are there” feeling that so many games are still chasing and iterating on today. — CP