The Evolution of Ultima Forever’s Britannia

The map for Ultima Forever has undergone significant revision since the game was first conceptualized. Mythic Entertainment generously allowed me to obtain photographs of the various “early stage” maps for the game when I visited the studio recently. This series of images shows how it began from a tracing of the Ultima 4 map and, through successive iterations, became what it is today.

Note: None of the maps depicted at the link above is the final map of Ultima Forever; Britannia has seen significant amounts of polishing and adjustment since the print of the eighth map was made. Some of these later revisions were visible around the office at Mythic, but were marked up with production notes; we felt it would be imprudent to record images of these at this time. Even so, the eight maps we were able to photograph show the evolution of Ultima Forever’s world, from drawing board to in-game realization, and hopefully also demonstrate the care and effort that Mythic have taken with respect to the lore of the canonical series in crafting a new Britannia.

Many thanks to Kate Flack and Paul Barnett at Mythic, especially, for walking me through the history of Ultima Forever’s Britannia and its development. And my apologies for the fact that some of the photos are a bit blurry…