Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss - Legacy

Legacy

Ultima Underworld has been cited as one of the first RPGs to feature first-person action in a 3D environment. Gamasutra posited that "all 3D RPG titles from Morrowind to World of Warcraft share Ultima Underworld as a common ancestor, both graphically and spiritually ... for better or for worse, Underworld moved the text-based RPG out of the realm of imagination and into the third dimension". The game's soundtrack, composed by George Sanger and Dave Govett, was the first in a major first-person game to use a dynamic music system; the player's actions alter the game's music.

The game's influence has been found in BioShock (2007), and that game's designer, Ken Levine, has stated that "all the things that I wanted to do and all the games that I ended up working on came out of the inspiration I took from ". Gears of War designer Cliff Bleszinski also cited it as an early influence, stating that it had "far more impact on me than Doom". Other games influenced by Ultima Underworld include The Elder Scrolls: Arena, Deus Ex, Deus Ex: Invisible War, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, and Half-Life 2. Toby Gard stated that, when designing Tomb Raider, he "was a big fan of ... Ultima Underworld and I wanted to mix that type of game with the sort of polygon characters that were just being showcased in Virtua Fighter". Ultima Underworld was also the basis for Looking Glass Technologies' later System Shock.

id Software's use of texture mapping in Catacomb 3-D, a precursor to Wolfenstein 3D, was influenced by Ultima Underworld. Conflicting accounts exist regarding the extent of this influence, however. In the book Masters of Doom, author David Kushner asserts that the concept was discussed only briefly during a 1991 telephone conversation between Paul Neurath and John Romero. However, Paul Neurath has said that John Carmack and John Romero saw the game's summer 1990 software convention demo, and recalled a comment from Carmack that he could write a faster texture mapper.

Despite the technology developed for Ultima Underworld, Origin opted to continue using traditional top-down, 2D graphics for future mainline Ultima games. The engine was re-used and enhanced for Ultima Underworld's 1993 sequel, Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds. Looking Glass Studios planned to create a third Ultima Underworld, but Origin rejected their pitches. After EA rejected Arkane Studios' pitch for Ultima Underworld III, the studio instead created a spiritual successor: Arx Fatalis.

In the early 2000s, Paul Neurath approached Electronic Arts (EA) to discuss a port of Ultima Underworld to the Pocket PC. EA rejected the suggestion, but allowed him to look for possible developers; Neurath found that ZIO Interactive enthusiastically supported the idea, and EA eventually licensed the rights to the company. Doug Church and Floodgate Entertainment assisted with portions of its Pocket PC development, and the port was released in 2002.