It's already Christmas on GoG!!!

Apparently everyone feel that way. Except for like 5% that prefers Ultima 4 and 1% that prefers Ultima 8 or 9.

They really get the shaft. Even on that ultimaforever site, while the UU games are included in the banner, the WoU games are not!

Savage Empire really captured my imagination because suddenly instead of just waiting for the next Ultima Installment, there were unlimited numbers of games that could be made. They were quite critically well received too, shame they didn't sell well enough to keep making them.

Nope. 4-7 all directly follow each other, as they're the same world. But you can play it without playing any of them. You'll interact with the same people, visit the same locations & see how much the world has changed in many years.

Ultima 4 is free here on GOG - worth playing a bit before you try U7 if you end up buying it. I don't know how well they aged though.

Just... thanks ^^

So, how much continuity is there between the games? Can I pick Ultima 7 up right now and have a great time with it without having played the old games much (I did play a little bit of 3 and 4 many years ago), or is there some over-arching story I need to keep up with?

please read posts before your one :)

Now accepting editing of the U7 gogwiki entry! Go at it, Ultimites. (Is that the name?)

[url=http://www.gogwiki.com/index.php?title=Ultima_7:_The_Complete_Edition]http://www.gogwiki.com/index.php?title=Ultima_7:_The_Complete_Edition[/url]

Look at this page for reference: http://www.gogwiki.com/index.php?title=Duke_Nukem_3D

If I were to get this, should I use the default DOSbox package or should I use Exult? Is there even a major difference?

Sorry, I posted it from the news page, which seems a bit glitchy as it only showed one page of comments without any hint that there were more of them until I had commented myself.

Ultima 7 starts a new trilogy. If you haven't played the others, you won't be lost. There are plenty of references to the older games, but it is rather self-contained. If you play it and like the universe it is definitely worth going back and playing the older games though.
Exult replaces much of the Black Gate interface with Serpent Isle's. It also allows you to adjust the resolution for both parts and fixes a few things. A complete description can be found on their website. Having played through both versions, I prefer the original overall. I think Exult is a great idea though.

(from the website)

3.16. What are the improvements in Exult over the original Ultima 7?

Many more keyboard shortcuts than the original had. Including in BG the 'k' key that checks if you have the right key for a lock in your inventory. The list of keys can be found in the Documentation.
A new worked over Game Options menu. This menu is explained in detail in the Documentation and many of the following improvements and Video/Audio options can be accessed via this menu. Open this Game Options Menu by pressing 'Esc' in the game.
SI style paperdoll (inventory screen) in BG. Very impressive. For this you need to have Serpent Isle installed on your hard drive and you must set the path to it in exult.cfg (see the Documentation) and activate it in the Gameplay Options.
This new inventory screen acts sometimes a little buggy, so if an item seems to have disappeared disable the paperdolls in the Gameplay Options.
A beautiful new save game box. This allows you much more save games than the original (you should run out of disc space before you run out of save game slots), shows a screenshot of the location you saved at, the members of your party, your stats, game time and the date you actually saved. The save game box is opened either via the game menu or the 's' key.
Face status bars at the bottom of the screen that show your health (and that of your party members) as well as your mana. Double-clicking on the face opens the inventory and double-clicking on the bars shows the status screen.
Middle mouse button support. In the normal game, the middle mouse button activates the target-function (which could also be accomplished by pressing 't'). for modal gumps, the middle mouse acts as 'return', the right button as 'escape', so you can now for example accept the default slider value by just pressing the middle button. The escape function is also available during most other actions like selecting a target or conversations.
Wheel mouse support. If you have a wheel mouse some features are auto-enabled in Exult.
In slider gumps (e.g. how much gold you want to drop), scrolling the mouse up/down, moves the slider either left or right. Holding down 'Alt' while using the wheel scrolls 10 steps.
The save game menu scrolls one line, while pressing 'Alt' it scrolls pages.
You can also scroll the map of the game up or down and while pressing 'Alt' you scroll left or right.
Fast Mouse which makes the mouse cursor move faster in full screen mode.
Multiracial Avatar in BG. As with the paperdoll support you need to have SI installed and the path set in exult.cfg.
Higher resolutions than the original. You can set the resolution as high as your computer supports. But there are some issues with it and it is considered cheating.
Compressed save games. Exult compresses save games by default as zip files. They are still labeled *.sav and have the save game name in the zip comment.
A notebook for making notes and the possibility to automatically add notes

Mmm... juicy release. I always wanted to play this.
Wishlisted for now, but soon... soon... will be mine! :D

Fantastic, just fantastic.

Well played GOG and long may you reign :)

I played this to death in the early 90's , both parts, and tried the PSP version but it just wasn't the same. So here goes for a momentus playthrough again, but what about Skyrim......

There is an Exult port for the PSP so you can theoretically take Ultima 7 with you...

there was a great and informative article posted on hg101 about the Ultima series recently, which made me want to start playing it (though so far I'm only part of the way in 4).

http://hardcoregaming101.net/ultima/ultima.htm

The first three games were more or less dungeon crawlers, and there wasn't a lot of emphasis on plot and keeping the world consistent between games until 5 or 6. And as many have already said here, 7 is the start of a new plotline anyway.