Ultima Underworld & Syndicate Returned To GOG

Well, this is one of those stories we never got around to at the time. Mostly because E3 just ended two weeks prior, I had things backlogged, and I was a little angrier about CDPR saying Cyberpunk 2077 is “Satisfactory.” Nonetheless, places such as PC Gamer mentioned it in detail at the time. EA was pulling three classics (ok, four, but one is a bundle) from the GOG store. June the 28th, Ultima Underworld 1+2, Syndicate Plus, and Syndicate Wars, were all set to be delisted.

Two months later, publisher EA has turned its head and heard the usual cries as games get delisted. Now, I have an opinion that might shock you here. I don’t like delisting as much as the next person, but we only hear outpourings of love for these classics when the delistings come around, usually from people telling the publisher to stop doing it and go back to making infinite money from loot boxes. It is true, while it is a shame to see them go, it makes no sense to boardroom executives to keep a game in online stores when it isn’t making money, hand-over-fist.

Nonetheless, over the weekend, the decision was reversed and three titles were once again put back on GOG. They were not just re-released into the wilds of Good Old Games, but currently, they are free in a bundle to show… something. That’s the bit I don’t understand. The three classic games that may have, probably, been making EA $20 a quarterly report are currently making the company nothing but good PR for being the good guy EA. Nonetheless, everyone can go back and yell that the graphics of a 1993 game made by Peter Molyneux are a bit crap. No, sorry, “retro.”

A sly dig at the propensity of indie titles mining the “retro” look pits aside. 1996’s reproduction of Molyneux’s isometric real-time tactics game is about a dystopian cyberpunk megacorp assimilating four people like Cybermen and sending them out to play Hitman Go. Given this is a Molyneux game before Black and White, it is actually made with some genuine care and some good ideas. Ok, Syndicate Plus might not be the greatest game you’ve ever played, but it is at least interesting. The Plus is in reference to the release with all the expansions, or what you call DLC if dial-up wasn’t dreadful.

Around the same time that Syndicate Plus was released, Syndicate Wars (a sequel) popped up. There is a reason the next Syndicate game after that was released in 2012 and was a first-person shooter, and it was just called Syndicate. Neither of those were particularly bad, not to the point you’d call a dystopian cyberpunk hellscape called Cyberpunk 2077 bad, buggy, unfinished, and generally shouldn’t have been released in such a state. At best, all three games would now be considered fine, if not a little dated in every respective year.

The last of the returned classics is something I don’t think I’d touch in a million years, but that’s what I get for not liking classic RPGs. The Ultima series is one of the longest-running RPG series. Yes, even longer than your beloved Fallout and Final Fantasy. However, much like both, there were spin-offs. The first Ultima Underworld game set you off into the lands of a dead utopia in search of a kidnapped daughter. The second game, Labyrinth of World, set you off to save the world from a villain seeking world domination. I think it is fair to say, with the first being released in March 1992 and the second in January of ’93, the second improved but didn’t have time for a great story to be told.

Currently, you can pick up all three games for free until the 3rd of September.