Lord British's Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues headed to Kickstarter

Ultima creator Richard "Lord British" Garriott has announced his next game. It's Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues, an episodic RPG with a name that makes just as much sense if you randomly reorder all the words in it. It's being built in Unity by a team of about 12, Portalarium, and hopes to build on the traits that made Ultima famous. That means there's no class system to constrain your character. Your avatar can become an adventurer, a farmer or a frontiersman and participate in an "overarching story" that's "woven into the player experience." You can expand that story over time by buying future episodes.

Virtue of the Forsaken: Avatar Shroud will also have "meaningful PvP," crafting, giant spiders, "actions that have consequences," men with swords in tin hats and player housing, the latter of which is offered as part of the top tier rewards for contributors to the Kickstarter campaign , which is aiming to raise $1M to fund the project.

Forsaken Avatar: Virtues of the Shroud will have a persistent world, but isn't an MMO. A handful of players can drop in and adventure with you, and if you opt in, you can let the game select these people from your Facebook friends list. If you want to play offline, you can. The game will update with information from the persistent world when you log back in.

Those are a few early details. Find out more on Lord British's Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues site . Richard Garriott stopped by for a chat with Tyler, so we'll have more on Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues shortly.

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Lord British's Shroud of the Blue Denim: Forsaken Virtues

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Tom Senior

Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.