Produced by: Thepal

Website: Serpent Isle

Serpent Isle – An Oblivion Mod A more-or-less straight-up remake of Ultima 7 Part 2: Serpent Isle, using the Oblivion engine. Download Now! 712 Downloads

Serpent Isle is, as the name would imply, a more-or-less straight-up remake of Ultima 7 Part 2: Serpent Isle, and uses The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion engine. Thepal has chosen to remake Serpent Isle and bring its magic into a 3D world, in an attempt to bring the many memorable moments and elements of the original game to life in a way Ultima fans have never seen before.

Thepal has elected to create Serpent Isle as “an almost 1:1 remake of the original game. The original dialogue, quests, locations, furniture…pretty much everything [will be] identical.” He notes that this will work well for two reasons in particular:

Oblivion’s engine is, in certain respects, almost identical to the Serpent Isle engine…apart from being in 3D. It contains everything Thepal needs, including an advanced scheduling system, to make Serpent Isle come to life.

Serpent Isle was a piece of art that really does not need to be changed.

A direct remake also means — or hopefully means — that he can create the mod faster than a more innovative retelling would require. He notes that “[d]ialogue for a town takes a week instead of…well…closer to a year for previous remakes. Of course, dialogue still seems to be the most time consuming part of the mod, but has been made easier due to a scripted Ultima-like dialogue system that has been incorporated into the original Oblivion dialogue system.”

His expected release date is still the obligatory “when it’s done”, although he rang in the end of 2010 with a release of a 100 MB demo, available here for download. More recently, real-life and hard drive failures have set its development back, but Thepal continues to work on the module as he is able to find time. Be sure to also keep an eye on Thepal’s YouTube channel, which features test and gameplay footage from the project.