How Richard Garriott’s RPGs evolved from Ultima to Shroud of the Avatar (video)

Posted byby Dean Takahashi
March 8, 2013
Updated June 20, 2025
2 min

richard garriott ultima ii

Richard Garriott, chief executive of Portalarium and known under the handle Lord British, announced his first new fantasy role-playing game in 15 years today. His Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues is the spiritual successor of the Ultima series, and Garriott explained why that is the case in an interview with GamesBeat.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.