Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny

Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny (1988) is the fifth part of the computer role-playing game series Ultima.

At the start of Warriors of Destiny, the player learns that Lord British has been lost on an expedition into the Underworld, and the throne of Britannia has been usurped by a tyrant known as Lord Blackthorn, while three shadowy figures known as Shadowlords terrorize the countryside. Blackthorn enforces a hypocritically moralistic code of law ostensively based on strict enforcement of the eight virtues, but in fact anything but virtuous. The Avatar is summoned back to Britannia by his friends; together they form the "Warriors of Destiny" in order to eliminate the Shadowlords, undermine Blackthorn's rule, and restore Lord British to his throne.

It can be said that the game deals with the issues of fundamentalism and moral absolutism.

Warriors of Destiny featured much more polished writing (earlier games were riddled with some orthographical errors and uneven vocabulary) and considerably greater detail than previous games, and also included a time-of-day system in which the sun rises and sets, and non-player characters would appear to have set daily schedules. This game has been lauded as realistically portraying a culture living under a dictatorial regime; its tone is much darker than that of Ultima IV.

This game was the last Ultima developed on the Apple II; the limits of that system were increasingly becoming a hindrance to further technological advance, and thus all later parts were developed on PC systems. This was also the last part in which Ultima creator Richard Garriott had a major share in the actual coding; in the later parts he acted as a game designer only.