Ultima 4…unplayable?
The Brainy Gamer — who in real life teaches a class in which he periodically subjects his students to classic computer games like Fallout and Planetfall — has written an interesting article that really hammers home the gulf between gamers of yesteryear and gamers of today. Of particular interest is that the game that serves as the foil in the article is nothing other than Ultima 4.
He summarizes the core of the issue handily:
I had supplied them with the Book of Mystic Wisdom and the History of Britannia, both in PDF form, but not a single student bothered to read them. “I thought that was just stuff they put in the box with the game,” said one student. “Yes,” I replied, “They put it in there because they expected you to read it.” “Wow,” he responded.
Some of their difficulties must be chalked up to poor teaching. I should have done a better job of preparing them for the assignment. I resisted holding their hands because in the past I’ve found it useful to plop them down in Britannia and let them struggle. Figure out the systems, grok the mechanics, and go forth. Ultima IV may be a high mountain to climb for a 19-year-old Call of Duty player, but it’s well worth the effort.
At least that’s what I used to think. Now it seems to me we’re facing basic literacy issues. These eager players are willing to try something new, but in the case of a game like Ultima IV, the required skill-set and the basic assumptions the game makes are so foreign to them that the game has indeed become virtually unplayable.
And as much as I hate to say it — even after they learn to craft potions, speak to every villager, and take notes on what they say — it isn’t much fun for them. They want a radar in the corner of the screen. They want mission logs. They want fun combat. They want an in-game tutorial. They want a game that doesn’t feel like so much work.
In a way, this sort of shift was inevitable. Gaming on the PC was, at its inception, very much the province of the bookish, techie types. So was console gaming, though to a lesser degree. Conversely, gaming today, as Warren Spector recently mused, now has a much wider audience across a much wider variety of platforms. And as a result, the nature of games themselves — and the expectations that gamers have going in — has changed substantially.
But let’s keep our focus on Ultima specifically, and PC RPGs in general. Take something like my favourite Ultima, Ultima 6, which doesn’t really offer the player much in the way of an in-game tutorial. Lord British, if you talk to him, explains the conversation mechanics a little bit when you first speak to him, but after that you’re more or less on your own figuring out how the game works. Unless you read the manual, of course, which was just something you did back then.
Fast forward a few years and consider Ultima 9. Ascension still included the usual Ultima documentation in the box — the bestiary, the spellbook, the game controls explanation, etc. — but it also featured an opening tutorial in which Hawkwind guided you through the basic interactions that would drive the game forward. Between the Avatar’s house on Earth and Stonegate, you were introduced to the inventory system, clothing, the journal, the spellbook, combat, keys, switches, and jumping…all the things you would need to navigate through Britannia.
A lot of Ultima fans didn’t like the introduction of an in-game tutorial element. Many felt it broke immersion, or that it broke with tradition, and/or that it was poorly executed and felt tacked on. I’m certainly prepared to grant the last point; the tutorial was very overt. Compared with something like Mass Effect‘s tutorial — which used the context of an initial set of missions (Eden Prime > the Citadel > Investigating Saren > Becoming a Spectre) to introduce you to the game, its environments, its controls, and combat, and which gave you control-specific instructions with pop-up notifications — Ultima 9’s opening sequence does stick out like a bit of a sore thumb. I don’t think it breaks immersion, per se…but you definitely get the feeling that you’re starting in the shallow end of the pool.
But since I’m kind of digressing, let me now return to the main point: even in the Ultima series, we saw the shift. Ultima 6 was very much a gamer’s game (for lack of a better term); the developers could (reasonably) expect that its audience would have a certain level of literacy and technical proficiency. Ultima 9 wasn’t strictly a gamer’s game; given the wider audience of Ultima 8 (which was, if memory serves, the top-selling Ultima game), Ultima 9 was in turn targeted toward a wider audience, and took steps to ensure that people who couldn’t necessarily be bothered to pick up and read a manual through from cover to cover could still get into the game and play it to completion.
In other words, Ultima 9 was, in part, targeted toward a very different kind of player than previous Ultimas had been. The developers tried to do this in a way that wouldn’t seem egregiously out of place to established Ultima fans; the debate over the level of success they achieved has been raging ever since.
This is something that modern developers — including developers of Ultima remakes and new Ultima stories — need to consider, I think. The days of expecting a player to grind his way through something like Ultima 4 in order to get completely leveled up and recruit every companion are pretty much extinct. Granted, enthusiastic players may still opt to churn their way through every fresh hell the game can throw at them in order to reach that level cap (be it level 8 in Ultima 6 or level 60 in Mass Effect)…but that’s not an expectation that can be placed on the person who is going to play the game through once, for fun.
Interesting thoughts. While we were making Ultima V: Lazarus, we wrestled with how much we wanted to leave open, and when to hold the player’s hand. Looking back, there are several things I would have done differently, as lead world designer; more lights in the dungeons, and more directed flow of overland gameplay, to name two chief regrets. I wonder if that would have made the game worse in the eyes of the Ultima-phile.
On that fellow’s blog, I suggested he try having his students play the Ultimas in reverse order; starting with U9, and working backwards, gradually acclimating his students to earlier RPG gameplay. I wonder how that would work out.
The days of expecting a player to grind his way through something like Ultima 4 in order to get completely leveled up and recruit every companion are pretty much extinct.
…except in MMOs, where gathering esoteric knowledge (drop locations, etc) and hardcore grinding is still perfectly acceptable. Though, perhaps, not strictly required.
Ah man this article makes me sad for the next generation. I understand about the lack of maps and quest journals. Also less friendly interfaces.
But the part about not knowing what to do bothers me…it’s just a sign of the Entitlement generation, they dont want to think for themselves.
To me figuring out what to do and exploring was the best part of these games!
Interesting article. I don’t think this applies specifically to gamers. You can see the same trends in the media in general, with modern output being dumbed down and requiring lower attention spans. The fact that earlier computer games were made to appeal to bookish/techie types is one of their major appeals from my point of view. I actually liked having manuals to read and thinking for myself.
I know Ultima fans who aren’t much older than these students so I certainly wouldn’t write U4 off as unplayable to anyone below a certain age. The term gamers refers to a much larger group of people these days. It could be that a modern Ultima 4 would appeal to nearly as many people as the original did, but that wouldn’t necessarily be enough people to make a profit with development costs these days. If an updated iPhone version is ever released it will be interesting to see how it’s received.
A great pity indeed. I played U4 back at the age of 12, and still consider it one of the best Rpg’s I’ve ever played. I still have the notebook I used to write down the stuff I needed to finish it and looking at it always brings me tears. But I cannot get anyone else I know to even bother looking at those games…
That’s a fascinating suggestion. From the sound of it, it wouldn’t work for his course — he seems to hammer the kids with a pretty wide variety of games, and not give them too terribly long to play it — but it would (I think) make for an interesting study…and then one that would probably be quite informative as to the transitions that have happened in games over the last 20+ years.
That’s kind of what I was driving at. Grinding still exists, and many still practice it…but it no longer falls into the realm of strict necessity, as it did in the earlier Ultimas.
In general, I’d agree. Heck, the first time I played U6, I think I explored all of Britannia by walking before I ever even thought to try and figure out how to solve the main quest.
But that’s my point: Ultima fans from back in the day are gamers of a different breed than gamers of today. And if anything new does ever emerge in the Ultima franchise, it will be something that has to at least be accessible to said new breed…though hopefully without being a complete turn-off to old fogies like us.
@Pix: You’re bang on when you note that the term “gamer” is way broader today than it was in years past. I’m driving toward a similar point in my third-last paragraph in this article.
Which I guess would mean that any new Ultima adventure, should one ever materialize, would have to make a hard choice: opt for the classical presentation and thus appeal to a niche market, or opt for a more modern RPG presentation (e.g. in-game tutorials, informative and multifaceted UI, etc.) and trade some loss of niche appeal for some potentially greater broad market appeal.
A tough call.
@aragorn: It is difficult, to be sure. Granted, remakes like we’ve seen thus far do well at giving the games a bit of a more modern face…and some have been grandly received.
I suppose we do have to accept that, 20 to 30 years on (depending on which Ultima we’re talking about) the games will lose appeal and fade. Seminal RPGs they may be, and groundbreaking, and foundational to modern RPGs in so many ways…but they will have to fade away at some point. (Not unlike text-based adventure games before them.)
I think this article makes some good points.
I have to admit, having just replayed the two “original trilogies” of Ultima that these old games can become a pain to play at times. I feel we shouldn’t look at the past with pink tinted glasses – the truth of the matter is that as ground breaking as the Ultima games were, most of them are getting really dated in sheer design. Not so much the concept (I feel Ultima IV could make a awesome game nowadays if done right), but by the way things are handled.
Ultima IV was a groundbreaking and revolutionnary game. But looking it objectively: it’s still a game very combat focused, with a lot tedious tasks (such as gaining an Eight of honesty), little plot to speak and *very* repetitive aspects to it.
Basically any modern RPG who would just translate the exact same game design with shinier graphics… would probably just suck.
@Claymore – that’s a good point about Lazarus. I loved the game, but I feel it was too hardcore for its own good. I’ve seen more than a few people who really wanted to play and love the game… but ended up dropping it because of how hardcore it was, how they’d get lost with no idea of what to do, how there was no journal to keep track of things and so on.
Now it’s easy to go and say that today’s generation are lazy or whatever – I think it’s just that there are better way to handle things now, which makes some of these old hardcore approach more frustrating than fun, and yes even for people who knew these approach twenty years ago.
You have good point about playing the series in reverse order too. As a matter of fact I *have* recommended to a few people over the year who wanted to see what Ultima was all about to start with Ultima IX, and usually with positive results. While this might sound like heresy to some fans (and especially the hardcore UVII crowd), I feel this is actually the most sensible approach, because ten years after the game it still keeps a mostly modern design and UI (which IMO just show how ahead of its time it was) and is easy to play and get into. The fact is the game was designed to cather to new fans (which was the cause of many of the consistency issue), and that from this point of view it really does work. (Indeed I’ve always felt that had the game not been released in such an unplayable state that caused all the crappy review it got, it would probably have been a new U8 : panned by fans, by loads of sales due to bringing a lot of new fans to the series).
@Kenneth – There’s no tough call to me. Any new Ultima released nowadays would HAVE to cather to a new crowd and keep in mind modern expectations. It will piss of old fans, but if done well it can create a game still faithful to the license, and bring a gazillion of new players to the point that old hardcore fans will be a moot point. (Case in point: Fallout 3).
I can’t really disagree with your assessment, Sergorn, especially in regard to Fallout 3.
The dumbing down of Ultima IX was completely unnecessary, IMO. Remember, this was 1999, not 2009. The era of Baldur’s Gate (which was a great commercial success).
Origin thought they had to ‘go 3D’ to succeed – they were wrong.
Of course, Bioware did eventually go 3D as well, but by the time they did, the technology was far more mature.
I would actually disagree. U9 lacks polish, perhaps, but its UI and controls pretty much set a standard for 3D RPGs, elements of which can still be found in modern games. It was a very forward-looking design for it’s time, and even now the U9 engine still holds up in some respects. Obviously not graphically, though with a high-res reskin it would measure up decently. But in terms of what it lets you do in the world, with the scenery, it offers more and better than can be found in many modern RPGs. Heck, it even has jumping…try and do that in Dragon Age or NWN…or Mass Effect, which is built from the Unreal engine, for frying out loud!
Was 3D unnecessary? I tend to think not not…it was a novel concept in the RPG realm, but was becoming established in other genres.
The choice of Glide as the 3D API was a mistake, but I would argue that the choice of 3D itself wasn’t. Origin games typically pushed the limits of the systems of the day, and especially after U6, no Ultima really ever used the same engine as its predecessor. Going 3D was an obvious choice in keeping with that trend, and had the game not been rushed out the door we’d be remembering it as the forward-thinking decision it actually was, rather than looking on it as an object of controversy.
As to its dumbing down…was it really dumbed down? I mean, every Ultima prior gave you the option to ask the same “I’m the Avatar and I’ve totally lost my memory” questions. U9’s were made more obvious because of the voice acting, but you could ask the same bonehead questions in U6 and U7.
That’s because games have to cater to new players, players unfamiliar with the series. U9 followed U8, which was (if memory serves) the top grossing Ultima of all time. U8 brought in lots of new fans…U9 had to give them a way to become familiar with Britannia and her history. And yeah, to us die-hards, the questions seemed silly…but then too, there were other conversation options as well; WE didn’t have to ask Lord British who he was. New players might have wanted to, though.
Likewise, the tutorial. Hey, old fans and new fans alike were being faced with a new engine and a very different RPG experience, a very different engine. A few tips and pointers were actually pretty nice to get.
Agreed with everything you said Sergorn. Ultima II and Ultima III were, I believe, horrible designs. It was impossible to survive in Ultima II unless you found the one store in which you could safely steal foo. Trying to find the Mark of Kings in Ultima III so that you could actually progress was damn near impossible unless you happen to know it’s on the first floor of one dungeon. Also, don’t even get me started on robbing Death Gulch 20 times, or massacring the same group of guards for 2 hours, just so I had enough experience and gold to handle Exodus’s Castle.
I thought Ultima IX was generally a great game, except for a few major flaws. First and foremost was the bugginess, since the game was released in an unplayable state. That is unacceptable to ANY player. As well, I thought the voice acting was generally extremely weak, and the NPC interaction had been dumbed down to an excessive degree. On the plus side, the engine itself was wonderful (when it worked), the world was beautiful, the dungeons were a fantastic experience, and I LOVED the puzzle aspect of them. I wouldn’t ask to change anything of that part of the experience. Fantastic music, fantastic graphics, and the game still feels modern today.
Dungy raises a key point: U9 had the best dungeons of any “numbered” Ultima game. They were exceedingly well-made, each one was different, most were challenging, and the atmospherics were awesome. They put the dungeons in U7/SI to shame, and even best out the dungeons in U6, which could be excruciatingly tedious in places.
The choice of Glide as the 3D API was a mistake, but I would argue that the choice of 3D itself wasn’t. Origin games typically pushed the limits of the systems of the day, and especially after U6, no Ultima really ever used the same engine as its predecessor.
Yes, that was Origin’s mantra, a new hardcore limit-pushing engine for every game. But by the end of the previous century, that mantra was sorely out of date. Creating new 3D engines for every game?
Only if you have somebody of a John Carmack-calibre onboard. And even ID Software only managed to create what amounted to playable tech demos of their engines.
Let me just say that there’s no direct connection between ‘dumbing down’ and going 3D. But the technology was evidently difficult enough to implement that other aspects of the game inevitably suffered.
Again, even Bioware suffered somewhat from their transition to 3D in Neverwinter Nights, which was three years later. The campaign that game originally shipped with was far less sophisticated than what gamers had become accustomed to in the later Infinity Engine games. (fortunately, they improved with the expansion packs)
That’s true too…but I’d argue in turn that what shortcomings U9 had were not the direct fault of its engine. U9 was simply not release-ready, in any respect. It was rushed, and different aspects of it suffered for that reason.
Given more time, Origin could have developed it a bit more and would likely have pushed out a game that was less buggy and more stable…but also a game with a better plot, and maybe a bit less linearity.
On the plus side, while the owners of the Ultima copyright haven’t done much with it during the last 10 years, they’ve still been extremely generous with the way they’ve allowed Ultima fans to use their copyright. I mean, Vivendi and Lucas Arts have been FAR less generous with their intellectual property. As far as I’m aware, no Ultima projects have received a cease and desist order. Because of their generosity, we have Lazarus, the U6 Project, Redemption, and a number of other projects, and the former two stand by themselves against any of the other Ultima games, and I’m sure the latter will too. And, if we see a proper release of the old Origin games, good manual scans, map scans, and they take the time to play the game before releasing it to make sure it actually works (sadly, not every company does), like has been hinted on this site, I’ll have nothing but gushing praise.
The thing I would argue personally, is that (outside of any plot consideration please), I just don’t see how Ultima IX “dumbed down” anything in term of being an Ultima game.
Kenneth and Dungy have already pointed it for the dungeons – but I would actually argue that in sheer design area, Ultima IX is possibly the best existing Ultima game. This is a point that was actually argued my many of the reviews back in 1999 actually – a lot of them thought Ultima IX would have been a groundbreaking game and one of the best games of its time if it hadn’t been released in such a terrible state.
And I feel more fans might be willing to see this if they were not blinded by they hatred of the game because of its “inconsistencies”.
Now there were some stuff cut and missing such as NPC schedules, temp companons and so on but it wasn’t done because Origin wanted to “dumb thing down” – and solely out of technical concernes (indeed all these cut stuffs are still present in the game’s code). Basically it’s not dumbing down, it’s just time constraints.
And I’ll repeat a bit was Kenneth said; but Ultima IX’s engine was groundbreaking for a 3D game in 1999. Period. Many haters usually go and focus on all the stuff that was missing compared to Ultima VII. Okay, this is a way to look at it. But you can also look at in a broaded perspective: in that the engine allowed to do things no other 3D games offered, and that many games today still don’t offer.
People complain about Ultima IX not being as interactive as Ultima VII (which is probably arguable in some ways), but it’s still more interactive than the vast majority of 3D games and RPG released nowaday.
I’ll just point one single aspect: moving thing around. Ultima IX allows you to move pretty much ANYTHING in a 3D environment and so crazy stuff with this – in the same way that the previouses Ultima games did. Can you name many games that allows to do so nowadays? Even the Gothic/Risen games which offers a lot of interactivity (and are in many ways a followup of Ultima IX’s design philosophy) don’t allow this kind of stuff.
I guess it’s one of those glass half full/half empty kind of thing – but I can’t blame Origin from trying to push things forward because this is what drove Ultima forward for 20 years. A lot of people goes by the adage “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Well I would point that had Richard Garriott followed that philosophy, we wouldn’t have had such groundbreaking games as Ultima IV through VII. It’s as simple as that.
Now I guess some might argue that Ultima IX is “dumbed down” because is not very RPG-ish from the way it handles character development and so on. Which is a valid point. But the truth of the matter is that Ultima cessed to be a hardcore RPG since basically Ultima VI, when the series began to focus more on world simulatoin, adventure, dialogue and exploration rather the usual motto of CRPG games (meaning it didn’t care anymore about focusing on stats and combat).
In this essence, Ultima IX wasn’t so different from Ultima VII really (indeed to me Ultima IX always felt like some sort of blending of the Ultima VII and Underworld design philosophies)
Or in other words: if you consider Ultima IX “dumbed down” the series – so did the almighty Ultima VII then. (note that this is actually an argument that was brought forth by those who DID thouhgt Ultima VII was an inferior Ultima game back in ’92)
Regarding NWN – I don’t think the issue with the original campain has anything to do with 3D, especially considering that techincally speaking the Baldur’s Gate engine had hardly anything that was lacking in NWN. The issue is more that NWN wasn’t meant to have a main solo campain originally and the original campain was crafted at the last minute – hence its general suckyness.
Also when I look as Bioware’s game today as opposed to what they did before, I do not feel they are dumbed down (but then I would argue you can’t get dumber than the first Baldur’s Gate). Streamlined in obvious ways yes, and the 3D aspect do make it hard ti craft the same quantity of content as a Baldur’s Gate 2, but this doesn’t feel “dumbed down” to be.
But I guess it all bodes down to what ones consider the important aspect of a “RPG” game.
@Dungy – this is definitly true about the attitude of EA regarding fans projects. Not that this doesn’t just concerns Ultima, but also a LOT of Wing Commander fan projects that have been released in the last ten years.
Considering how many publishers have basically destroyed all kind of fan project over the years, fans can only be thankfull to EA about their attitude with fan projets.
I know I certainly am.
I imagine if you announced you were going to make a Mickey Mouse or Super Mario Bros fan game for Dungeon Siege, you’d last about 5 seconds. 😛
Dungy: I don’t agree that Ultima II and III had really horrible desings for their time. If you play the game and want to end it really fast, then yes, you have to do all those things you mentioned, but I played those games really taking my time doing things (like exploring all dungeons), and so far in Ultima II I have just stolen 1 time from that place you mention. You can survive perfectly with the money you get. It’s just a bit difficult in the begining. It still has a lot of annoying bugs though… like the stats restarting after 99.
Anyway, about Ultima IX, I agree with sergorn, the game was groundbreaking. And all the innacuracies it has can be explained, as a matter of fact, the only thing that really bothered me was Malchir’s statement about how he died.
I remember that after I played Ultima IX back in the day no game came close to it’s graphics or UI for years, and as Sergorn said, even today some games don’t really get close to what that engine can do.
It even has some nice physics (which sadly were a little bugged and get even more bugged as years pass and computers get faster…).
If they had taken at least 1 more year before release, the game could have been a big hit, but they released it with tons of bugs and in a time when almost no one had a computer that could play it (I bought more or less the best hardware there was at the time and the game still was a bit choppy sometimes)
About the topic in question, people nowdays want to just play the game without any tedious tasks added to the experience. They don’t like to draw maps, or take notes or anything. They want everything inside the game and they expect every game to be like that. I don’t mind games like that, but sometimes I think they overdo it. I don’t mind auto journals, or automaps, but all those arrows pointing to the important stuff/npcs in the game world (Oblivion or Dragon Age for instance) are in my opinion a bit too much.
Quite right, Natreg; if one wants to point to a “dumbed down” RPG, U9 ain’t it, at least not in comparison to some modern titles (which do practically lay out a yellow brick road for the player).
As to the point about EA and remakes, we must remember that at least two remakes died because their developers couldn’t get a formal blessing from EA. That’s not a strict condemnation of EA, mind you; their policy has always seemed to be one of calculated indifference, as opposed to the more persecutorial attitudes of other publishers.
In other words, no remake will ever get the “you go, team!” from EA, but neither will they get the cease and desist letter. It’s a workable, if not strictly ideal, system.
I can’t say I blame EA for taking that approach. EA would be foolish to give official blessing to a project without having proper control over it. What if someone decided to hide 2 minutes of hardcore pornography in a product, unknown to EA?
Exactly, Dungy.
Really, it was silly of developers like the Dawn of Virtue team to make their project’s continuation contingent on EA’s good blessing. The fact that they got as far as they did with it without getting sued was as much a blessing as they could ever have gotten.
Yeah well – to be blunt the whole cancellation of Ultima 1 Rebortn and Dawn of Virtue just because they couldn’t get official permission, always felt to me just like a poor excuse just to stop doing these games.
Anyone with a bit of common sense would understand from the start, that whether they care or not, companies just CAN’T go and get official sanction to fan projects. It would be akin to giving official recognition to fan-fics or fan-films. Granted there have been a couple of exceptions – but basing a whole project on the premise that you might get someday an official recognition from the IP holders just feels silly and sort of a misplaced vanity to me.
Also I feel the whove U1R/DOV debable actually kind of hurt the community, because it gave the impression to many people that EA had put a stop to these projects, while it was a decision made by the developers themselves.
EA in the end wouldn’t have cared had these projects been completed.
I think they have a policyt which is to consider fan content such as the Ultima remakes or the Wing Commander mods, akin to fan-fiction or fan-films. Basically something that is not going to hurt the franchise (and if anything keep the community and the fans existings), and that they’re not gonna attack unless someone try to make some bucks out of it.
Hell now that I think of it, this attitude from EA and OSI can actually go back farther than that. You just have to think about Ultima Online and the numerous free Shards that have existed over the years. EA could have easily had them legally shut down like Blizzard or Sony did with WoW and EQ (even moreso since these shards were technically against the UO TOC)… but they never did, and I actually rememebr Richard Garriott (which was still one of OSI’s big honcho then) welcoming this kind of player made shards.
But basically I think this a healthy attitude in term of respecting the fan communities, and I guess as healthy as it can gets in term of not hunting down those projects.
If one really wants to know how gaming attitudes have changed since the 1980s, it’s best to go back to the source. I spent some time leafing through old Computer Gaming World and Softline episodes at http://cgw.vintagegaming.org/. It’s a great place to look for reviews of the Ultima series at the time they were released, and there’s tons of great information there, and lots of old Origin Systems advertisements. Some gems I’ve found.
Softline, Volume 1.1, September 1981, Page 18 Ultima I review
Softline, Volume 2, January 1983, Page 40 Ultima II review
Softline, Volume 2.4, March 1983, pages 48 – 49 Richard Garriott interview/Ultima II advertisement
Softline, Volume 3.2, November – December 1983, pages 16 – 17 Ultima III review, Ultima III advertisement
Softline, Volume 3.4, March – April 1984, pg. 49 Ultima III top RPG
Computer Gaming World Issue 2.1, Jan-Feb 1982 Page 33. Ultima I review
Computer Gaming World Issue 2.6, Nov-Dec 1982 Ultima I/II advertisement
Computer Gaming World Issue 3.2, Page 23 Ultima II Advertisement and review
Computer Gaming World Issue 4.5 Page 14 – Interview with Lord British about plans for Ultima IV. Quite informative
Computer Gaming World Issue 5.5 Page 47 – Ultima III Macintosh review
Computer Gaming World Numbers 25/26 have great Ultima IV articles.
Computer Gaming World Number 47, page 12 – Review of Ultima V
Computer Gaming World Number 87 Reviews Ultima VII (page 40) and Martian Dreams (page 82)
Computer Gaming World Number 96 Reviews Ultima Underworld I
Softline Volume 2.4 is especially interesting, since it has a newspaper article written about Richard Garriott shortly before the release of Ultima II in 1982, talking about his success with Akalabeth and Ultima I.
Cripes, guy, this is like a month’s worth of article material. Excellent find!
I haven’t even read 10% of the Ultima articles yet. Fortunately, there’s a search index you can download for Computer Gaming World that allows you to save a lot of time if you’re looking for something really specific. For instance, there was a single 3 line mention of Mt. Drash back in August 1983. They thought it was nifty. 😛
It’ll make for some interesting additions to the “What Makes an Ultima” series, I think. Might even use it to expand the synopsis page.
I miss the old Computer Gaming World. Up until about 1990 or so it was just awesome and focused alot on RPG’s. I think I still have an early 80’s mag or 2 laying around somewhere.
Ultima IV is not unplayable now, but new games have been released in the last 25 years. Therefore, new gamers would not play Ultima IV like an original and revolutionary game anymore. They would play a game knowing that there are others (which were released after it and were inspired by it) which have the same features as Ultima IV.
This makes Ultima IV is outdated in terms of technology, design, story and gameplay, compared to newer games.
Games evolve and the impact of a revolutionary concept marks the moment they are actually revolutionary. People will continue having fun with older games, but they will rarely be a great hit again, unless someone remakes them with new good features.
I don’t get this. World of Warcraft is all work (fetch me X of this, kill Y of that, grind, grind, grind).
Sure, interrogating every person you find in Ultima IV might be a bit of a chore, but even that is more varied than the quests in WoW.
I liked ultima 4,and ultima 1 and ultima 7.
I have some stuff though that bothers me about ultima 4:
The whole key words things annoys me.Its very hard to know if someone has the right information or is even the right character.There are also moments that are very vague,like the moment where you search for a rune in minoc tower.