Spoony Reviews Ultima 8
Well, Noah “Spoony” Antwiler has posted his review of Ultima 8: Pagan. And well…he doesn’t like it. Though at least Master of Orion 3 still ranks worse in his mind:
Unplayable? I passed it.
To be fair, he actually does raise a valid point about the game’s packaging and themes. Pagan was controversial in my house too because of that damn box art, although my parents didn’t really follow in-game content that closely. But let’s face it: Ultima 8 does make you do some rather unvirtuous things.
Anyhow, this one wasn’t as laugh-inducing as some of his other stuff has been, so…enjoy it for what it’s worth (there are a couple decent laughs), but also take it with a grain of salt. He utterly lambastes the game, far more than it deserves.
Heh. You sound more defensive about this than you did about his negative review of your favorite entry in the series.
Maybe.
Don’t get me wrong, U8 certainly has and does many things worth the criticism they receive. But it hardly merits the insane level of “WORST GAME EVARRRR!!!” that Spoony doles out in this review.
Plus, he just wasn’t that funny this time around. Even when I disagree with his assessment, I’m usually left in stitches…but not this time.
I’ll take “Axes To Grind” for $800, Alex.
I enjoyed the review and understand now why Ultima fans don’t like arcade action mixed in. It was so poorly executed previously that the only saving grace is Underworld and partially VI and VII.
About the only thing I liked about Pagan was the micro-managing of the magic system. I’ve only done one playthrough of the game and that was the pre-patched version. If I were to play it again ( I’m tempted but it’s doubtful), I would still play it pre-patched, because as tedious as the platforms were, it was still challenging to time the jumps for the vertical hovering platforms.
He should have spent less time showing exploding chests and more time explaining how the game’s writing had suddenly and inexplicably declined from the heights achieved by its predecessors only a year earlier.
Was the writing that bad? I never thought the writing was all that bad, aside from the odd plot point or two that is introduced early on and then entirely dropped for whatever reason.
In terms of pure themes, I’d argue that Pagan had some of the best writing. The game forces you to make the choice to basically ruin this other world in order to save Britannia and Earth. I wonder what the Avatar would have thought, in between Ultima 8 and 9, when he got back to Earth and realized that the Guardian apparently hadn’t even touched it while he was away and that he had crapped all over Pagan for nothing.
Nah, “WORST GAME EVARRR!!!” will be his Ascension review. 😉
The game forces you to make the choice to basically ruin this other world in order to save Britannia and Earth.
A “choice” (really, just the Avatar stumbling aimlessly through gray caves and causing trouble) which has no effect on the game world at all except some rain and fireballs falling on Tenebrae which nobody even remarks upon (except maybe a couple of sentences from Devon about the rain).
And why did you need to free Hydros? To cool some lava so that you can cross to the other side. A “deep thematic choice” made in service of platforming mechanics – how very appropriate. And I’m pretty sure you didn’t need to free Pyros at all.
The whole “Avatar destroys one world to save another” theme is something that Ultima fans have sort of independently decided was the “true genius” of U8, but the game itself contains very little to support the notion.
I actually have a friend that loves this game. Only Ultima he’s ever played and he apparently has very fond memories of it…
I dunno, I thought it was pretty funny. Cut Spoony some slack, he’s been going through some shit, and it looks like he’s getting back up on his feet.
I agree with Infinitron.
The whole “OMG the Avatar as so eviiil and did so many eviiil acts in Pagan” angle is *way* overblown, to the point of being sometime ridiculous.
One of the prime example really is Malchir and how some fans ramble about how the Avatar MURDERED him (what an evil Avatar!). I mean come on? Now when you kill someone in self defense it’s murder ? Geez I guess the Avatar murdered Hook and Elizabeth and Abraham as well 😛
Even the whole “deamon summoning” angle, while understantably controversial for some people (personally god, I loved that flaming Pentagram boxart)… really has nothing un-virtuous from an Ultima angle, or else I should have lost my Avatar during Ultima V considering how many deamons I summoned in the name of Virtue. Likewise for the Pentagram controversies, which were symbol of magic in Ultima since… always.
The game had darker and violent understones… but this was consistent in how the series evolved with Ultima VII.
Now regarding the Avatar’s actions, personally I feel the “sin” the Avatar commited in Ultima VIII, is that he DID put Pagan on the brink of destruction in order to get home without knowing for sure he WOULD succeed. I mean had the Avatar died while “batling” the Titans, Pagan sure would have been in trouble. But getting rid of the Titans certainly wasn’t an evil act (no matter how much some fans want to pretend the Titans weren’t really evil) and it’s even stated as such in the game with Mythran explicitely saying that all Pagan will be in the Avatar’s debt if he vainquish the Titans. But I can’t say I would feel the acts of the Avatar in themselves were evil or that questionnable on the whole.
And indeed that seemed to be the thematic Garriott was aiming for in Ultima VIII: no so much about “Hey look the Avatar does evil stuff” but more about “How far can you go for the greater good ?” (which leads to some questionnable act but… not that much either).
@MicroMagic – There are a lot of people who like or even love Ultima VIII actually, it’s just that a lot of them weren’t Ultima fans to begin with, so they had no cause to be dissapointed. Same thing with Ultima IX really.
The Avatar does do one pretty awful thing – taking the Breath of Air from Stratos and destroying all healing magic on Pagan, causing poor Stellos’ instadeath.
However, even the consequences of this were not explored enough. Why are all the healers in Pagan hiding out in some little cove in the middle of nowhere? Shouldn’t they be in the city, you know, healing people? Shouldn’t we see how the sick are dying because of the Avatar’s drastic actions?
It’s especially weird considering that they did flesh out the Theurgists a bit with the Torwin plot which, while rather dramatic, didn’t really have anything to do with the Avatar and his actions.
True about the Breath of Air, but even Stellos seems to suggest that that taking the Breath of Air might not be so bad if he DOES have a good reason to do so (which he has really: destroying the Titans).
But indeed it’s an aspect that is never explored, so it’s hard to tell. Kinda like Stratos herself really, did she really have good intentions ? (why then? Regret for participating in the destruction of the world perhaps?) Or was she just a devious bitch who approached Stellos with good intentions because she didn’t want to be bound like Hydros or Pyros ? We can speculate as much as we want, but there is nothing in the game really explaining it.
And that’s why its a shortcoming of the game. It isn’t explored well. We don’t see the thematic depth that would’ve given us a better sense of the Avatar’s status and character spanning his sojourn away from Britannia.
@WTF: The reason I think Spoony’s review is pretty much on is 1) that each of the accusations he makes are correct (exploding chests ARE dumb, grey caverns ARE repetitive, plot threads ARE left dangling, Pagan destruction IS fairly inconsequential) and 2) his emotional response isn’t given–and he explicitly says this at the end–against the game’s own merits, it’s against the body of work that Ultima represents. It’s an abrupt change and a slacking of the technical and storytelling triumphs that the earlier games had. To top that with an inexcusable incompleteness and failure at the jumping game mechanics the designers *wanted* to emphasize, well, it’s worthy of frustration and screams.
I’ve gone back and played the game fully patched and with the emotional distance of time. It’s an ok game. Pretty repetitive. Simple narrative. Too much wandering. Kind of depressing world. As an Ultima? It’s drek worthy only of a sidebar in the Ultima canon, not as a fully fledged entry in the series. And that, also, I how I view Ultima IX: 1) ok, maybe middling game, 2) poor and incomplete Ultima, 3) to be excoriated, not excused for its bugs.
One thing to remember about video reviews (and shows like Spoony’s in particular) is that they are often deliberately hyperbolic. At least he picked on it for good reasons, rather than the UW2 stuff.
I quite liked parts of Pagan, it felt like there was a lot of potential that wasn’t quite realised. If the game had been fleshed out more, and not so action-focused, it could have been truly great. In particular, the necromancy always stood out to me. Maybe because it was an earlier part of the game, it had been more carefully finished, but my hazy memories of it were mostly positive, whilst other parts were poor (wind/water) or felt incomplete (fire). I also always thought Lithos looked a lot like the Nome King from Return to OZ. (compare here: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_dd_RmxygLnk/TG8Qmk7BYfI/AAAAAAAAAio/nt5lx8UZvDo/s1600/return-to-oz.jpg with here: http://codex.ultimaaiera.com/images/thumb/8/8d/Lithos.gif/150px-Lithos.gif )
I’ll be interested to see his Ultima 9 review, I’ve never played the game myself (heard so much bad about it, and after U8… well, I moved on to other things). Did play the demo though, which I thought was pretty good (I recall it being quite a fancy 3D engine for the time).
It is still quite a fancy 3D engine, especially with just the graphics that it already supports.
I think Spoony is funny sometimes (tho not in this review), and his points about Pagan are all spot on. But this is Ultima-my favorite series- so his comments still make me want to stab him in the lung!
I agree with @bedwyr. The game just feels very unfinished. There was the whole lost vale that was never completed, the loose threads Noah raises in his video. It is an okay game, and I think you can derive some enjoyment from imagining what the game could have been, where the game could have gone.
I also think that the avatar doing unvirtous things was a metaphor for what was happening to Britannia. This is a theory, but I think if the game had been completed this would have been much more clear, i.e. you would have to go against all your virtues to be able to complete the game. The more I think of this, the more I think it makes sense. Each Ultima since 4 explores the theme of virtues.
U4 – paragon of virtue
U5 – enforcement of virtue is no virtue at all
U6 – a different set of virtues (from the gargoyles) doesn’t mean they are evil
U7 – but sometimes are different set of virtues are very much evil (the fellowship)
U8 – do ends justify the means? is escaping pagan worth losing all your karma/virtues
This is from ultima wikia:
1. The usecode reveals that Lithos was angered by the removal of the Heart of Earth, so he would start earthquakes and would send his undead army against Tenebrae. Also, Vividos would openly accuse the Avatar of treachery. (lack of compassion / honor / honesty / justice)
2. When looking through the program files, there is an item in the GFX-files: the Key of the Necromancer. This object does not appear in the release but can be created with the cheat program. However, its properties are broken and it only has the same use of the Key of the Caretaker. Such a key might have been passed to Vividos, when he became the Necromancer, and then to the Avatar when Vividos somehow died. Lithos’ parting words that the Avatar shouldn’t meet him again until becoming the Necromancer amounts to nothing in the release. Under this scenario, it might have. (killing Vividos: lack of Valor,sacrifice,humility etc.)
As the avatar was corrupting himself, so was the land. So the game ends to a very ironic note, where supposedly the avatar reaches the power of a titan, only to find he basically gave up all he stands for, and finds a burning land waiting for him.
What a game U9 would have been.
but sometimes a* different set of virtues is* very much evil (the fellowship)
I might have other typos. sorry.
Wow, thanks for such a tight thematic interpretation Julio. That’s really close to how I perceive the Ultimas.
Shit, that was nice. I’ve never heard it laid out like that either, very concise and to my mind accurate.
Ultima wikia? :/
Thanks so much!
I was looking for some information to support my claims, so that’s where the wikia came from: http://ultima.wikia.com/wiki/Hydros
It seems to be pretty complete for U8.
Guys…the Codex! It’s right here!
Well…here, actually.
Forget that Wikia nonsense.
Hey WTF, sorry about that. I would definitely link to the codex. But I can’t seem to access it right now. I’m getting a 404 from the link.
Thanks
It should be working now. Not sure what happened, but it looks like an update removed PHP4 compatibility and swatted a configuration file.
You can all thank Fenyx4 for his hard work getting it humming again.