WtF Dragon says:

It’s a moral quandary not in the sense that you have a clear choice between one or more righteous paths and one or more anti-righteous paths, but in the sense that you are presented with a series of options that, while each ostensibly is in keeping with a particular Virtue, one or more of them may not align with the moral and ethical values of you, the player. In my own case, I couldn’t choose option #3, since I draw no significant moral distinction between mercy killing and other forms of euthanasia. The question isn’t designed to necessarily penalize your Avatar; it’s designed to make you examine your own conscience…something Kate Flack (the lead designer) has spoken about in a couple of interviews now.

And don’t worry…the game will give you plenty of opportunities to lose Virtue. That isn’t the point of encounters like this, however…these are a different sort of situation.

The fact that it lists the Virtues associated with each choice is, yes, an accommodation to those players who are just in it for the stats…and maybe it would be nice if they gave us the option, in settings, to remove the tooltip. But at the same time…does it really matter? We here are not that sort of player, and we here are unlikely to become that sort of player; there is a separate audience for the game that will actually ponder the options presented regardless of whether or not the associated Virtue is listed. Mythic is trying to design for both play-styles. So yeah, some people — those just in it for the stats — won’t get the full depth of Ultima meaning from the game, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still there for those who want and go looking for it. And hey, I’m sure for some players, the tooltips will be a source of introspection and philosophical examination. (To wit: Is that really a Just course of action?)

I mean, I know that Garriott tended to force the issue rather more, and that certainly worked back in 1985. Garriott also had the tendency to code games that rather mercilessly dispatched the player for various technicalities, without warning or much explanation. Again, that worked in 1985 (and before), and there are a handful of games that employ the gimmick now…but it’s not exactly what most gamers today go looking for, nor is it something which was preserved through all the later Ultimas.

I mean, in the end, it’s putting the onus on the player. If players want to just move on through and level up in a stat, then so be it…it’s technically possible to play Ultima 4 that way too, even if it isn’t quite so obviously indicated — at first — which actions will bump you up in which Virtue. If players come looking for moments that inspire introspection, they’ll find those, tooltips be damned. Really, situations like these are just an expansion on the format of the gypsy questions that formed the basis of character stat/class determination in the original series; there were no anti-Virtuous answers there either, and you always knew which Virtue corresponded to which choice. And come to think of it, it was possible to stat-grind that system too…picking Valor and Compassion at every possible turn, and ending on Valor, was a great way to end up with a high-dexterity fighter.

So really, it’s not that I’m trying overmuch to give the game a pass…it’s that I can look at the classic games and realize that the same things you’re criticizing here can be done in many of them. Maybe not quite as obviously, but that’s not really a significant factor.