Extra Lives: Ultima Retrospective Series
Reggie C., who blogs at Extra Lives (World 1-1), recently completed a series of retrospective articles looking at the games comprising the mainline Ultima series. These would have passed almost unnoticed, I fear, had Infinitron Dragon not chanced upon the site whilst looking for something else entirely.
The retrospectives — covering each numbered Ultima game from 1 through to 9 (as well as the two Underworld games) — are lengthy, detailed, and overall quite excellent. A sample of each is provided below, as well as a link whereat the rest can be read.
…for the RPG crowds looking for a little D&D inspired fun on computers, Ultima I was exactly what they were looking for in the same way Akalabeth was — a simple character creation system, point allocations into stats, and race selection with humans being smarter than elves for a change when it came to magic. Dwarves were also in there along with a hobbit-like race called “bobbits”. It also boasted a wide variety of hotkey triggered actions in conjunction with the direction keys. NPC conversations were nearly non-existent and most existed in the game to either sell the player something or send them off on a quest. These were the simple, early days of CRPGs, but it was still more than enough for role-players.
According to Richard “Lord British” Garriott’s own note in the manual, it took him 14 months and the help of a small team made up of ‘friends and colleagues’ to build the game which was far larger in scope than the first one. It was also programmed in assembly making it “the first assembly language program” that he had ever written according to a “tell all” article for Computer Gaming World in 1988. After his experience working with Ken Arnold on Ultima I in which he only knew BASIC and Ken used machine code for the tiles, Garriott decided that was how he wanted to code for the sequel to make it even bigger than before.
Ultima II still used the mechanics of the first game — tile-based, top down perspective and movement, key letter commands, wire frame dungeons, lots of monsters to kill — and expanded the world with the use of time gates and travel into outer space. Did you know that Jupiter has a dungeon? Towns have also gotten larger, breaking away from the single-screen that they used to occupy in the last game.
As a first for the series, it finally included parties, catching up with what titles such as Sir-Tech’s Wizardry which Garriott also recalls in Addams’ book. The first two Ultima games were solo ventures — the player as the “Stranger” would go forth and smite evil all by themselves. Now, the “Siege Perilous” has been “widened” to allow a party of four to enter the lands of Sosaria. Or, you could start off solo and recruit whoever you wanted from the land itself if you so chose, though this didn’t actually seem to work.
now in his twenties and as more players continued to explore his worlds, he realized that this was an opportunity to do more than simply send players off to kill monsters again. If someone was going to spend “100 hours” exploring his world, he felt that the content he was providing should be as responsible. This was a turning point for Richard Garriott and the series as a whole. He had always been personally invested in each Ultima, but now he wanted to take it and himself to another level.
As described by the History of Britannia (which, at least for the computer releases, came with the game along with a cloth map, the Book of Mystic Wisdom, and a small ankh), Ultima III ended the Age of Darkness. The defeat of Exodus transformed the land, shifting “mountains’ and oceans into what they are now. Lord British has unified the land into Britannia and the last vestiges of evil need to be extinguished once and for all. But the true battle lies within!
At least, that was the gist of the game. It was easy to be confused at first. There was no Master Evil that threatened the land, no Wicked Empire to throw down. No clear “goal” in the most traditional sense of a CRPG. It was as if the player were sent on clean-up duty. But the last few pages of the History revealed the real struggle in the words of Lord British himself — to embody the Virtues of the land and lead Britannia to a new Golden Age.
Under the hood, the game boasted a number of technical changes in addition to being able to transfer an Ultima IV character over. A lengthy, text filled, intro explained things to the player with stills and the gypsy was back with questions to craft a new Avatar for players that wanted to start fresh. NPC conversations were expanded allowing a considerably larger range of topics to quiz them on using key words. And not all of them thought that Blackthorn’s brutal control was a bad thing, either.
The tile-based, top-down overworld looked better than before along with the first-person dungeons. Party size had also gone down from eight members to six. Combat was tweaked — unlike in the top-down world of Ultima IV which restricted attacks to the four cardinal points, Ultima V allows you to attack monsters diagonally now. Incidentally, monsters could always attack diagonally in IV giving them something of an unfair advantage. One interesting thing to note was that monsters weren’t all that plentiful on the surface aside from the dungeons or the underworld which actually made sense if you thought about the setting of the game — Britannia’s still at peace, albeit one that has turned it into a police state, but at peace nevertheless. The real monsters are elsewhere, and not always in a dungeon, either.
Ultima VI had also merged both the overworld and its dungeons into one, seamless map. First-person is no longer used for the dungeons — everything is seen in a top viewed, tile-based perspective. Your party of friends are also individually seen on the map instead of only appearing during combat. Graphically, it was also a huge departure from the previous games.
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The twist towards the end was that the gargoyles attacking Britannia and its Shrines weren’t doing so out of evil intentions — they were doing it because of what the Avatar had done to them first. The Avatar was prophesied by their people as the False Prophet, a being that would destroy their world. But that’s exactly what kind of happened. What the Avatar and Britannia had no inkling of in Ultima IV was that when the Codex was recovered, it started the slow collapse of the Underworld where the gargoyles lived. Needless to say, the gargoyles were more than a little upset and by the time Ultima VI came around, attacked out of desperation.
Ultima VII was like Ultima VI from a visual sense, only with massive changes. This time, gameplay mechanics were largely mouse-driven as they were in a typical adventure game on the Macintosh or the SCUMM titles from Lucasarts like Maniac Mansion. The keyboard was also used, but players no longer had to memorize a laundry list of hot keys to manipulate the environment with or special words to use in conversation with NPCs. Topics were listed onscreen with clickable subjects instead.
The game also lived up to its voluntary rating in being for “mature players”. Well before “BioWarian romances” became a buzzword in the modern lexicon, games like Ultima VII pushed the boundaries in small ways on romance and sex. While not as extensive compared to what BioWare would do later, players could take their Avatar and engage in heterosexual trysts with a number of characters in the game depending on their choices.
In a logical progression of what came before, Britannia continued to be a place wide open to exploration — players could literally wander off the linear story and start poking around places where they didn’t belong which is what I almost immediately did. When I hit the capital of Britain, I spent hours walking around and trying to get into as many buildings as possible and reading the in-game books lying around. And, of course, relying on that old adventurer’s maxim of trying to pick up everything that wasn’t nailed down…without my companions or anyone else seeing just what I was doing.
Torches flickered, darkness hid what was around corners, but not everything was entirely in 3D. It was still a mix of 3D environments and 2D art as seen with NPCs, monsters, and whatever you could lay your hands on. Keeping track of all of that stuff was the interface which was also artistically styled to match the medievalism of everything else as it appeared carved from stone with a metallic compass in the center and a parchment paper-doll representing your character and their equipment surrounding the viewing area. Adventure-like icons allowing players to pick up, examine, or interact with things.
Players could also go hungry without food. Swimming was part of the action. Being able to freely look around would be key to revealing hidden clues or items. Carrying too much could weigh you down, slowing movement and making it difficult to keep your head above water. Equipment could wear down in their effectiveness unless cared for. Combat swings were determined by where your cursor was onscreen allowing for overhead bashes, thrusts, and slashes.
Where the first game was largely focused on the underground ecology of the Stygian Abyss, this one takes the player to several different worlds populated by a kaleidoscope of enemies and creatures along with the lore behind why they exist — and what the Guardian has done to make them so.
It was an huge adventure told against the backdrop of an interdimensional war of conquest with the Guardian as the overlord leading his armies, culled and trained in fighting pits which you will also be visiting. And it was still the same kind of non-linear experience that the first game was. There were still certain rules — more worlds would become “open” during the course the game and you couldn’t be a total ass — but once you were somewhere, it was up to you on how to go about unraveling the mysteries ahead.
Ultima 7 Part 2: Serpent Isle:
Serpent Isle is a massive game — its utility of the cultures, history, and their integration with the gameplay are remarkable for all of the connections made and how important the entire picture is to completing the game. That said, it also needs a large degree of forgiveness for its harsh linearity and its penchant for leaving one in the dark if there isn’t a convenient save to jump back to. The NPCs were great to talk to, there was plenty of personality around, but there were times that I could have used a parser to quiz them specifically on topics I needed to know more about or needed a refresher on — even though the game’s script assumed that I didn’t need one.
But one thing that it should be lauded for is in being one of the few CRPGs to inhabit its world with flawed personalities and mature-level situations, plying modern conventions into its environment in ways that the ESRB or Wal-Mart might get upset over. Brazen sexism, philosophical intolerance, greed, arrogance, madness — it’s all bared here and not simply to shock players for what it dares to do. It all fits a purpose to why they are there, even the mad grade schooler that runs around wanting to eat the flesh of anyone around her like a medieval Regan from the Exorcist. Though the characters still have some flaws — no one really reacts to the sacrifice of good Dupre who hurls himself into an incinerator — the world of Serpent Isle wouldn’t be the same without any of them. Or in how they flipped the tables on so many things from Ultima VII’s sandbox.
Like Exodus: Ultima III, this next game was titled the same way as Pagan: Ultima VIII after the world that it takes place on. No longer is the Avatar on Britannia having been transported to Pagan by the Guardian at the end of Serpent Isle. Now he’s on a world that knows nothing of the Virtues that the Avatar had stood for, one that has been ground beneath the heel of his greatest adversary, the Guardian. It’s from this prison that the Avatar must escape from before Britannia is reduced to ashes. No friends provide company this time around, no party to help tackle the challenges ahead. This is a solo action adventure.
So goes the latest setup for the next major entry of the long running Ultima series. Yet longtime fans also remember it for every different reasons. Some had considered it “okay”, others had decried it as the death knell to the series, ultimately pandering to a new demographic inspired more by fast action and bleeding edge graphics. CRPGs were also facing increasing competition from multiple fronts whether it was Doom on PCs or the runaway success of the increasingly lucrative console market with its wide swath of JRPGs.
Personally, I didn’t hate Pagan — it was very different from the ‘classic’ Ultima as I knew it then, but it wasn’t quite the “Super Avatar Bros.” that it had earned as a nickname from certain quarters. Yet seen through the lens of history against what the series was known for over a decades worth of sequels, it’s also easy to understand why many longtime and die-hard fans that had been with the series since the beginning were upset over the changes. To them, Pagan was the “universal ammo” moment or “third-person shooter” shift for the Ultima series.
Partly due to the rough development history it went through and EA’s lack of support for the game. Ultima IX, when it was released in 1999, wasnt quite the grand finish to the Guardian trilogy that fans had expected, especially after Ultima VIII. There were still some fine ideas and concepts buried in the game, but it wasn’t remembered with the most fond of memories even by the series’ most ardent supporters over the years since. It seems to be one of those games that fans prefer to forget focusing instead on what the series had done fantastically well in the past.
In this climax, the Avatar has finally escaped Pagan and returned to a Britannia blasted and ruined by the servants of the Guardian. The Avatar’s arch-enemy had won and a last second escape literally saves the Avatar from being char-broiled by a flying wyrm. His friends driven underground, forming a loose resistance against the overwhelming misery that the Guardian has inflicted on the world, struggle against the Guardian’s minions and his plan to tear what is left apart. The odds aren’t good, Lord British himself is a prisoner in his own castle, and it’s up to the Avatar to set things right. Not only for himself, but once and for all so that the world would survive without him.
This was an incredibly ambitious game. Imagine a game like Ultima VI or Ultima VIII with the ability to manipulate everything within their environment transported over into a 3D world with fully realized polys and textures — a Britannia with all of the openness of an Elder Scrolls with the mechanics of a third-person action adventure game like Eidos’ Tomb Raider or Adeline’s Twinsen with cutting edge graphics. Or expanding on what Looking Glass had already accomplished back in 1992 and 1993 with Ultima Underworld and its sequel, respectively, now into the kind of open outdoors that Bethesda’s procedurally generated wilderness gave players to run wild with.
Anyhow, do click on through each link and read through the entirety of the retrospective. The articles are engagingly written, filled with detail, and…well, let’s face it: it’s always nice to reminisce along with someone about the highlights of each Ultima game, isn’t it?
(Hat tip: Infinitron Dragon; Image credit: Mythic Entertainment)
