Zero 1 Gaming’s Ultima Retrospective: Ultima 6
It has been a little while since we last heard from Paul Izod at Zero 1 Gaming. However, he continued his retrospective look at the Ultima series today, this time taking a look at Ultima 6, upon which he heaps a great deal of praise:
…where the narrative is concerned Ultima VI: The False Prophet stands on its own as the best game story I have ever come across. While in my previous article I may have asserted that Ultima V’s narrative was the best of the series, on reflection I feel I must retract. Taken as an overall story, while Warriors of Destiny was truly special, The False Prophet stands out as just that little bit better. I’ll be honest, it’s like picking your favourite child really, it’s virtually impossible.
…
What, on the face of it, promises to be a fairy standard fight against overwhelming odds rapidly becomes a commentary of prejudice, pre-conceptions and of the consequences of noble intentions. The concept of perspective is applied to previously heroic deeds and the player is forced to face the fact that the Avatar, while a hero in the true sense of the word for Britannia, is also the harbinger of doom for the Gargoyles, who are fully justified in hating him for his actions. The attitudes of the Britannia people and Lord British are shown to be resistant and prejudiced and the theme of unifying the two slighted peoples is also touched on.
…
The true merit of Ultima VI: The False Prophet is in its transformation of standard, clichéd oppression storyline into an odyssey of self-discovery, introspection and evolution. It doesn’t overtly preach and it certainly doesn’t patronise; what it does is deliver a revelatory narrative in the most engaging way possible and for that I can describe it as nothing less than one of the best games I have ever had the fortune to experience.
Regular readers of the site will remember that I have consistently praised Ultima 6 as the best of the series, in no small part because of its beautiful subversion of the standard “save the land from the monsters” trope. Giving the monsters a legitimate grievance and a sympathetic (in the end) cause was a stroke of narrative genius on the part of Origin Systems, against which not even baking bread can compare.
At any rate, do read the whole thing; the good Mr. Izod also discusses some of the criticisms that have been leveled at Ultima 6. He also indicates that his next article will focus on Ultima 7, which suggests that for the time being he is ignoring the Underworld games from his retrospective series.
Oh don’t worry, I’ll be covering the offshoot games like underworld too 😉 might do underworld next actually, we shall see 😉
Paul, are you referring to my criticisms of Ultima VI in the article? I’m not sure anybody else has ever bothered to level serious criticisms at U6. 😉
Re: The game’s story
The idea certainly had potential, but in practice I felt the whole Humans vs Gargoyles thing was underdeveloped, and only came into play in the very final act. You spent most of your playthrough in Ultima VI collecting runes, mantras and map pieces. Those are the things I remember doing in Ultima VI. The “resolving the Gargoyle crisis” stuff was just the endgame.
To be honest, it was based on general impressions felt over the years I’ve felt when reading about it and my, admittedly limited, memories from the time.
Not sure I’ve come across your article on VI. What’s the link my friend, I would be very keen to have a read 🙂
I haven’t written an article. I’ve levied my criticisms against Ultima VI on Facebook and elsewhere.
To me, Ultima VI is the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion of the Ultima series. It knocked a bunch of people’s socks off because of its ambition and they remember it fondly, because they’d never seen anything like it before, but the game had SO many design flaws.
Ultima VII is the Skyrim to Ultima VI’s Oblivion – streamlined, but far more tight and coherent.
(Both games are of course much better than their modern counterparts.)
Ultima 7‘s a fun enough game, and some of its world simulation aspects are unparalleled (though I’d argue that it and Ultima 6 ultimately end up balancing out based on which world simulation features are and aren’t present in each).
Narratively, though, it’s somewhat contrived and straightforward, not really that much different than any episode of Murder She Wrote or a good Hercule Poirot yarn. Hey, there’s a dead guy…here’s some clues to his murderers…here’s this group he was part of that seems shifty at the outset…more murders, infiltrate the shifty-seeming group, wild goose chase…and so forth. Except Hercule Poirot never (that I’m aware) had to end a case in a final battle royale.
The Skyrim/Oblivion comparison is, in other words, half-correct. From a purely technical standpoint, sure, Ultima 7 is the Skyrim to Ultima 6’s Oblivion. In terms of narrative, though, Ultima 7 is more the Morrowind to Ultima 6’s Oblivion. And even that might be an overly generous statement.
That said, I’ll concede that Ultima 6 could’ve done more to “sell” the idea of a Gargoyle invasion. Maybe I should see if I can pull up one of the Ultima 6 editors and change some of the random encounter eggs to spawn Gargoyles instead of e.g. swashbucklers and mongbats; I have the suspicion that this would greatly improve on that aspect of the game.
I think the issue with Ultima VI’s story… is that it lost its importance and context in time.
I mean it relies a lot on the twist: you start the game hunting evil deamons who want to destroy the world and so on…. and then bam you have THE twist. But it got to a point where really, everybody knew the Gargoyles are not evil, so Ultima VI kinda lost of its effect unless you had the chance to play it at the time.
Maybe so, but you could say the same about the Fellowship being evil.
I think it’s evidently true that the whole “Gargoyle invasion” crisis wasn’t represented in the game as well as it should have been. It’s why the Ultima 6 Project guys made the modifications that they did.
Except I’d argue the Fellowship being evil, assuming this was meant to be a plot twist, was a very crappy plot twist since it’s pretty obvious after five minutes in the game that they are evil and have got to be in league with the Guardian beucase of very obvious and not subtle twists.
Honestly I don’t think I’ve ever talked to someone who genuinely felt the Fellowship was good and felt this was a twist – if anything I’ve seen some people who were hoping the twist would be that the Fellowship wasn’t evil. 😛
While the Gargoyle twist in Ultima VI is awesome and well presented I think, while also serving as a commentary to to RPG genre itself.
Now could some aspects have been better handled? Sure. You’re probably right in saying the game could have used more time in the Gargoyle lands and with the unifying the races bit. But then… it’s also a 1990 games, and I think for a 1990 game it does thing very well.
I have to say, I completely disagree. Any story loses some impact after the first experience, from knowing the twists etc. The story in VI has enormous merit in its underlying themes and applicability. It speaks on a number of levels and offers varies societal commentary, as well as being a fine narrative in its own right.
From ‘The Quest of the Avatar’ onwards, Richard Garriott and Origin strove to implement ever increasingly complex and sophisticated stories and themes and I think the story in VI stands out as the exemplar of that effort.
Oh but I completly agree with you. ^^’
I just think however knowing the twist beforehand diminishes the full impact of this.
the narrative of VII had a lot of promise, it just was, sadly, flawed in its implementation. There was great potential to further challenge the very foundation of the virtues and the Avatarship as a whole, really challenging the notion of prescriptive religion, of the nature of choice and the greater good. hell, even the guardian could have been played at least partly as potentially benevolent initially. It could have been a swashbuckling murder mystery dragging you across Britannia on the trail of murderers and conspiracies, uncovering the mysteries of the impending arrival of the Guardian and eventually revealing the fellowship as what they are, a cult.
instead, they had the guardian stick his head into your living room and basically tell you his plan…
what could have been. To be fair, it says alot about how great the game itself is mechanically and environmentally that it is accepted as the majority favourite of the series DESPITE the flawed story.
I agree. When we did that interview with Raymond Benson he explained how the thing he loved about UVII is how it played and unveiled like a myster novel and that was what he aimed to achieve… but to me it just falls flat considering the mystery basically solves itself after a few minutes.
aye, it certainly feels like a story high on aspiration and grand in intention, which possibly was too focussed on the what and not the how of the story, if you see what I mean
The story may not have been as exciting as it could have been, but the game’s thematic coherence was superb. Every single thing you saw in Britannia reflected the game’s themes of modernization and social alienation.
In contrast, remarkably little of what you did in Ultima VI had to do with the Gargoyle crisis.
Stupid dormant shrines.
Haha.
I see where Paul is coming from, but I think he’s looking at the game from a very limited perspective. You can’t judge the quality of a game’s storytelling through the basic narrative alone. Yes, fighting against a race of demons and learning that they were actually good guys was a pretty original thing, even mindblowing, but ultimately that’s only a minor part of the experience.
You need at the full package – theme, worldbuilding, pacing, consistency, general writing quality. In all of these areas, Raymond Benson’s professional team blew Ultima VI out of the water. That’s to be expected, because the man came with serious credentials.
Did that goalpost just move?
Not 100%, but narrative is still a huge part of that; the meat, if you will. You can dress the plate up with other fine things, but the side dishes don’t make the meal.
I disagree. The narrative is the major part of the experience; what the hell is the game without its story, after all? Just a fancy-ass walking simulator with swordplay thrown in.
I’ll grant that Ultima 7 had higher-quality writing, even if the story was otherwise fairly contrived and uninspiring. Ditto the consistency with respect to its predecessors.
Then too, I’d argue that Serpent Isle exceeded Ultima 7 in terms of both its story and the quality of its writing…and Benson was minimally involved in its production. So the quality and consistency argument only gets you so far; if the story overall is mediocre, the fact that its grammar and sentence structure are better doesn’t count for much.
For theme, world building, and pacing, Ultima 6 matches or exceeds what Ultima 7 offers, I’d argue.
To be honest, I think that the reason it didn’t focus on the Gargoyles was precisely because the idea was to not think about the gargoyles as anything but monsters initially. The idea was for the player to engender the same mindset as the people of Britannia; that of an invading horde of monsters. that then sets a benchmark from which to then contrast the reality of the tragedy of the their true nature. Delve too much into them sooner and you undermine that. You would have had the same problem as in VII where the Fellowship needed more mystique than they were given
I agree.
As a matter of fact U6P does just that : they introduce this sort of Gargoyle Avatar/antagonist very early in the game which basically blow the whole lid on gargoyles being more than evil mindless monsters. Which is okay about a remake but not the point UVI was trying to make (the whole wingeg/wingless thing was interesting too even if UVII dropped it all)
lol in what way am I being limited in my perspective. In every way VI’s narrative was more sophisticated in realisation. There was a greater depth of applicability, theme, commentary, satire and just overall engagement. Perhaps VII could have had that, but the story rather fell flat and much of the potential was lost
Paul, you must not have played the Ultima VI that I did. The Ultima VI that I played was a game where Gargoyles only appeared near the shrines, nobody in Britannia really talked about them much except maybe in Britain and Cove, and half the playthrough was spent teleporting around the world with the Orb of the Moons, searching for map pieces in dungeons.
Again, cool idea, poor execution.
Kenneth:
I tend to agree that Serpent Isle was the better game. If the developers had been allowed to finish the game, it would be a strong contender for best RPG of all time. One of the greatest tragedies.
It was, incidentally, also a thematically strong game (with recurring themes of colonialism, religious conflict and religious dissidence). If Benson had nothing to do with that, then I still don’t know what was up with those U7s and why their writing was so good. 🙂
Well… U7 had Benson.( Im not a fan of his writing but he undeniably brought a lot in term how of the writing team was managed.)
SI has Warren Spector and Sheri Graner Ray 😛
I don’t know about Sheri, but yeah, Warren seems thoughtful enough to have come up with that kind of thing.
Well, Sheri Graner Ray came with Ophidian Virtues so that’s gotta count for something. 😉
I think Serpent Isle was special because it seems the team really had some kind of synergy or osmose with everyone working on as a single mind. Kind of a pity that team didn’t stay together to make another game afterward.
also, bit cheeky I know, but if you’re enjoying the Ultima articles i’m doing, please take the time to sign up to the facebook page (www.facebook.com/faultypixel)
also, I do host a gaming radio show that gets released as a podcast, where i often touch on ultima. that can be found on itunes 😉
Apologies, for the plug, but you know how it is!
The problem with having a contrived “story” is that once experienced and known the intended emotional and intellectual effects are diluted significantly. It’s like reading the same sentence in a book over and over again. It may be brilliant, insightful and entertaining, but it’s static.
Without getting into arguments about which stories were subjectively more engaging or better executed, I argue that their value as classical works are more accurately defined by what you feel when you play them now (anachronistic elements aside). Only gameplay with output sufficiently complex to belie predictability is capable of sustaining a work through the ages, with some examples being chess and Tetris. Obviously those are minimalistic works compared to Ultima, but I think the same standard applies. Story’s great, and I love them (Game of Thrones, for example), but we’re not yet at the point where stories and gameplay actions are one and the same. Until then I think we’ll be rutted in these arguments.