Linguistic Dragon found time for another session of Savage Empire recently, and has posted his thoughts about it:

Starting up the game proper leads to me waking up in the the hut of Intanya, shaman of the Kurak tribe and my caretaker during the time I was unconscious. His treatment apparently had the side effect of granting me the ability to understand the dialect of the peoples in the valley, and to assure himself of my mental state and recuperation, he asked me a question. Answered to his satisfaction, he then proceeded to give me the rundown of the current state of affairs. He suggested finding Aiela, the kidnapped daughter of the chieftain, along with the two companions I had accidentally fallen into the valley with via the corrupted moonstone, Professor Rafkin and Jimmy Malone. According to Intanya, Jimmy was likely to be found with the Disquiqui tribe far to the south, while the professor with with the Yolaru tribe, some distance east. He also suggested I speak with Aloron, chieftain of the Kuraks and Aiela’s father, if I wished to aid in the search for her, which I most certainly did – I had, after all, failed to rescue her the first time around (hence the unconsciousness), and felt a certain responsibility to see the job through to completion. Intanya had a few other things to say, such as a mention of the insectoid Myrmidex, fierce warriors and the enemies of most of the valley from what I gathered, and by the time we had finished speaking, I had a decent sense of the current situation, and what I should be doing for the immediate future, at least.

…

…Aloron, the chief, told me much of the same information, corroborating a few rumors and giving me an idea of how I might go about finding the Urali and rescuing his daughter.

Well, one of them. Because before I left the village, I met his other daughter. I bumped into Tristia.

And in so doing, bumped into one of the reasons I had less options when it came to choosing specifics about my character. Savage Empire is the first Ultima game to feature something of a romance subplot, and again, I’m… not entirely certain how I feel about that. Again, it makes sense in the context of the game in and of itself, as it does feel like something that’s very much a part of the genre that Savage Empire is paying homage to. But it feels a little abrupt and forced. I’m not really one who needs romances in games to begin with (there’s far more to explore as far as character relationships go than just the romantic, after all, and more often than not I find other sorts more interesting), having only seen two ‘romance paths’ to completion in all of my gaming that I can think of. It’s just… never really been something the series has spent much time focusing on. Sure, a fair number of Britannians flirt with the Avatar in Ultima VI, and one can even have a little one-night fling with a gypsy, but the focus has been more on the heroism and the teamwork than the romance. Again, I do give the genre shift some credit, but with the potential to do so right off the bat (Tristia’s quick about it and is right there in the starting village, after all), it’s just way too quick. You’ve got to ease into these things to make it feel right, or if not that at least introduce circumstances that make it reasonable to accelerate such a thing – I imagine I won’t be quite so jarred when I finally do rescue Aiela.

You know, when we did the Spam Spam Spam Humbug episode on the portrayal of masculinity and femininity in the Ultima games, we totally missed discussing Savage Empire. We might have to revisit the matter.