Linguistic Dragon recently, for the first time in over a year, posted an update to the Ultima Journeys blog…or, at least, an update in which he cotinued playing through an Ultima game:

When last I left off, I’d just taken my first steps into the underground domain of the original inhabitants of Eodon Valley, the Kotl. And I’m beginning to sense something of a trend here. First it was Ambrosia in Ultima III, then retrieving the Codex from the Abyss in Ultima IV, which was followed by the Underworld of Ultima V, then the Gargoyle lands of Ultima VI, and now the Kotl city in Savage Empire. The Avatar seems to have a certain fondness for hurling himself headfirst to explore vast, dangerous underground territory in search of something necessary to save the world. At this rate, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was another game down the line that ended up being entirely underground!

…oh right. Ahem. Moving right along!

As you might expect, given that this is Linguistic Dragon, it is a lengthy article that goes into great detail about all that transpired during the play session it chronicles. An excerpt:

Spector turned out to be holed up in the generator room itself, both himself and the generators protected by the same force field we’d witnessed about him earlier. It took a while to catch sight of him proper, considering that my sight was limited in the underground city and the narrow path over the lava to where he was standing was blocked by a robotic tyrannosaur that I’d just so happened to kill on that path. Once I’d managed to get a grasp on things, the mad doctor and I had ourselves a little chat. He theorized that the moonstones that had brought us all into the Valley in the first place were pieces of the black stone the Myrmidex now held, and that one of the side effects of drawing power from that stone were odd changes in the flow of time. We knew we had to throw a monkey wrench into his plans somehow, but what could we do when both he and the generators that would power his plot were protected by force fields?

Mess with the controls, of course! Those were still within reach, and we soon managed to shut down the power in the city. The glow faded from around Spector, and he found himself in his right mind once more. The automatons froze as they shut down (Yunapotli included, sadly), and the city went dark. There was no chance to reflect on what this meant for the legacy of the Kotl, however, as the shut-off instigated a collapse of the city, and we found ourselves fleeing for our lives as the ground shook (complete with shakes on-screen, a nice touch). We managed to escape just in the nick of time, and as we stopped to catch our collective breath, Spector told us what needed to be done to deal with the Myrmidex threat once and for all. He told us there were too many for a single band to deal with, but with the tribes of the valley united, they could be defeated. Their queen would need to be destroyed, lest she spawn another brood and trouble the Valley all over again. So too would the black stone need to be destroyed – Spector wondered whether it was what was keeping us trapped in the Valley, but regardless, he feared what the Myrmidex might do if they figured out how to tap its power the same way the Kotl had. It was what had driven him mad in the first place – what might it do to the Myrmidex? It was too dangerous to ignore.

As always, I’ll suggest that you click on through to read the whole thing.

Now, during the course of that session, he was able to complete the game, so in yet another recent update, he gives us his thoughts on the game:

All in all, I think I’ve come out of this game with a newfound appreciation for it. It’s still not going to rank up there with my favorites in the series, I’m not going to be as eager for a reply of it as I am the Age of Enlightenment games. But I think there’s something quintessentially Ultima about it. One of the hallmarks of the series, in my mind, is its willingness to experiment, to try new things and go in different directions. It doesn’t just take what worked and make more of it – it tries to iterate, find new things that work, ways to improve on what’s already working. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but it does, at the very least, end up interesting, and that’s part of what’s enjoyable about the series for me. And that’s exactly what Savage Empire did – it took something that worked, it built on it, it went a different direction, and it tried new things. Some of it I enjoyed, some of it I didn’t. And I’m expecting all of that will be improved and experimented on and taken in new directions come Martian Dreams. I have a feeling I’m going to end up seeing Savage Empire the same way I see Ultima II – a transitionary stage, between a spark that served as its source material and the eventual refinement of those ideas to a fine point. There’s bound to be some awkward growing pains in the transition – Savage Empire certainly has them. But like Ultima II, despite its flaws, I have a great appreciation for its part in the development of the series as a whole, and an even greater one now that I’ve played it to completion. Whatever else, I think that’s my biggest takeaway, and I’m all the more eager to see how Martian Dreams goes as a result.

You’ll want to read the whole of that article as well; Linguistic aptly and convincingly compares Savage Empire to Mass Effect 2.

And, with that game under his belt, he then embarked upon an attempt to play through its immediate sequel: Martian Dreams.

Once again the game took the tack of throwing the Avatar into an adventure apart from Britannia, via the Orb of the Moons. While Savage Empire took him into a lost world, Martian Dreams sent him on a steampunk adventure on the Red Planet. Considering time travel is involved, it’s a little difficult to properly decide where the story truly begins (or a least when), but perhaps the best way to approach it is the Avatar’s own perspective – when Dr. Spector shows up on his doorstep one night, ostensibly at the Avatar’s own bequest, the two are visited by a mysterious stranger with a package for them. This package contains a photograph of the two of them with several Victorian-era figures, a note signed by Nikola Tesla, and a book on time travel and the Orb of the Moons written by Dr. Spector himself – dated a century earlier. Following the instructions laid out in the book, the two venture to an abandoned laboratory in Colorado, use the Orb, and find themselves in the year 1895. They discover that two years prior, the astronomer Percival Lowell had developed a “space cannon” designed for a trip to Mars, unveiling the project at the Columbian Exposition of 1893. Unfortunately, the cannon discharged a day early – with several prominent figures of the era on board for a tour. And so the Avatar and Dr. Spector join Tesla’s rescue mission, for whatever adventures might await them on the next planet over.

Much like Savage Empire, I don’t have a lot of previous experience with Martian Dreams. This was largely in part due to the interface issues I had with Ultima VI, which I’ve previously stated that I had several problems adjusting to at first. However, the premise reminiscent of a Jules Verne novel (adaptations of which I read voraciously as a kid) intrigued me far more than Savage Empire’s, and so I was a bit more willing to stick it out just to see what the game had to offer. I’ve never managed to get very far in the game, but I loved its aesthetic and the ideas behind it. It’s one of those games that I quite readily praise even if I’m not entirely sure it’s one that ends up clicking with me personally. Although considering how I’ve managed to get over my initial problems with the Ultima VI interface back during my playthrough of that game, I suspect I’m going to have a much better time of it this attempt around. I’m excited to experience the story firsthand in its entirety, because from what I’ve seen of it in Let’s Plays, it’s going to be an excellent adventure.

But of course I can’t get started without delving into the game manuals – yes that has to be plural, as Martian Dreams came with two!

And again, I’ll suggest you read the entire piece. And thereafter, follow it up by checking out his first steps in the game:

My adventure on Mars began the same way most of my travels through the Ultima series begin: wrapping my brain around the control scheme and figuring out what the heck I have to work with. That was a relatively simple affair as far as Martian Dreams was concerned. It didn’t take very long at all to slip back into the groove of the Ultima VI engine (though it did take me a while to remember that it’s B and not C that switches in and out of combat mode). There wasn’t that much in my inventory to take stock of either, mainly clothing that was already equipped, a pocketwatch, and Nellie Bly’s pistol. I also took a moment to take a peek at my little band’s stats, and already found myself with one improvement over Savage Empire: Aric was my most highly experienced character, and even he had some room for growth. One of my complaints about Savage Empire was how little development it felt my characters were experiencing over the course of the game – here in Martian Dreams, there’s lots of space for improvement. I’m still a little wary over carrying capacity and inventory concerns perhaps making the actual stat growth choices… less of one (does intelligence even have a use in this game, since there’s no magic?) but that’s a bridge I’ll cross when I get to it. In any case, I suspect the possibility of more frequent levels, even if it just ends up being extra HP and a point of strength, will help alleviate the problems I had in the previous game of that nature.

Now that I had an idea of the characters I’d be bringing along with me on this excursion, it was time to… well, get an idea of the characters I’d be bringing along with me. (Ah, language. Gotta love the multiple ways certain turns of phrase can be interpreted.) I had a sense of what I might be able to expect from them gameplay-wise, so I next took a moment to get a sense of who they were. Spector assured me of his desire and ability to assist – and asserted it was his job to keep the Avatar out of trouble – before remarking once more upon the differences between what modern science said of Mars compared to their current experience of the Red Planet. Nellie Bly told me a little bit about herself, speaking of her experience as a journalist, her chosen pen name, and the notes she would take about the expedition. It seems she’ll fulfill a similar role to Jimmy in Savage Empire, in effect functioning as a walking, talking quest log. This is something I do appreciate about the Worlds of Ultima games, in essence keeping track of at least the highlights of important plot points right there in game. Makes it easy for a quick reminder of what the player maybe should be doing right about now without drowning them in detail. I feel like with the sheer amount of content and sidequests and detail in modern games, it can be a bit difficult to parse a quest log for the immediately important bits, and the simple approach used here feels like a good way to go about it – keep track of the Big Relevant Plot Things, and leave whatever else the player chooses to pursue to their own recollections.

Most recently, Linguistic has gotten his party into some troublesome situations on the Red Planet:

With our oxygen needs now seen to, at least for the foreseeable future, we wound our way through the canyons to what we surmised was the designated meeting place in the Chasma. And sure enough, we found Cooter himself, hidden behind a narrow passageway blocked off by a large trunk. He was quite relieved to be rescued, saying that he’d been captured by Rasputin and his “varmints” at Argyre, over his knowledge of the oxium stores on the planet. He mentioned one in particular, a motherlode of the stuff beneath the station at McLaughlin – the only problem was that it was behind an electric-powered door, which would not open unless power could be restored. Mr. McGee suggested that Edison, one of the expedition members holed up in Olympus, would probably be able to figure out what needed to happen there, and in the meantime, told use where he’d buried his map to the motherlode, just outside the entrance to the Chasma. It was an easy effort to find said map (and I was rather amused that I needed room to ‘move’ the dirt I was digging up in order to do so, a nice touch), and from the looks of it, the motherlode was east of the Xanthe Terra, nestled in a corner by some canals just to the northeast. I made a note to look into it when I passed by the area, but for now, it seemed clear Olympus was my next destination.

We picked our way back out of the maze of canyons, aiming for the settlement – and once again found ourselves facing a veritable wall of creeping cacti standing in our way. Aric and Dibbs bravely flung themselves onto the front lines, with Nellie Bly and Spector taking potshots from the sidelines. All was a flurry of sap and sabers and shells and needles, but they just kept coming! I think when all was said and done we’d somehow managed to beat back upwards of thirty cacti, and the sap we’d spilled there on the edge of a canal might have gone a decent way toward filling it. We were mostly unscathed, save for a few scratches, but weary, and by the time we came to the gates of Olympus, we were aching for a safe refuge and a friendly community to catch our breath.

If you thought tangle vines in Ultima 6 were a pain, Mars is going to be quite the trip for you!

And literally just as I was about to hit publish on this article, Linguistic posted one additional update:

Forget all roads leading to Rome. Now that I had an affidavit certifying my mental stability – signed in triplicate – in hand, all my leads seemed to point me in the direction of Olympus. There were at least three threads I could recall to follow up on within the community’s walls. Dibbs had suggested a man named Trippet there could assist with repairing the broken conveyor belt in the power station. Edison might be able to help figure out how to get said station providing power once more. I’d also been told Carnegie had been working on building another cannon to make the return trip to Earth. Though he had run out of iron for the necessary steel, seeking him out could still be beneficial, and he too was purportedly to be found in Olympus.

And so, with my course decided, I set out once more to deliver my affidavit to Nathaniel and gain entrance to the gated community. Sticking near the canals had been both easy to navigate and relatively safe in the past, so I stuck to the pattern. It indeed proved to be an uneventful journey, and we spent some time marveling at the Martian vegetation – the forests, the wriggling worm grass, the berry bushes. The glut of levels I experienced in my last session seemed to be dwindling back to what felt like “normal” levels as well. No longer was I seeing at least half my party get stronger when I rested – granted, that was partly because the recent addition of Sherman to the group had increased its size, but I was, at least, beginning to catch up to all the experience I’d been gaining.

As always, click on through and give the whole thing a read. There is, as you can well expect, quite a lot more of it.