GA101 - Ultima VII

From thecrankyhermit

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Way back in 1979, a teenager named Richard Garriott, known to his friends as Lord British, had a hobby of creating Dungeons and Dragons games. For a high school project, he would create Akalabeth, a relatively simple dungeon crawler. A copy wound up in the hands of California Pacific Computer Company, who contacted Garriott to purchase the rights to the game and distribute it. It ended up selling 30,000 copies, an unexpected success, encouraging Garriott to create a successor, Ultima, with commercial distribution in mind from the start.

It expanded on Akalabeth, becoming grander in scope. Ultima's world, Sosaria, was an advanced and open-ended overworld, possibly the first of its kind, from which one could travel across plains, hills, swamps, and oceans, to discover cities, dungeons, ruins, and other landmarks. Lords offered quests and rewards, stores sold weapons, armor, magic, and leased transportation, and dungeons were mazes filled with monsters, traps, and treasures. In short, it defined the whole RPG genre for years. It was released in 1980, became an enormous success, launched Garriott's career as a game designer, and began what is arguably the longest running series of all time.

Sequels to Ultima continued to innovate, refine, and revolutionize the genre. The next two entries completed the "Age of Darkness Trilogy," and were released from 1982 to 1983. They expanded the gameplay's scope, depth, and complexity, and introduced more RPG gameplay staples such as party-based combat, NPC interaction, and puzzles. Although the plots were simplistic, and the design was initially ad-hoc in nature, the trilogy developed Sosaria into a fully realized world, with a distinct history, mythology, and mysticism. With the conclusion of the trilogy, Garriott saw the founding of Origin Systems, where he would direct, design, and self-publish games for years to come.

The next three sequels, produced independently by Origin Systems, were released from 1985 to 1990, and made up the "Age of Enlightenment Trilogy." All were set on the continent of Britannia, of which the geography remained fairly stable and well-developed compared to the settings of the previous titles. With this age, the series found a sense of coherent continuity, and with it explored deeper themes, and loftier RPG concepts. Ultima IV's quest centered around spiritual journey, and introduced a virtue system, which punished unvirtuous behavior with karmic demerits. The next two titles featured stronger narratives, which unfolded throughout the games by ingame sequences, dialog, gameplay mechanics, and world design. They explored themes of moral absolutism, perversion of virtue, and xenophobia, and built conflict around finding solutions to these problems. Throughout the trilogy, Britannia became increasingly detailed, interactive, and eventually seamless.

Ultima VII was released in 1992, and would be the last project Origin would produce independently. It represents the pinnacle of the long running series, and some would argue the pinnacle of RPGs themselves. It is the deepest, largest, most detailed, and most well-written game in the main series. Perhaps more importantly, it is the most intuitive and accessible Ultima since the original.

The Ultima timeline is often divided into three Ages, with Ultima VII being the beginning of the final Age - the Age of Armageddon. You, the Avatar, are startled by visions of a demigod who calls himself "Guardian" and bears ominous prophecies. Once again, you are magically summoned to the realm of Britannia, where 200 years have passed in your absence, and your past adventures are now legends, but nothing more.

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A faction called The Fellowship has emerged, taking the role as new age spiritual leaders for the people of Britannia (in a thinly veiled and slightly mean spirited jab at Scientology, beating South Park to the punch by about 13 years). Civilization is more prosperous, more peaceful, more advanced, and more developed, but magic is weakening and becoming unreliable. Right away, upon your arrival, you witness the scene of a grisly and surprisingly graphic ritual murder, and as Britannia's legendary champion of virtue, must search for clues which will lead you on a quest in pursuit of malevolent forces.

The quest continues in Part II: Serpent Isle, where your travels take you to the Lands of Danger and Despair, an archipelago not visited since Ultima I. The lands have been settled by the descendants of colonists from Britannia, who have built three city states, each with their own governments, cultures, enterprises, and even currency. The lands are also home to the ruins of an ancient serpentine civilization, whose mysteries play a central role in the plot.

Ultima VII is huge. Huge, open-ended, and mind bogglingly detailed. All of the Ultima games up to this point have had (or rather established) sandbox RPG qualities, but Ultima VII is the biggest, freest, and most detailed of them all.

Britannia



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Gameplay scale



Each "part" consists of a single, monolithic map. The cities of Britannia, for instance, are not individual maps - they are organized collections of buildings, walls, pavements, and citizens placed on a large plot of land somewhere on the map, separated by vast stretches of wilderness. The insides of buildings are not individual maps either - entering a house simply removes the roof (or even second floor) so that you can see what is inside. Caverns are passages beneath impassible terrain. The world of Britannia is truly a single cohesive world with no seams or transitions.

Although there is a linear path to finishing the game proper, the real fun is exploring the vast world and seeing everything they put into it. There are hundreds of NPCs, maybe a thousand of them, and every single one of them has a name, a daily routine, and their own dialog tree. There are tons of side quests to be found by exploring everywhere and talking to everyone. Not all quests tie into the main plot, but they can frequently be just as well written and thought provoking as the main quest is.

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The world is highly interactive as well - everything that looks like it can be picked up and collected can. Everything that looks usable is. All chairs can be sat in, all candles can be lit or snuffed, and you can even bake bread if you have access to flour, water, an oven, and know how. With sufficient strength, everything can be moved (even things like trees, walls, and pavement if bugs/cheating is accounted for).

Although the Avatar is a paragon of virtue and the game is designed to be played as such, you are free to behave however you like. Unlike many RPGs that offer an illusion of free choice by offering both a good script to follow and an evil script to follow, Ultima VII allows all kinds of interesting emergent behavior simply through gameplay mechanics. Want to murder everyone, even plot important characters? You can. Steal from the church's poor box? You can. Years after the games release, enthusiasts have engineered ingenious ways of robbing banks and jewelry stores and the like, with one method even involving a getaway wagon.

No less remarkable is that Ultima VII metaphorically deals with real world issues, and deals with them gracefully and thoughtfully. Racism and prejudice were major themes of Ultima VI, and although they are no longer elements in the main plot of Ultima VII, the issues stemming from these themes continue to be reflected in Britannia, as class struggle, segregation, and even drug use can be observed. Reflecting 200 years of advances in civilization, Britannia also faces issues of industrialization, pollution, division of labor, and widespread political/economic/social reform. These problems aren't even all within your power to personally resolve. Many RPGs would present every conflict as a plot point representing a challenge or a side-quest for you, the playable deus ex machina, to complete. Some of the conflicts in Ultima VII are exactly that, but others are long term ongoing struggles - longer term than the game's plot, and with limits to how much you can possibly influence the direction of.

Ultima VII is the finest moment of a series that reinvented itself, and the whole RPG genre, with nearly every single installment. Its world is massive, filled with secrets to find, people to talk to, quests to complete, things to see, and things to do.

The series as a whole was massively influential to RPGs - the concept of exploring an open-ended world at your own pace, now ubiquitous to the genre, was first seen here, and was developed and refined to levels rarely attempted to this very day. Talking NPC's come from Ultima. Tactical turn-based combat comes from Ultima. The karma meter you see in Bioware's games and others comes from Ultima. NPCs with complex schedules as seen in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion comes from Ultima. With so much owed to Ultima, every serious gamer should be familiar with it, and observe its importance in gaming history.

Ultima 7 Complete is offered at Good Old Games. The fan project Exult can be used to run it natively on Windows with a bunch of enhancements, like high resolution support, digital music, and various interface tweaks. Do not play the SNES or "EA Replay" versions - it is a completely different game, and a horrendous one.

Beginner tips:

  • Make sure you have a copy of the Quick Reference Card handy. You will need it. Reading the manual is a good idea too.
  • Take notes! Take lots of detailed notes. The game won't do it for you. Although the main plot is linear and fairly straightforward, the real fun is exploring and doing side quests, and its these which put you at risk of forgetting what your ultimate goals are.
  • The moonstone is awesome for travel. The magic carpet is even better. Both can be found fairly early in the game.
  • The Mark and Recall spells will save you lots of backtracking.
  • The magic hoe, found in Mack's shed, is one of the best weapons in the game. The shed's key is hidden near the shore of Lock Lake.
  • Visit the Isle of Fire as soon as possible.
  • If you join the Fellowship, visit the casino at Buccaneer's Den. You can make a ton of money at the rat races by gaming the system.


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