Ultima Retrospective

From thecrankyhermit

Akalabeth: World of Doom

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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 a computer version in BASIC. A copy wound up in the hands of California Pacific Computer Company, who contacted Richard 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 another game, with commercial distribution in mind from the start.

You play as a fighter or mage, whose goal is to become a knight. To receive this rank, the country's king, Lord British (the first example of author-avatarhood that would be a long-standing Ultima tradition), tasks you with exploring dungeons and slaying ten increasingly difficult (and increasingly deep-dwelling) monsters. You start the game in a shop, with no equipment, lousy stats, and just enough money to buy food for the journey ahead. Exiting the town brings you to an overworld map, where you can access dungeons, towns, and Lord British's castle, who gives bounty jobs, offers promotions for completed jobs, and gives rewards for donations. Dungeons are multilevel mazes, navigated in first person, filled with deadly monsters, the stronger types of which live in the deeper levels of the dungeon. Monsters drop gold when slain, which can be used in towns to buy more food, better weapons, and new spells, or offered to Lord British, who rewards you with better stats. With these upgrades, you stand a better chance of surviving the deeper dungeon levels, where you face stronger monsters, receive more gold, and reap higher rewards and promotions. The final task is to slay a balrog, who are the deadliest monsters in the game, and can only be found in the deepest, most hazardous levels.

If all of this sounds simplistic, like I am describing the most basic RPG mechanics as if they were the main thing a game consisted of, that's because it is. Remember, this was 1979 - there *were* no precedents to speak of, and Final Fantasy wouldn't exist for another eight years.


Is it worth playing? Maybe. Sure, it is highly simplistic, has some irritating aspects, and ultimately offers nothing that you couldn't experience from an afternoon of soloing dungeons in World of Warcraft. But on the other hand, if you can get over the annoying parts, you can finish the game in an hour or two (especially if you play mage and abuse magic), and it does provide some interesting historical insight, even if it's mainly in the context of being a precursor to Ultima I. So I'd say, think of it at a bonus goodie for Ultima I - worth playing if you are serious about tackling the series.

My rating:

1 balrog (playable)

Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness

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With the success of Akalabeth, Richard Garriott began work on another RPG, still using BASIC, but this one grander in scope, as it was intended to be a professional commercial product from the start. It has since become a big success, becoming one of the first definitive RPGs, and establishing the groundwork for future games in the genre to come.

The game is set in the high fantasy world of Sosaria, a world consisting of four continents, divided into eight regions, each ruled by a lord (one being Lord British). An evil wizard, Mondain, terrorizes the land with monsters who attack travelers and ruin villages. He is also immortal, having created a gem that granted such power over 1,000 years ago. You play as a hero (this time the roles of Fighter, Cleric, Wizard, and Thief are available), summoned by Lord British to go on a quest to end Mondain's immortality. Later games in the series would reveal that the hero comes from Earth, which exists in a parallel dimension to Sosaria.

Ultima I had a far more advanced overworld than Akalabeth, and much of the game is spent traveling it. The overworld is quite open-ended - you can go anywhere you like on the starting continent from the start, and once you gain access to a ship, you can go anywhere, any time. Monsters appear on the overworld as well as in dungeons, there are multiple castles and towns, and oceans separate the continents. The eight lords offer different quests, which may be Akalabeth-style bounties, but may also be scouting quests to discover landmarks on the overworld. Towns offer different kinds of weapons, spells, and armor, and also feature pubs, where you can buy drinks and hear clues from the bartender. Towns will also rent transportation, such as horses and chariots for faster land travel, and rafts and frigates to cross oceans and discover new continents. And eventually, you can buy a flying car (it gets weirder).

So you'll gain cash and experience points mainly in dungeons, visit all the towns and landmarks to get better and better armor, weapons, and magic, visit the lords to complete quests, advance the storyline, and get better stats. Eventually, you might try to rescue a princess from a castle dungeon, and succeed, at which point she tells you that only a Space Ace can stand a chance against Mondain. And this is where the game gets just plain strange, as you must rent a space ship from a town's transportation shop, blast off into orbit, load up on rocket fuel from the space station in high Sosaria orbit, and hit hyperspace where you must dogfight aliens until you achieve the rank of Space Ace. Then if you speak to the princess, she will tell you the location of a time machine that must be activated with gemstones from the four major lords, which will take you to the forge of Mondain's gem of immortality, where you battle him once and for all.


Is it worth playing? Actually, this is easily one of the most playable Ultimas. It takes a bit of time to learn the ropes, but not as much as you might think - the game is simple enough that an otherwise clunky interface doesn't hinder you much, and can probably be beaten in an afternoon. The huge historical importance is a big draw too. Oh, and even though this is supposed to be impossible, you can kill Lord British simply by having unnecessarily high stats - another long standing Ultima tradition albeit an unintended one.

My rating:

1.5 time machines (good)

Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress

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With another hit on Garriott's hands, he began working on a sequel, this time using assembly language. With much more complex coding and an even grander scale than before, it would take him two years to complete. By its completion in 1982, California Pacific Computer Company would go bankrupt. Sierra On-Line would publish Ultima II.

This time, the game is set on earth, and drawing influence from Time Bandits, spans several time periods, including the age of Pangea, a post apocalyptic age of 2111 AD, and a "Time of Legends" populated with mythological beings. Mondain's apprentice, Minax, has gone into hiding, vowing revenge, and has used time travel to unleash beasts from Earth's distant past into periods of history, and is using dark influence to eventually orchestrate a global nuclear war. You, the hero of Sosaria, must return to earth, master time travel, and find and destroy Minax.

The gameplay is similar to Ultima I, but with a bigger scope. The world of earth is not only larger than Sosaria, but there are five different time periods of earth to explore, accessible through a web of time portals scattered across the planet. Space travel returns, this time a shuttle must be stolen from the Soviet space program, and every planet in the solar system may be landed on and explored. The towns are much larger than before, there are many more NPCs to talk to, and there are many more puzzles and token items as well.


Is it worth playing? The added complexity, depth, and scope actually hurts the game, to be quite honest. The web of time gates makes navigating the world much harder than Sosaria, and the puzzles and token items mean much more grinding for money and much more bouncing around the whole world trying to find the one NPC who will give you a clue you need to solve a puzzle. The RPG mechanics and narrative are still quite primitive, meaning it's more of a chore to play than the first, but without the big payoffs or satisfaction you'd associate with more complex RPGs. This is probably the worst game in the series, and is strictly for completionists.

My rating:

1 EGA dragon (playable)

Ultima III: Exodus

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In 1983, Garriott canceled his contract with Sierra, and founded a new company, Origin Systems, to self-publish the third Ultima game.

Ultima III returns to Sosaria, which is once again in distress. The last remnant of Mondain and Minax, a being of unclear origins known as Exodus, has summoned an army of monsters from hell to conquer Sosaria and take his revenge. This time, a part of four heroes are summoned by Lord British to search the land for Exodus and his secrets, and destroy him once and for all.

Probably Ultima III's greatest contribution to gaming was the party-based system. While it wasn't the first RPG to have it (Wizardry was party-based from the start in 1980), the fact that Ultima was centered around an overworld and not simply dungeon crawling meant that many new rules and concepts had to be established. Overworld combat, for instance, was carried out in a turn-based, tactical manner, where each character could be moved around individually along a grid and used according to their strengths. Also for the first time in the series, dungeons are actually important to the plot, and not just locations for fighting monsters or collecting treasure.

The game world is bigger than earth in Ultima II, but without the multiple time periods, and without space travel, and is overall less confusing to navigate. To help travel quickly, there is a series of moon gates, which open and close according to a lunar cycle, and provide instant travel to all of the major regions of Sosaria, also depending on the lunar cycle. The game remains highly open-ended, with no immediate goals in sight from the start, but to explore the world, talk to people, find quests, find clues, raid dungeons, defeat monsters, collect treasure, buy better equipment and magic, upgrade your stats, and eventually find the secrets of Exodus.


Is it worth playing? The game is even bigger in scope, depth, and complexity than Ultima II, and can be similarly overwhelming to new players, but it's better designed and ultimately more satisfying. The party system has some balance issues - some classes are underpowered, some completely useless, and the stats and leveling system is, for lack of a better word, unconventional (in retrospect, of course). But even discovering these things for yourself can be fun. Ultima III was actually a huge hit in Japan, and its party system and general design had immediate influence on Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, and possibly on The Legend of Zelda too. Recommended to curious gamers willing to face a relatively (to modern games) steep learning curve.

My rating:

2 hapless adventurers (very good)

Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar

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Ultima IV was released in 1985, revolutionizing the genre like no game did before, and perhaps like no game has since. Previous RPGs were little more than dungeon crawlers or treasure hunts or a mixture of each. Ultima IV is the game that introduced roleplaying to RPGs.

Sosaria, now free of evil, is at peace. Lord British has united his continent and led it to prosperity, renaming it "Britannia." But he feels the people need purpose in their lives. Therefore, he has summoned you, the hero from earth, to Britannia to become a champion, a spiritual leader, and an embodiment of virtue - an avatar. There is no final boss or central villain to defeat, but simply a goal to better yourself as a person.

Ultima IV's monumental contribution to gaming ultimately boils down to its virtue system. There are eight virtues that you must discover, learn of, meditate on, and practice to become the Avatar. Previous Ultimas allowed you to murder everyone in town, steal all the treasure, and seemed to encourage it from time to time. This is still possible in Ultima IV, but this will now screw up your karma which you absolutely must keep good in order to succeed in your quest. But as there are eight virtues, there is more to this than simply being good vs. being bad - you must embody *all* of the virtues, which means performing numerous good deeds of each. For instance, slaying a foe in combat is an act of Valor, but permitting him to flee is an act of Compassion.

The game world, despite taking place on a single continent, is even bigger than Ultima III's, and is just as open ended. There are eight major towns throughout Britannia, each dedicated to a virtue, and therefore each the ideal place to learn about its virtue. You start the game near one of them, which is determined by a series of pre-game questions, and must explore the continent, visit every city, speak to the people, and learn about the virtues as you practice them in your quest to become the Avatar.

The historical importance of Ultima IV is staggering. It represents an unprecedented achievement of maturity, depth, and sophistication in gaming, and this was in 1985. Nearly every RPG ever made since has featured some kind of moral compass. This is the game where it all started. So why isn't it required playing for GA 101? Mainly because the learning curve is rather high. The game plops you down in an open world to explore, gives no direction for short term goals, gives only vague hints at first as to what your long term goals are, and leaves it up to you to discover how to accomplish these goals and to break them down into your own series of short term goals. This could prove quite intimidating for the newbie, especially to the newbie who is used to modern RPGs that hold your hand. That said...


Is it worth playing? If you're willing to learn a new skill set and put aside any preconceived notions about what an RPG should be, absolutely. It is incredibly rewarding to play to completion. It's also the only game in the series to be released as freeware - you can download it from GOG and a Windows-compatible source port here. Skip the NES port, though - it loses something in translation.

My rating:

3 mantras (excellent)

Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny

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Ultima IV was released in 1988. Building upon the innovations of Ultima IV and filled with an unprecedented level of detail, polish, and for the first time in the series, an intricate plot, Ultima V pushed the limitations of 8-bit systems to their breaking point.

Having completed your quest of Avatarhood and returned to earth, Britannia has entered the Age of Enlightenment. Scholarship, arts, and athleticism flourish, and the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom has been enshrined. Your adventures are legendary and the people of Britannia aspire to follow your example. Lord British has led an expedition to the uncharted underworld of Britannia, leaving Lord Blackthorn as regent. But years later, you have been summoned back to Britannia. There, you learn that Lord British never returned from the expedition, and Blackthorn has taken power, enforcing the virtues of the Avatar as a state theocracy of moral absolutism. Your friends, who have incited revolution against his reign of tyranny and oppression, now live as outlaws, and have summoned you to lead them on a mission to dethrone Blackthorn and discover the fate of Lord British.

Ultima V was the first game in the series to truly feature a plot outside of what is written in the manual. The first three games were simplistic, with the conflict being little more than the hero's quest to find and destroy a trouble-making villain. The fourth was even more simplistic, about the hero on a quest of self improvement. Ultima V features a lengthy introduction sequence establishing the first act, and further developments occur ingame, through dialog, gameplay mechanics, and world design.

The game depicts a strict dictatorial regime, and the world you explore reflects it. Harsh laws derived from the virtues are posted in public centers. Prisons are numerous. People are nervous, as aiding outlaws such as you and your friends can be punished with death. Militia are everywhere. The game does an incredible job of setting up a brutal and chilling atmosphere with the seemingly simple 8-bit technology it uses.

The virtue system from Ultima IV returns, though it's less important than before. Several innovative features have been added too. There is a day and night cycle which affects gameplay - the most dangerous enemies roam the land at night, and many cities have a curfew, making it dangerous to be in these cities at night, but other times you must in order to meet allies of the resistance. NPCs are far more complex than before, featuring extensive dialog trees that allow dialog to more resemble conversation than reading signposts. They have daily routines too, even the guards and militia. Even the simplest and least consequential NPC will sleep, work, and eat according to the time of day, and can be seen walking from one location to another if you stick to them closely long enough.

Gameplay is non-linear in the style of Ultima IV, with a large world to explore at your own pace, long term goals that are vague at first, and open-ended design. The biggest difference is the ever looming menace of Blackthorn's regime, especially since you now must be careful what questions you ask who, as one of the major quests is to explore the dungeons, and revealing your intentions to unseal these lairs of evil to the wrong person would trigger suspicion.The final stretch of the game becomes a linear one, as you must enter the underworld of Britannia and retrace the steps of Lord British to discover his final destination.


Is it worth playing? You bet, though the same reservations regarding Ultima IV apply here as well. The learning curve is similarly steep, the game design is similarly open, and can be similarly overwhelming at first, maybe moreso. But behind this curve is an epic plot that warps the series' moral lessons almost right after they were established - a theme that the series would revisit several times. Get over the initial hump, and you will be rewarded with a level of atmosphere, sophistication, detail, and depth that hardly seems possible given the technology available. Beware the NES port - it's more than the system can chew.

My rating:

3 talismans (excellent)

Ultima VI: The False Prophet

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Ultima VI was released in 1990, and for the first time in the series, was built from the ground up with PCs in mind. By abandoning its origins on the Apple II, they were able to use 256 color VGA graphics, and a revamped interface with mouse support. This was also the first game in which Richard Garriott did not program, working mainly as co-designer with his colleague Warren Spector.

Once again, you are summoned to Britannia, by way of a mysterious black stone - a sign of bad omen. Out of desperation, you return to Britannia anyway, to be ambushed and captured by an army of living gargoyles. You are bound to a sacrificial altar, and are about to be killed in their macabre ritual, but are saved at the last minute by the Warriors of Destiny, with whom you retreat by moongate back to Lord British's castle. There you learn that the gargoyles, denizens of the underworld, have risen to the surface and are mobilizing for war against Britannia. It is up to you to fight the invaders, and save Britannia once again.

The innovations from Ultima V are all present, and are now presented in VGA graphics. Sprites are more detailed, NPCs have portraits, and animations are more interesting. The multi-scale design is abandoned too - the overworld is now presented to scale, and is many times larger than it ever was before. Towns and castles are no longer icons on a map, but are integrated into the main world - they are seen at the same scale and perspective as anything outdoors is. The first person dungeons are done away with as well, now displayed from the same isometric perspective as everything else.

Gameplay is a bit more directed than previous Ultimas. The game begins in the throne room of Lord British, so there's no initial confusion as you gather your bearings like there is in its predecessors, and there are directions and clues to discover there right away. It's still an open ended game with a ton of optional things to do.

In between the releases of Ultima VI and VII, Origin released two new games, both using an engine made from a hybrid of Ultima VI code and, interestingly, Wing Commander code. Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire took the Avatar to a world reminiscent of tropical Africa, with stone age tribal cultures, shamanistic magic, and dinosaurs. Ultima Worlds of Adventure 2: Martian Dreams took the Avatar back to the 19th century in an alternate timeline where H.G. Wells-style space travel is a reality and humans (many of them famous late Victorian personalities) have begun to explore Mars. Both games are lite RPGs compared to Ultima VI, with fewer roleplaying options, somewhat smaller worlds, and more puzzles and other adventure game elements. Their plots are completely unrelated to the main series, though several characters are obvious surrogates for your Britannian allies.


Is it worth playing? Yes, if you're prepared to forgive some transitional warts. It's more accessible than Ultima IV & V, but not as much as VII. It's technically impressive, and may have the best written and most thought provoking central plot in the entire series. Sure, it starts off like a typical plot of evil invaders attacking who must be fought off, but it quickly becomes a character driven drama, and halfway through the game, you uncover an absolutely ingenious plot twist, and the very title "The False Prophet" takes on a whole new meaning. But it has some issues that hold it back from the greatness its predecessors achieved. There's a metric ton of inventory items that can be collected, and sifting through them all is quite tedious. Your field of view is rather small, which when combined with the huge scale of the game, makes it really easy to get lost. The conclusion is a bit of a letdown as well, because for all the thoughtful and insightful questions the game has to ask, everything is ultimately solved with arbitrary plot tokens. But these things are relatively minor downsides for a game that made such huge strides in presenting a sprawling, dynamic world, and in blending gameplay and story.

My rating:

2.5 flasks (great)


Ultima VII

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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.


My rating:

3.5 scary red dudes (remarkable)

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.