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ULTIMA VII (1992/1993)

Okay, let me try this again. Although Ultima V is my personal favorite game in the series, there is no question that Ultima VII is the largest, most detailed, most interactive, and most technically accomplished game in the series. It has been hailed as one of the greatest and most influential RPGs of all time. The scope of the game is absolutely massive. It is like Ultima VI on steroids. I probably won't have as much to say about this one since it is basically the culmination of nearly a decade of graphical and gameplay advancements. It is like a work of art.

In fact the game is so large, it was released in four separate installments. Ultima VII: The Black Gate was released in 1992 and was closely followed by an expansion pack, The Forge Of Virtue. Ultima VII part 2: The Serpent Isle was released in 1993 along with it's expansion pack, The Silver Seed. Finally, the whole game was re-released on CD format in 1994 as The Complete Ultima VII. Both parts of the game share the same game engine and form a continuous storyline. The expansion packs added new quest areas which were fully integrated into the main quests and could be played at any time. These games were very densely plotted and it could take dozens of hours to complete each part of the game, assuming you didn't stop to do any of the side quests. I could spend pages discussing the plot, but I'll just try to briefly summarize it here.

Ultima VII begins a new saga in the series. On Britannia 200 years have passed since the events of Ultima VI. Britannian society has grown and changed dramatically. Although Lord British and some of the Avatar's old companions are still around, the Avatar himself is remembered only as a mythical legend. Although Britannia has been at peace, some have noticed severe problems bubbling under the surface of this prosperity. Corruption, poverty, class warfare, drug addiction, and racial intolerance are becoming more prevalent. Parts of Britannia have been environmentally damaged, magic is no longer reliable, and people have forgotten the Virtues. Seeing what has become of Britannia, a druid named Batlin and like-minded individuals created a new society called The Fellowship with the goal of repairing society and replacing the Virtues of the Avatar with a new, more modern philosophical system.

Meanwhile, on his native Earth, only a few years have passed for the Avatar since his last adventure in Britannia (the passage of time moves differently on different worlds). Things seem peaceful and quiet until one day a powerful, malevolent being known as the Guardian appears before the Avatar. The Guardian proclaims that a new age is dawning and announces his intention to conquer both Britannia and Earth and enslave the Avatar. Following this encounter a strange moongate opens up and the Avatar is compelled to return once again to Britannia. A large earthquake heralds his arrival and immediately upon his return, he learns that a brutal, ritualistic murder has taken place just a few hours ago. The Avatar's quest begins with him trying to solve this murder. As he journeys from one end of Britannia to another, he will have to try and heal the wrongs in Britannian society. Through many twists and turns, the Avatar eventually unmasks the Fellowship as a powerful cult attempting to undermine Britannia and ready the world for domination by the Guardian. The Avatar and his companions are successful in stopping Batlin and his followers from creating a portal which would allow the Guardian to enter this realm. However, this also leaves the Avatar stranded in Britannia.

Some months later, Batlin escapes capture and sets off for a long-lost continent called The Serpent Isle, which is only accessible by sailing through the mysterious Serpent Pillars. The Avatar and his companions pursue Batlin to The Serpent Isle and Ultima VII part 2 begins. Although the lost world of The Serpent Isle shares some ancient history with Britannia (in fact it was one of the continents visited in Ultima I) it has since developed its own history, cultures, and its own philosophical systems. As they journey across this unfamiliar land, the Avatar learns that the forces of Imbalance are ripping this world apart. After great sacrifice and much destruction, the Avatar is able to restore Balance to the world and finally stop Batlin (who has broken ties with the Guardian). Although Britannia and the Serpent Isle are saved from destruction, the Avatar is ultimately captured by the Guardian and banished to a strange world that is completely under the Guardian's control. This sets the stage for Ultima VIII...

As I mentioned earlier, Ultima VII was a massive technical accomplishment. The graphics are the most obvious advancement from Ultima VI. Everything is more detailed and animated. The full VGA color palette is taken advantage of. The action is from a top-down isometric perspective and now takes up the entire screen. The world is no longer tile-based or grid-based. The seamless, multi-layered world exists horizontally and vertically, with many structures extending upwards and downwards and with objects now becoming stackable. A variety of terrains are present. Grasslands, caverns, mountains, swamps, deserts, frozen wastelands, forests, jungles, oceans, etc. Everything is represented graphically and so there is no longer a need for a status screen or for extensive menus. The world is dynamic and everything and everyone moves in true real-time. Day turns to night, weather effects occur at random intervals, monsters and wildlife roam the countryside. The inhabitants of the world go about their business. People still have daily schedules, but now you get to actually see them working at their jobs. Bakers will bake bread, smiths will forge swords, proprietors will service food and drinks, bards will play songs, farmers will harvest crops or milk cows, parents will care for their infants, etc. The world moves around you, whether you do anything or not. And you can participate in all these activities.

The entire world and everything in it is interactive to an even greater degree than Ultima V. You could bake your own bread from start to finish. Or you could find ores and forge your own weapons. Get drunk. Have sex. Harvest your own food. Eating is important in this game and if you don't feed your companions they will complain loudly about it and will eventually die of starvation. You could manipulate nearly every object in the game that wasn't bolted down. And all this happens via the point-and-click actions of your mouse. You don't ever have to touch your keyboard and there are no longer any command functions. If you want to search through a chest, a closet, a bag, a backpack, dead body, or other container you just click on it and a graphical representation opens up allowing you to explore and move the contents. Clicking on you and your companions will open up a paper-doll model of your character and you can then equip them with clothing, armor, weapons, or other items. Everything happens in real-time, including combat, so you can again assign various battle commands to all members of your party and allow the computer AI to handle combat entirely. Your companions will even shout and yell during the fray. Sometimes this can lead to chaotic battles, with your own companions firing projectiles at allies or enemies battling each other. There are various modes of transportation, but in order to sail a ship you must own a deed for that ship. Magic works pretty much like it did in the last game. Buy spells from mages, use them from your spellbook, keep a bag of reagents handy.

Conversation is once again a hugely important part of the game. You no longer type anything out to pursue topics of conversation. Instead, you must navigate a point-and-click driven conversation system with topics presented for you. This means that unlike Ultima VI, you cannot skip through the plot in the game. Some important conversation trees are only accessible after speaking to another NPC or completing some important quest event. You have to do everything in order, and you can't just skip to the end of the game, even if you already know what to do. But Ultima VII: The Black Gate is a very open-ended experience. You go wherever you want and do whatever you want. You can pick up the main quest whenever you want or you can spend with the optional side-quests, or you even just go off and do your own thing for a while. The Serpent Isle not as open-ended and the plot is a little more linear and sequential. On the other hand, the storyline for part 2 is so much more complex, epic, and layered. In fact, some sections of the plot had to be entirely cut out of the final release in order for the game to release on time (The Serpent Isle was the first Ultima game published by Electronic Arts, which purchased Origin that same year). Something else which is new to this game; as you progress through the plot, your actions have actual consequences for the world around you and NPCs will respond to these changes. A number of NPCs must die during the course of the plotline and this triggers other plot-related events. Part 2 has even more of these scripted events. Once certain plot points have been reached, the world is irreversibly changed and you cannot go back, which may cut off your ability to finish certain side quests. There is nothing like this in Ultima V or Ultima VI which had mostly static worlds and few scripted events which NPCs reacted to.

For the first time, there is no character creation. You can pick a name for the Avatar and you can pick the gender but that is it. Leveling up in this game is a little different than in previous games. Instead of meditating at shrines, you can now raise your stats by visiting trainers. For money, they will increase your stat, assuming you have enough experience. There is no longer a karma system that keeps track of good deeds and bad deeds. But there are still consequences for immoral activities. Guards and townspeople will still notice illegal activities and confront you over them. Your companions can even become disgusted by your behavior and leave your party or even turn and attack you. You can get away with more dubious acts on The Serpent Isle, which has entirely different philosophical systems. The disembodied Guardian will often appear throughout the game and taunt you or comment on your progress through the quest. He will also try to mislead you at times. Oh, and the Guardian's dialogue is fully digitized speech recorded by a voice actor, another first for the series. The Guardian is a more subtle antagonist and a more constant presence than your enemies from the earliest games. His influences on the world are subtle but still destructive. One of the really cool things about Ultima VII is how it references all the previous games in the series and even ties up many of the loose ends from those older games. There are even some Wing Commander easter eggs.

Ultima VII pushed the limits of PC hardware and pushed the limits of storytelling and interactivity for computer games. Ultima VII was a masterpiece and a sprawling epic but unfortunately this was also the last great game for the series. Origin was bought out by Electronic Arts in 1993 and the development studio was slowly destroyed from the inside out. Although Ultima VII was released largely unscathed, the changes in management would eventually ruin Ultima VIII and Ultima IX.

you have to be carefull how you pilfer in Ultima 7, the first part anyway. The AVATAR's hands are clean, but Iolo is the most prolific thief in the universe.

ULTIMA VIII (1994)

Let me go ahead and try to finish up this thread. As I mentioned in the last post, Electronic Arts took over Origin Systems in 1993. At least initially, I think this corporate merger helped Origin Systems out. EA provided them with a huge influx of money and they could now hire more staff, develop more games, and make the games bigger and better. Unfortunately the developers at Origin were not used to working under strict deadlines and this lead to some subplots being cut out of the latter half of The Serpent Isle. Despite the cuts, the game was still pretty damn good. But things really started to go sour with Ultima VIII. Until now every game in the series had gotten progressively bigger and better than the game before it. And this game certainly had a more advanced graphics and physics engine than Ultima VII, but in almost every other way the game was a huge step backwards. In my opinion it's the least enjoyable game in the series since Ultima II. But it wasn't horrible. I don't think it was that much worse than many of the other cRPGs coming out around the same time (Eye Of The Beholder III, Might & Magic: World Of Xeen, The Elder Scrolls: Arena). But by Ultima standards it was pretty poor. It stripped out many of the elements that had made the Ultima series stand out from the rest of the pack. There were still some good things about the game, so I'll talk about those first.

First of all, the audio-visual elements were much improved over The Serpent Isle. The digital soundtrack is deep, dark, and atmospheric. The musical compositions were appropriate for the darker world of Pagan. There was recorded speech or some of the more important characters in the game. You could hear all sorts of noises... thunder rumbling, people screaming, doors squeaking, weapons clanking... you could even hear different sorts of noises depending on what sort of terrain your character was walking on. The improved audio really helped with the feeling of immersion. The graphics were gorgeous. Ultima VII was no slouch in this department either, but graphics were now more detailed and more photorealistic. In part this has to do with the changed perspective. In the previous games you viewed the action from a top down, bird's eye perspective. Now you see everything from a diagonal or 45 degree perspective. You are not just looking at the top of people's heads anymore. It seems more three-dimensional. You feel closer to the action and that makes the characters, objects, and monsters seem larger and more detailed. Or just compare the screenshots from this game to the screenshots from Ultima VII. Because of this perspective change, the cardinal directions are a bit off from what you'd normally expect (walking up to the top of the screen does not take you north, instead you'd have to walk towards the upper-right corner of the screen). You no longer travel through a seamless, continuous open world like the last two games. The game world is divided up into sections and when you reach the end of one section, there is a load time while you wait for the next section to be generated. This was probably done because processors at the time couldn't handle all that graphical information all at once. Along with the improved graphics comes a simple physics engine. Objects arc when thrown. When they hit a wall they bounce off and then drop to the ground. Set off an explosive and you'll see objects fly off in all directions. Objects thrown in the water will make a splash. Characters make movements more fluidly and characters are more realistically animated. The Avatar himself was given a whopping 1500 frames of animation. He doesn't just move from place to place. You can actually see him lift his legs and walk (or run) there. When he is standing on the edge of a precipice you can see him wobble around and flail his arms. You actually see him draw his weapon and then bring his weapon down to attack. And if he is attacked you will see him fall on his back and then get back up.

Unfortunately the technical achievements came at a cost. I figure they spent so much time working on these new game engines, they ended up not have enough time to fill their new world up with characters and storylines. They kept going over their deadline and eventually EA forced Origin to release the game in a half-finished state, with roughly half the plot cut out! Because so much was cut out of the game, it feels very small compared to Ultima VII. Among the things missing is that sense of interactivity with the world around you, one of the elements very unique to Ultima. Objects in the game look very nice but you can't really interact with them like you could in the last few games. You can't sleep in beds, you can't bake bread, you can't sit in a chair, you can't play musical instruments. There are a huge number of activities that are no longer available. The game is now just like any other RPG (or the first four Ultimas); you can look but you can't touch! You can still do some limited stuff like open doors and push levers, but its not the same. And the new physics engine is impressive but they clearly didn't work all the bugs out. The game tries to be more realistic than Ultima VII when it comes to manipulating objects... in this game you have to actually be close to an object to move it. But if you are too close and the object is on the ground, the computer may think you are stepping on the object and won't let you pick it up! Or you may lose an object behind a wall or piece of furniture and never be able to retrieve it (you can't rotate the camera around and look at it from another angle). The Avatar himself can get stuck in some odd positions where the camera can't follow you. And unlike Ultima VII you can't stack objects like books together. Drop an object in a place where it isn't supposed to go and it will just start bouncing around till it finds a place where the engine will let it rest. The engine is VERY picky about where you can place an object. If you pick something off a table, good luck trying to put it back in the same place!

But the biggest issue that most Ultima fans have had with the game was the frustrating platforming elements. This game is more of an action RPG than a traditional RPG. For the first time in the main series, you can now run, jump, and can climb over things. You will have to run and jump across many platforms to get through the game. Some of these platforms move around and some of these platforms disappear so you will have to time your jumps just right. Sound familiar? Maybe if you were playing Mega Man. Unfortunately the Avatar moves like molasses and the whole system is poorly implemented. If you miss a jump and fall into water or lava you die instantly and have to restore the game from the last point you saved it. You may make multiple attempts at completing a single jump. These parts of the game are extremely repetitive and frustrating and do not feel like a normal Ultima game at all. (In fact the game has jokingly been referred to as Super Avatar Bros). Dont get me wrong, I like platformer games like Super Mario and Prince Of Persia. And I like action RPGs like Zelda and Diablo. But this type of gameplay just doesn't fit right with Ultima, which has traditionally focused more on exploration and traditional RPG elements. If they had more time to play with the engine, maybe it would have worked better. It is nice that you can now actually climb up walls and ledges to get to a second floor, but sometimes you get stuck in odd places where you can't climb back down (like a cat?) And the Avatar moves around very stiffly because of all the frames of animation. You can't just start moving in any direction. You have to first turn towards that direction and then start walking that way. The increased animations are also a double-edged sword when it comes to combat. If a monster knocks you down, you have to wait for the Avatar to get back up, but in the meantime the monster may knock you down again, trapping you in a cycle where you are unable to do anything. Combat has gone back to the simple hack and slash of the first two Ultima games. In those games you just kept pressing 'A' and traded blows with the enemy until one of you died. Here you just keeping clicking your mouse button until the same thing happens. You can also kick the enemy but there is no reason to do so. All of the strategy is gone. You can't even level up your character anymore because you don't get experience points. You can raise your strength and dexterity skill by swinging your weapon, but you don't actually have to hit anything. So you could max out those stats as soon as you start the game just by going into combat mode and swinging your sword around at thin air. And you could keep re-reading the same book over and over again to max out your intelligence. Stuff like this completely unbalances the game (granted this has been a problem even with many recent RPGs).

Actually there are many ways in which this game feels like a throwback to the days of Ultima II. This is the first game in the series since Ultima II where you have no party to accompany you. I guess they did this for story reasons; they wanted you to feel alone and isolated on this strange world. It also wouldn't have made any sense to have a party with all the platforming stuff. They'd probably have had to create animations for every character and for every action they performed. So I get why there is no longer a party, but it doesn't feel like a traditional Ultima without one and it feels like a step backwards. There isn't a very large variety of weapons or items to find and there are not a large variety of monsters. You will quickly get sick of having to clobber the same creatures over and over again. The game world is very small and very homogenous compared to Ultima VII. It consists of a mostly mountainous island with only one small city to explore. There are a few outlying enclaves, and lots of monotonous caverns to wander through. Gone are the forests, deserts, swamps, frozen wastes, and high seas. Gone are all forms of transportation. The game world is so compact you don't need transport. The cloth map that comes with the game is utterly useless, because there is almost nothing to explore. There aren't a lot of NPCs around to talk to and most of the people are kind of depressing anyway. The game uses pretty much the same conversation system from Ultima VII but the NPCs no longer have character portraits so it all feels more impersonal. There was really no excuse for not including character portraits and it is just one of the more glaring examples of how rushed the game was. NPCs still have schedules they follow. But time won't pass on its own. If you need to speak with a character that is currently sleeping, you actually have to leave that section of the map and re-enter it if you want him to wake up. There is no more day and night system. You don't need to eat, although it can raise hit points. There are also huge plot holes in the game and obvious ones too. Doors and paths that lead to nowhere and events that never happen. Descriptions of places you never get to visit, like an underwater city. The developers certainly had grand ambitions for the game but there wasn't time to put a lot of that stuff in.

But I actually find the backstory for this world pretty interesting. It is one of the better things about the game. There were clearly a lot of cool concepts here that the game designers wanted to explore and some of it did make it into the final game. Personally, I was glad that we got to finally get away from the world of Britannia and explore a very different environment. This game picks up immediately after Ultima VII part 2: The Serpent Isle. The Avatar was captured by the Guardian and banished to the bleak world of Pagan. This is a harsh, brutal, unfriendly world and no one here has ever heard of the Avatar. You are pulled out of the ocean by a fisherman named Devon, who tells you more about the world. After you leave Devon, the first thing you witness is a public and very graphic execution. The game has a lot more mature content... more blood and more body parts (although no sexual content). The few inhabitants left on this oppressed world of eternal twilight are either brutally sadistic or downtrodden and pessimistic. If anyone is caught in a criminal act (including the Avatar) an executioner will immediately teleport into the area and blow you up. On the world of Pagan exists only one known land mass, a mountainous island called Morghaelin. On this land mass, there is only one city which is called Tenebrae. Tenebrae is ruled a vicious enchantress named Mordea. There is almost no flora or fauna on this island and there is very little that can grow on this world except for a variety of mushrooms.

This is a world that is completely under the domination of the Guardian (although the people do not know it). Long ago the world of Pagan was much larger and much more habitable. The people were known as Zealans and they worshipped ancient gods who represented basic emotions like love, hate, and apathy. Then the being known as the Guardian began communicating with some of Zealans, convincing them to turn away from the old gods and embrace him and his allies, four elemental Titans. These people soon became known as Pagans. With new worshippers these elemental Titans began to grow in strength and eventually became very powerful. They were able to control the seas, the skies, the volcanoes and the earth itself. The Zealans and the Pagans went to war with each other and this tore apart their society. Then the Guardian came and he and his Titans devastated the world. Lands were swallowed up by oceans, cities were devastated by volcanoes, earthquakes, and storms, and the light of the sun was never seen again. The Zealans were destroyed or forced in hiding, and the people offered themselves up to the Titans in order to appease them and end the devastation. Each Titan eventually gained a select group of disciples or adepts. The titan of earth, Lithos, controlled the Necromancers. The water titan, Hydros, controlled the Tempests. The air titan, Stratos, controlled the Theurgists. And the titan of fire, Pyros, controlled the Sorcerors. Each of these groups developed thier own completely unique system of magic. Each system of magic had its own special reagants and rituals, and each magic system drew its power from one of the elements. Three of these groups lived in isolation from the rest of the population. The remaining sect, the Tempests, controlled the city of Tenebrae. In this game the Avatar must learn to master all the different schools of magic, break the control of Mordea and the Titans, and eventually find a way off this world. Along the way he will learn more about the Zealans and the Pagans. And he will eventually gain the power to challenge the Guardian himself. This would then lead to a final confrontation with the Guardian in Ultima IX.

Because of the rushed production a lot of potentially cool elements were completely excised from the game. In fact you could complete this game much faster than you could with some of the earlier titles. There wasn't much of a world left to explore and not as many quests to follow. Most gamers probably spent their time trying to get through the annoying platforming parts. But despite all these drawbacks the game can still be fun at times. What's left of the world is pretty interesting. You get to meet the Zealan gods, who will tell you how to get off Pagan. You will meet a wizard named Mythran who will guide you along the way and even teach you his own special system of magic, which has much in common with the Britannian system. You get to learn four completely different magical systems and you learn how to turn these powers against the Titans. Once the power of each Titan is broken, the game world will change in interesting ways. Earthquakes and storms will become more frequent, and fire will begin falling from the sky. Supposedly an undead army would attack the city but you never get to see this happen. Because of cuts to the game you don't actually get to learn the Tempestry magic or explore the underwater city of Hydros (In the game they say it is because the power of the Tempests can only be inherited through a particular bloodline). And some other planned quest areas were never developed. Because this is a world without virtue you will have to do some decidely immoral things just to stay alive. This game challenges your perceptions of good and evil. What lengths are you willing to go to survive? Can evil actions lead to a greater good? By the time you finish the game you are left to wonder whether you did the people of Pagan a favor by destroying the Titans or whether you've only increased the misery in their lives. Once you gain all the Titans powers, you become the Titan of Ether and you are finally able to free yourself from Pagan...

Overall, the game had lots of potential. Yes, much of the game had to be cut out (including a planned expansion pack) and the platforming stuff was poorly implemented, but I think there was still a fun game buried underneath it all. I can get some enjoyment out of it, though it is definitely not in the same league as the last few Ultima games. It's not a bad game, just a bad Ultima game. In fact, it still sold pretty well and introduced many new fans to the series. Most gamers who had never played the previous Ultimas had plenty of good things to say about Ultima VIII. I really think that if the developers were given a few more months they could have come out with a pretty excellent game. The very successful action RPG, Diablo, came out two years later and it was game with a lot of similarities to Ultima VIII. They shared the same perspective and very similar game engines. With some extra time the guys at Origin could have their own Diablo-like game two years before Blizzard. Or they could have made a more traditional RPG like Baldur's Gate, released in 1998. Unfortunately the situation between EA and Origin would only get worse over time. Ultima XI, released nearly five years later, was just as poorly made (or maybe even worse) than Ultima VIII. A sad end to a great franchise. I'll just briefly talk about that in another post...

If I had to rank the games, it would probably go something like this (from best to worst):

VII - VI - V - IV - III - VIII - I - II

My favorite game is V but that is just a personal thing.

You might be wondering why I am not doing a write-up for Ultima IX: Ascension, released in 1999. Well, to be fair, I have never played the game! Until recently, it was hard to find and it was even harder to get it to work correctly. The game was ridiculously buggy and broken when it was first released. If you could play through the game without it crashing, you were lucky.

From what I've read, it is even worse than Ultima VIII (although there is probably some disagreement over that). It completely screw up the continuity with the rest of the series, and the ending is very unsatisfactory. I like to pretend it never existed.

But maybe one day I'll give it a shot, and revisit this thread. If you are interested, these pages talks about some of the troubled development history of the game and why it got a poor reception from fans.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_IX:_Ascension
http://ultima.wikia.com/wiki/Ultima_IX
http://ultima.wikia.com/wiki/Development_History_of_Ultima_IX

A big new review since last I checked this thread. Man, you must have been spending most of your free time playing those games. That looks like a lot of work, man.

Thanks for reading them!

Actually, I only played each game for maybe an hour or two just to re-familiarize myself with the series. I played them all before, years and years ago.

The majority of the content in these reviews is from memory. I pretty much already knew what I wanted to say about each game, but the hard part was trying to organize my thoughts into something readable and coherent!