Lessons In Video Game History- The Ultima Saga, Part 10- Ultima IX!

[NamerOfStars]

[Last entry here Lessons In Video Game History- The Ultima Saga, Part 9- Ultima VIII! , with links to earlier entries, which you should probably read before this].

Ultima IX.

What more needs to be said? What more CAN be said?

Quite a bit, since you probably have no idea what I mean by all that. This is going to be a LONG one, possibly over more than one entry again, so let's dive right in. As in my last entry, spoilers abound (even more openly than before); be forewarned.

First, some history. We begin at a sleazy Hollywood party in 1985. Two studio types, coked out of their gourds, are talking about the industry, and one claims that NOBODY could make a worse movie than Superman 3. The other says he'll take that bet, and soon enough...

Remember this; we'll be coming back to it.

Forward, to 1994. There was no way around it; Ultima VIII had been a disaster, crippling the reputation of one of the biggest and longest-running franchises in video game history. Richard Garriott, founder and head of Origin Systems, was determined to not let that happen again. The original plan had been that THIS trilogy of games would pit the Avatar against a recurring enemy, the Guardian, and that each of the three games would take place in a different world: one in Britannia, one in Pagan, a world the Guardian had conquered, and one on the Guardian's homeworld. The response to Ultima VIII changed all that. Well, arguably it had been changed already, since Ultima VII part 2 happened, but I suppose that simply made it a trilogy with four parts (hey, it worked for Wagner and Douglas Adams!). By 1995, the plan had changed: Garriott claimed that IX would be a return to form: "Ultima VII had the most detailed world, so we're going to take that detail level, we're including a huge ethic parable like those of Ultima V and VI, and it will contain the hard-core role-playing elements of the first three games, with a complete set of skills and attributes. From a technology standpoint, we've tried to add the visual detail levels of Ultima VIII, but we'll drop that control method.", he said. No more trying to imitate someone else, this was going to a barn-burning blockbuster to round off the franchise; a glorious send-off to end both the Guardian trilogy and the Avatar saga.

EA had bought Origin mostly because of the potential they saw in the Wing Commander franchise- the engines were difficult and expensive to make, but could be iterated on more-or-less endlessly; by comparison, the handcrafted Ultimas, with their unpredictable development timetables, were a side benefit at best. The Wing Commander spinoff Strike Commander, however, didn't do very well, so EA stepped in to amp things up, and, surprisingly for EA, actually made them better. Here's a shot from a WC 2 cutscene:

Pretty impressive for 1991.

And here's one from Wing Commander 3, just 3 years later:

Yes, that's Malcom McDowell and Mark Hamill.

Origin was largely thought of as "the Wing Commander company" by EA; what changed that? The beta test of Ultima Online. Archetype's Meridian 59 had shown them that there was limitless potential in this newfangled "internet" thing, and now they had a company ALREADY working on a game using it! IX was put on the backburner, and almost everyone involved moved to Online. By the time work on IX resumed, the game engine was out of date- while visually impressive, it had been made before the days of 3D acceleration, and couldn't compete with other games in development. A long period of retooling followed.

Then it was leaked that the game was to be drastically scaled down; it would once again be a single-character game, with no other party members. The space and cost requirements of voice acting meant that again, there'd be no option to play as a female, either. In early 1998, many of the team members, fed up with ever more shrinking of what was SUPPOSED to be the biggest Ultima game ever, left the studio. Garriott himself stepped back in, taking a lead role in production for the first time in nearly a decade, and he and the new project head (Spector having left the company) rewrote the story AGAIN, and in November of '99, the game was released. Was the result everything that was promised? Well, let's just say that I think someone told Richard Garriott that NOBODY could make a worse game than Ultima VIII.

I don't know when this box art was chosen, but I'm guessing it was early on in the process- it's clearly trying to evoke the box art of VI:

This picture will never not be awesome.

as a way of indicating that this game was moving AWAY from the mistakes of the more modern games, and back toward the ideas and ideals of the older ones. Let's take a look at how they did.

Ultima VIII ended with us reassembling the black gate the Guardian had used to leave Pagan, and using it ourselves to return to Britannia. Now, he'd been taunting us all throughout VIII of the damage he was doing there, but that was obviously not true, since we'd already stopped him getting in, and then Batlin had betrayed him in his second attempt. Evidently, he had another method up his sleeve, because THIS is what we return to:

This is the last screen of the game.

He's not only made it in, he's had time to build a giant statue of himself- this ain't good! So Ultima IX WON'T be a rapid buildup to prepare for an attack, but a desperate struggle against an already-entrenched evil. Okay, we can do that; heck, we did it before, in Ultima V, and not only did we win, we learned (in Serpent Isle) that the corrupted Blackthorn, once freed, arrived there himself and befriended a Xenkan monk, eventually learning the value of humility, and left there a changed man. So we've got a REALLY good track record of winning these things. But that's a long, hard struggle away; we've warped in to a Britannia completely controlled by a far more powerful enemy, so now is the time for drastic action. Guess what we do. Did you say "somehow return to Earth and just fart around for five years"? Good guess, if so; that's EXACTLY what we did. I understand that the game was rewritten several times, but they couldn't bother finding ANY way to make it work?

No. No, they couldn't. Take a look at this picture from the Tapestry of Ages, that depicts our adventures in Britannia:

Look at the upper part, there (sorry I couldn't get a clearer shot; it's high off the ground in-game): that's us being sacrificed in the intro to Ultima VI. And in just that one piece of one image, we see SEVERAL problems: our would-be killer is alone, instead of surrounded by a throng of his people; he's hit with an arrow fired from a bow, rather than a crossbow bolt, and Iolo there is simply standing in a doorway, instead of a red moongate (also it's daytime, we're indoors, and we're blonde, but those matter less). You may think those things aren't really important, but it shows the regard IX has for the established lore of the series- I'll be coming back to that, don't worry. Also, the reason that it's widely known that this is to be our LAST visit to Britannia is that the tapestry (which is clearly somewhat magical, as it's also prophetic) has no more room in which things are to be depicted- so says the manual. But in-game...

Yeah, there's a window in the way, but it's a TAPESTRY, not a mural; it could be moved. The devs couldn't even bother to make the game consistent with ITSELF.

But first I want to talk about the positives, because there are quite a few, and they really DID try to fix the mistakes of VIII. First, the graphics. Considering the multiple engine changes, and this being the only real 3D game of the series, it looks QUITE good for the time. And check out that tapestry again; I don't know who made it, but some serious detail went into that image. They -meant- it. It also explains why everyone who meets us knows who we are; they've got a picture to work from now. The cutscenes are AMAZING- not just in image quality, but in direction and storytelling.

The control scheme, while VERY unusual, even for the time (to move, you hold the right mouse button- adding in control to move left, alt to move right, and both to move backwards- and remember, this was 1999, long after the likes of DOOM and even Half-Life and Halo), but it's serviceable enough once you get used to it, and the mouse aiming part is downright necessary, not just for archery, but for swimming, which is actually POSSIBLE now. And the game's actually Dvorak-sensitive; after fourteen prior games that were caught behind the EIGHTEEN nineties, we leap ahead to the NINETEENs!

The game's also fully voice acted (though not WELL; the quality ranges from "passable" to "laughable"), and the maps you get (in-game, no less!) are actually on a useable scale for a change. Note-taking is now automated; while this means there's less ambiguity about what's important enough to remember, that's okay- this isn't a detective game like VII was. There ARE still notable action elements, with climbing and jumping, but they're MUCH less intrusive than in VIII, and while they still don't feel much like something that belongs in an Ultima game, the exploration and depth of the system that takes advantage of them DO. Your maximum mana level is determined by your karma level; not only is being virtuous part of the game again, but it REWARDS you for it, instead of punishing you for lacking it. Plus, if you kill things outside of the cities...

You get vultures. It's a nice nod to reality, and I appreciate them not just reskinning some other bird and calling it a crow; they went out of their way to make a vulture. And when you go to sell items to a store, not only does it automatically list what you have (no more searching around in your (now grid-patterned!) inventory system), it doesn't offer up what you have equipped; no more accidentally selling the armor you're wearing! And while the magic system takes some time to give you access to the spells that make magic worthwhile, you can brew you own potions now, so there's actually a use for all the reagents you find lying around before then.

So there was real potential here. We open in our bed, on Earth, on a pleasant summer morning, with our interdimensional friend the Time Lord (no, not from Doctor Who) telling us that we need to prepare for our final trip to Britannia- and that not only will we never go there again, we won't be coming back to Earth, either. This is the game's tutorial section (the only one in the series that has one), and while it's okay at teaching the systems, there are some SERIOUS problems. See if you can find the issue with this screenshot:

Take your time.

Yeah. Here on Earth, the sun rises in the EAST, not the south. They got the skybox rotation wrong. They also used the wrong image; if you wait around until it gets dark, you can see BOTH moons that Britannia has. Then we come to the most unrealistic part of the game: after being given tutorials on basic combat and inventory management, we just... leave. Now, if YOU were going to leave Earth forever, aren't there people you'd want to talk to first? Sure, you can't say "I'm off to explore another world I'll never return from", you'd get locked up, but at least SOME kind of goodbye would be necessary, wouldn't it? Even if you hate all humanity, you also leave your DOG behind, with no apparent provision made to take care of him; nothing so much as an email (we DID have that in 1999) saying "Hey, we need to talk, come over to my place tonight" and a note left to be found asking them to watch the dog. Nothing.

But we explore and meet a gypsy, who tells us that eight times before, we've made this trip- but that's wrong; Ultima II took place on Earth, Serpent Isle on, well, Serpent Isle (and we left to go there FROM Britannia), VIII on Pagan. Both the "World of" games started from Earth, and both Underworlds were from the same trip, so that's only SIX times we've done it before. It's a minor nitpick, but did they not look back on the games this was supposed to be a conclusion to? Anyway, she runs us through the virtue selection system, and then... creates a moongate?

Sure looks like it to me.

Now, the destruction of the Sphere generator at the end of the Black Gate destroyed the moongate network- that's why we were stuck in Britannia for eighteen months before Serpent Isle began. I suppose it COULD have been rebuilt or repaired somehow, but then why were you not called for before? That gazer there, behind the stone, is sent to stop us because "the Guardian knows what we're up to and is trying to stop" us. That means he knows the gates are working again. It also doesn't make much sense; why send a MAGICAL creature, which is explicitly weaker on Earth, to stop us? Why not WAIT until we're on the other side to ambush us? It's not friendly territory we land in when we hop through; we wind up where VIII left off: atop a tall pillar of stone, staring at the giant statue of the Guardian's head we saw in that ending screen. Then a dragon flies up, ridden by a pointy-toothed guy in scary armor, who raises his sword. We reach for ours, only to discover we don't have one. Then...

And then it zooms out to show the image being replayed in a magic mirror, and a voice says we've arrived and been "dealt with" by his "Wyrmguard", and the camera pans over to reveal none other than Lord Blackthorn, talking to the Guardian, who's sitting on a throne- and is now clearly human-sized. The end of the Black Gate showed him starting to come through, and made it clear that, assuming he was human-proportioned, he was at LEAST 10-12 feet tall; now he just looks like a red hairless human. It's kinda disappointing, really. But he knows that we weren't killed; the Time Lord's intervention saved us, teleporting us to a place called Stonegate. Blackthorn offers to have the Wyrmguard raze Stonegate to the ground, but the Guardian says no; he wants us to see what he's done to the place; he wants to feel our rage. Then he reassures Blackthorn that one he (the Guardian) is done with it, Britannia will be his (Blackthorn's)- but as the latter walks away, the Guardian muses to himself that only a fool would WANT what was to be left of Britannia afterwards. It's an excellent cutscene, and would have been a perfectly logical starting point; one little throwaway line about how the tutorial was just a vision or something could've taken care of it- but no. It also raises a question I've been wondering for a while at this point, though- why does the Guardian WANT Britannia? If it's just to smash it like he did with Pagan, why all the fuss? What's his overarching goal in all this conquest? Every world he came to, he entered by trickery and guile, which suggests there are limits to his power, but that, and his desire to HAVE places, are about all we know about him- will we find out more as the game goes on?

At Stonegate, we're given a spellbook and basic weapons and armor, and told we need to be sent along to Lord British to let him know we've returned, and are here to finish the Guardian off. After being attacked by (and defeating) one of the Wyrmguard (without his dragon), we find a teleporter that takes us straight to Castle British (that's convenient!), and... look, if you read the manual, you KNOW what kind of damage was done by the invasion: cities destroyed, mass populations displaced, whole territories wiped off the map. Here's the map of Britannia, stable since Ultima IV, and what it looks like now:

The red is land that's been lost, either sunk beneath the waves or blasted apart with earthquakes and rent into pieces. Thousands, if not tens of thousands have been left dead or homeless; Britannia is at war with a being possessing the powers of a low-level god. I fully expect to warp into a warzone. And I find... things in the castle are almost normal. Well, that makes SOME sense; Lord British is a powerful magician; perhaps he's managed to protect his immediate territory, and the seneschal next to me DOES tell me to go and see the king IMMEDIATELY, refusing to answer any of my other questions until I have. He does NOT, however, tell me where British IS, so I go through the wrong door, and find a chambermaid who's obviously in distress. I ask her what's wrong, and, um...

"The people are mean to one another"? That's bad- Britain IS the city of Compassion, after all- but it's nowhere NEAR the level of "we've been invaded by an extra-dimensional warlord who's teamed up with an exiled former dictator commanding a legion of dragon riders". British, too, seems more concerned about how his people are falling from the path of virtue than the war- um, there IS a war, right?

Apparently not- not in the traditional sense, at least. What has everyone concerned is the enormous stone columns that've erupted from the ground near each of the eight dungeons. People say they're somehow corrupting those around them, like Gwenno here:

I don't know about malevolence, but it IS strange that it turned her blonde (although she went from brown to red hair in the gap between VI and VII pt 2). She tells us that Iolo, her husband, went to investigate the one near their house, and never came back. When we go to investigate, we find Iolo, corrupted by the power of the column, and having apparently joined the Wyrmguard. He attacks us, and in the ensuing struggle, another BIG crack shows up. When beaten, he begs us not to kill him.

Obviously, the Compassionate thing to do is spare him, and as the Avatar, that's what's expected of us. But there's no challenge to it, no difficult element of wondering "should I trust what he says?". It may seem odd that I'm complaining about a LACK of morality being difficult (I mean, we have reality for that, don't we?), but there's no impact to the decision. This guy's been a companion since Ultima IV, as far back as we've had them, and in the series since Ultima *I*. He joined us on the Quest of the Avatar, helped overthrow Blackthorn, stood beside us as we saved Britannia from the gargoyle invasion and helped thwart the machinations of the Guardian TWICE- why the hell would we NOT spare him? He's the first Wyrmguard we encounter that we have any real conversation with (and even then, it's not much); there's nothing to suggest he's in real danger of a relapse, particularly at some weak moment. This is a series about morality, and, given how linear it is, this is the first real moral decision we face- there should be some WEIGHT to it. But all we get if we DO choose to kill him is

...which is a rational response to someone killing your husband- or would be, if not for the fact that I killed YOU thirteen games ago, Gwenno, and you didn't care, and when you died AGAIN in Serpent Isle, you were revived and then you- well, then you immediately began screaming about your need for blood, but that's because you were possessed. Lord British can't resurrect people anymore (for some reason), but the change in view of the dangers and reality of death is so sudden... wait, IS it sudden? Time flows differently here than on Earth, and not always at the same rate. It's been five years back home, so how much time has passed here?

I'd tell you, but I'm out of space, and have a LOT more to say, so watch here for the continuation.