The age of Enlightenment: The second Ultima trilogy

For many, Ultima 4: Quest for the Avatar was the point where the series found its footing. Before this entry, the series had offered fantasy and sci-fi cliches, where the player defeated the main baddie in the end. For the 4th game, Garriott wanted to try something different. Instead of having a villain to beat, the player would have to improve themself in order to win the game.

As the far story goes, a lot had happened in Sosaria after the end of Ultima 3. A great cataclysm had destroyed large areas of land and it was up to Lord British to unify the land into what is now known as Britannia. He came up with a system of Virtues, eight of them, which were aimed to bring out the best in people and now he seeks a figurehead for those virtues. And who better than the stranger who helped the world three times before. That stranger is you.

The idea was groundbreaking for its day and is groundbreaking even now. What you have to do, basically, is to defeat yourself if you want to complete the game. Instead of stealing things, you have to purchase them. You can't cheat people and you have to show courage and bravery in combat. Eight virtues in mind, Honesty, Compassion, Valor, Justice, Sacrifice, Honor, Spirituality and Humility, you set on the road of becoming the embodiment of them.

Obviously, gaining the maximum stats in many of these virtues means making and grinding, at times, obvious binary choices. If you cheat a blind merchant, that's a bad thing. If you boast with your deeds, that's not very humble, an act of compassion is giving alms to the poor and so worth. The core idea still stands though and in this genre, or any game genre really, Ultima 4 is an oddity that still stands out for its own benefit. Despite the narration has become increasingly important in RPGs, there aren't that many games out there where upholding a genuine ideal, at least in the realm of the game, is the main objective.

A part of the reason Garriott ended up designing Ultima 4 as he did was, that Ultima 3 was the first game he got direct player feedback from, as it was the first game he released under his own banner. So unlike with his previous publishers, Sierra and California Pacific Computer, he actually received mail that was written for him. The feedback tied to his own experiences from Christian Sunday School made him realize, that doing questionable things, like stealing and murdering innocent people, had been a bit too convenient a tool in winning the previous games. He also wanted to create an RPG that was about something else than just killing "the ultimate evil" at the end.

If Ultima 4 is about you, the player, becoming the Avatar, the paragon of eight Hinduism inspired virtues, Ultima 5: Warriors of Destiny is about seeing how those virtues are bastardized. While Lord British has gone missing during his expedition of the newly opened underworld, the rulership of Britannia is on the shoulders of Lord Blackthorn. Under his rule, the virtues are rigidly upheld which has led to strict laws of virtue, where liars are cut off their tongues for example.

These laws are upheld with a threat of Shadowlords, who are revealed to be shards from the immortality gem used by the villain of the first game, Mondain. They represent Falsehood, Hatred and Cowardice, thus being the opposite of the Avatar, who represents Truth, Love and Courage. So, as far Avatar's quest goes, the goals are clear: defeat the Shadowlors and Blackthorn and rescue Lord British.

Ultima 5, just like the games before it, improved old things and added new. Just as in Ultima 4, you can discuss with the people of Britannia by using keywords. The people have schedules that are tied to the day/night cycle so they move around accordingly within their own individual routines.

As a whole, Ultima 5 is one of the best-regarded games in the series. It is a lot darker than the games before it, presenting an interesting moral dilemma: what if things meant for good are turned into the tools of oppression. And really, the game doesn't just ask the question, it shows it.

Ultima 6: The False Prophet was, again something different, in both story and presentation. This was the point when the series shifted away from the old Apple II and 8-bit hardware, embracing the new possibilities of ever-maturing capabilities of PC worlds graphics and sound hardware. Indeed, technically, this was an entirely different kind of a beast, offering Britannia in a form never seen or experienced before.

The Shrines of Virtue have been overrun by a demon-like race of gargoyles as the Avatar finds out at the beginning of the story when the gargoyles intend to sacrifice the embodiment of virtues. Britannia is at war with the beings who rose from the underworld after it the rescue of Lord British who tasks the Avatar to take care of it.

It isn't that simple though, as you soon enough find out that the whole thing looks a lot different from the perspective of the gargoyles. They see the humans and the Avatar as a reason why their homes were destroyed and their culture and lives are at peril, so the mission of war becomes a mission of peace.

The way Britannia is presented is something entirely different from anything before it in the series. Instead of a world separated into a world map and location maps, the whole of Britannia is on the same map.  Your party can now, for the first time, seamlessly travel from town to town or dungeon, with no loading in between. The combat takes place on the same world map as well. On the other hand, this has an effect on the size of the map and Britannia isn't really a big place. Walking between places takes mere minutes. At first, Britannia seems big, but mostly because you can see so little of it at once thanks to how small the game window is.

There are a day/night cycle and people move around according to their own schedules. You can interact with the world in a realistic manner, like making dough from water and flour and baking that into bread. Depending on how you like it, you can run from the fights or fight as much as you want. Most likely fights happen on the shrines you have to cleanse, as they are guarded by the gargoyles. And, of course, you can talk to people who now have a lot of things to say. The user interface changed as well, turning to mouse-driven. The game can be controlled with a keyboard as well, but it is clearly meant to be played with a mouse.

All in all, Ultima 6 was quite a departure from Ultima 5. It improved upon many aspects, making the game look and sound better. It made the world more interactive and unified, but that also meant, that the slower computers of the era couldn't really handle it well. But on the other hand, the whole world was now genuinely one, unified place, all actions taking place on the same map.

As a side note, Ultima 6 was the first game in the series I played and for that, it will always have a special place on my heart. Nowadays it does feel like a title, that is most commonly overlooked by people, but despite some technical shortcomings, it does provide a solid story and okay gameplay after you get the hang of it.

Ultima 6, and its expensive engine, lead into two spin-off games starring the Avatar. These titles didn't take place in Britannia but are still considered to be a part of the official canon if you care about such things. But more of those titles later.

If you are interested, I took a glance at the first three games in the Ultima series a while back. On the same note, if you are interested in seeing what kinds of fan-made improvements there are for this part of the series, head on out to UltimaCodex. The two most notable fan creations are the Ultima 5 and Ultima 6 conversions for Dungeon Siege-engine.