Gamer's Month - Ultima VII

Role Playing Game. It's a term we're all familiar with but a lot of people use it to describe games that don't really involve much actual playing of roles. The vast majority of Japanese, console rpgs for example offer very little in the way of actual role playing, prefering instead to tell you a story via a series of fixed events with a fixed path between each. Sure, you might be able to pick which spell you'll use in combat and soe even allowfor a hint of character customisation but generally, the JRPG is a fairly linear experience. On the PC, things are a little more interactive and there are a number of games that allow huge customisation of your character and all kinds of different ways to approach any given situation with the feeling that you're actually part of a living, breathing world. Planescape Torment, Knights of the Old Republic and Fallout are all in my mind great examples of properly open world or customisable rpgs but they are all newcomers to the genre. One game led the way, forging a path so that others might follow. In the beginning, there was

Ultima VII was released in two parts, The Black Gate in 1992 and Serpent Isle the following year with each part also receiving an expansion pack, The Forge of Virtue and Silver Seed. The games are isometric(ish) roleplay games in which the player controls the Avatar, your alternate personality in the game world that exists kinda within a post-modern inside your computer place. It's not important, it's a handy plot device to cover why the Avatar doesn't exist in the world between Ultima games. Anyhow, you're dropped into the game world and almost immediately reunited with a few characters familiar to regular fans of the series. Initially tasked with solving a murder, you head off and are thrust into a plot to uncover the true motives behind the rise of a cult and eventually end up saving the entire world from certain destruction.

The plot is a fairly convoluted one and thankfully doesn't fall into the overly common cliches of a hero searching for a certain artifact to defeat a big evil entity. Well, it sort of does but there's a lot more to it than that. More importantly, the plot is not really the driving force in this game. Rather than head from plot event to plot event following unsubtle directions, via a load of dungeons you tackle in the order the developers want you to, you are free, even encouraged to head out into the world and explore for yourself. As with all good rpgs of this kind, there are a ton of sidequests in each town and you'll find yourself resolving disputes, fetching items and killing monsters left right and centre. The Serpent Gate has a slightly more linear plot but it's rather a grown up one, full of political intrigue and machinations.

So the plot's pretty great and the game's non-linear. Those alone would make this a must-play game for a lot of people but what really seals the deal is the game world itself. Much has been said about how the recet GTA games present you with a "living" world and true freedom of action and movement but Ultima was doing that fifteen years ago. Day turns to night and the people of Britannia go about their daily lives, working, eating sleeping and chatting in the pub. The Avatar can interact fully with the world around him too. If it's not nailed down, you can move it or destroy it. You can bake bread, milk cows, even change a baby's nappy if you really want. See a door you can't open? Sure you could look for the key or you could just find a powder keg and blow it open. Take umbrage with a shop keeper? Whip out your Arcane Mandolin and give it to him with all three barrels. Your party will comment constantly, get hungry and thirsty, can be poisoned (Deliberately by you) and hallucinate and will throw up when you discover a huge pile of body parts.

Of course you can't act without consequence. Get spotted breaking the law and the guards will come for you. Steal and kill too many people and your own party will disown you or even perhaps attack you requiring you to kill them, resurrect them and then play nice for a bit to get them back onside. It's this sheer variety of options and the inter-play of character reactions that makes the game so fun. I will never forget the time and effort me and a friend devoted to robbing the Royal Mint. Stashing our gear somewhere safe, carrying powder kegs from the castle armoury to the mint, hiding behind them until the clerk went home (They'll call the guards if you're there after closing), blowing the door, stealing all the money and gold bars, lying in wait for the clerk and killing him after he opens up (Blowing the outside door would have attracted the guards), stashing the gold, taking the clerk's body to Lord British for revival then finally taking the gold back to the mint and selling it back to them. It was a work of criminal genius.

Ultima VII gives you so many opportunities like this to piss about you can almost forget there's a wider plot to be followed and the one problem is sometimes working out or remembering where you were actually supposed to be going next. For those occasions though, the developers saw fit to give you a spell which when cast, kills every living thing on the planet except the Avatar and Lord British (Who won't speak to you).

If you like Planescape, Fallout, Oblivion or any of the other games to have come out since, then you owe it to yourself to play Ultima VII and thanks to Exult, a fan made Windows compatible version of the game, you can.

Oh yeah, those of you who can't be arsed to play the game should read this, a Let's Play style walkthrough which is very funny, taken from a great Ultima VII how to play as a criminal source here.

Jam it back in, in the dark.