This really shouldn’t have taken so long.
My relationship with the Ultima series started with the retrospective videos from The Spoony Experiment. Thankfully, GOG was in the process of releasing versions of the games on their platform around this time, and I picked up everything I could as it came out. Unfortunately, enthusiasm didn’t translate into finished runs of these games. I played through Ultima I first, and later finished a run through Ultima VII: The Black Gate. I loved every second of those games, and still tell everyone I can to play through them.
I was quick to tell other RPG fans that they didn’t need to miss out on the series in any way, despite my limited exposure. I didn’t want to “skip ahead” in each of the three trilogies, so progress was halted by the obtuse nature of Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress, and my old laptop crashing about 1/3 into Ultima VII Part 2: Serpent Isle.
A little over three weeks ago, however, I finally finished Ultima II. Excitement for this particular adventure was renewed, and I was ready to play more. I was left wondering which I wanted to play. I wanted to get back to Serpent Isle because I had gotten so far only to lose progress to Windows. I even bought an NES copy of Exodus in hopes of playing through at least some version of the game since I don’t play much on my PC.
And then there’s Ultima IV.
Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar, if you aren’t aware, is a free game on GOG. It’s been free as long as I’ve been playing games in the series. It was the first one I ever tried. It bounced me to the curb fast because I had no idea what I was doing – my first character started in Jhelom, which is entirely landlocked. I’d tried to play it numerous times, making different mistakes each time, even trying to rely on online help to make any kind of progress.
Regardless, it never worked out, so I would have to start fresh from time to time. Around ten years ago, I started what I had hoped would be the run that brought me to the end. I got a small notebook out from my writing supplies, and tried to play the game using only what would have originally came in the box – a map, a book of lore, a book of magic, a runic cipher.
The same Windows death that ruined my Serpent Isle run devoured that run of Ultima IV.
Needless to say, Ultima IV compelled me to come back far more than Exodus did on that night a few weeks ago. I grabbed a new notebook, printed a fresh map off from the downloads on GOG, got PDFs of the books loaded up on my tablet, and rolled a new character – this time a Tinker from Minoc.
I was determined to succeed in the Quest of the Avatar.
The Journey
For those uninitiated, Ultima IV is an open world RPG with turn based combat that takes place on a separate scene from the stages of exploration. Towns and castles dot the world, each housing a number of NPCs that the player has to talk to in text-adventure style keyword conversations. The player has to collect a series of items to succeed in their journey, explore a number of first person tile based dungeons.
But that description ignores what is most compelling about Ultima IV. The game is watching what you say, how you act, what you’re doing throughout, and is measuring your exhibition of the eight virtues: honesty, compassion, valor, justice, sacrifice, honor, spirituality, and humility.
On top of living the virtues in the world of Britannia, the player has to seek out eight runes, eight stones, seven companions, a three-part key, the wheel of a sunken ship, a book, a bell, a candle. There is meditation to be done at eight shrines. There are words of power to discover. There is an axiom to decode from visions offered by the shrines.
I don’t want to recount the specifics of the adventure here, though. There are excellent retrospectives and essays about the series that could do that just fine.
No. I want to talk about my journey throughout Britannia, and how I approached playing the forty year old game. I want to talk about my success. I want to talk my failures. And the things I ultimately had to look up to eventually bring my character to the depths of the Stygian Abyss.
A Veil Between Two Worlds
As previously mentioned, my intention was to play Ultima IV with no assistance from the internet. There was obviously some limit to how I could do this – I’d already seen videos about the game online, so I could only limit my exterior knowledge so much. Additionally, I had the experience of a few attempts under my belt. Regardless, I started my notes with a simple chart, knowing that I would need the mantras, the runes, a stone (which I thought was a gem at the outset, but no matter), and eventually to seek ascension in each of those virtues at the shrine.
From there, I started my journey out of Minoc, collecting the first pieces of my journey from there. I sought out a boat to simplify navigation. I captured every seemingly important detail in my notebook, and scribbled out the relative location of the various cities on my black-and-white map. Eventually I printed a second and translated the names on the map itself to give myself more information.
My avatar and his party died many times along the way.
But the experience of Ultima IV is not a cruel one. You respawn in Castle British, restocked with food and given 200 gold pieces. You are short a few items, but your key items remain – at least as far as I experienced. Check in with Hawkwind, and continue the journey.
There is a richness to the experience that I don’t find in modern RPGs. The quest journals automated by contemporary games are a blessing, sure, as nothing is forgotten if it is important. But I wrote my quest log, I wrote a guide to explore a world in the pages of my little journal.
In the ongoing drive for immersion in game design, I feel there’s still the possibility that the tangibility of things like printed maps and books of lore are viable in supplementing a gameplay experience. Where it does break the player from the controls, I don’t think that it removes the player from the experience. Those books exist for the player character. The game advises you to read the book of history before you determine your character class in the opening. The ankh the player character holds in their hand is the same as was included in the box back in 1985. That map is your map to the world of Britannia.
And, by extension, my hand written journal became my in-game journal, a document symbiotic with the texts included in the game.
As I pushed further in my journey, I developed a party of four, was blessed by the shrines, and made my way to the Stygian Abyss.
Those of you who have played Ultima IV already know what happened next from the last sentence.
The truth is, as dedicated as I was to navigating this experience through my own efforts, I wasn’t prepared to enter the Stygian Abyss. Certainly I had proven myself to be virtuous in the eyes of the game. Surely I was strong enough to face down whatever beasts awaited in the dungeon. I had the three part key. I had the wheel of the HMS Cape. I was prepared.
Still…I approached the chamber of the Codex, and was sent away. I was not prepared to enter and take the final test.
The Missing Pages
I took a break from Ultima IV in the days following my failure in the Abyss. I started playing the copy of Xenoblade Chronicles X that I’d been sitting on for a week while playing Ultima – I will have more to say about that game in the coming weeks. But, I eventually went back. I had to know what happened. I recovered my game, killing my entire party in the process. Turns out that the game got rid of my boat while I was down in the Abyss, and I hadn’t found mandrake root before going to the island, so I was stranded. No gate spell. No boat. Nothing.
So, I died, and respawned in Castle British, two hundred gold pieces to my name. I got a new boat and saved my game. Eventually, I would start poking around online to figure out how the game presents that you are prepared to go to the Abyss – I had believed that earning the eight stones and an entire ankh meant that you would be permitted access to the chamber of the Codex.
I didn’t find anything about specific indicators. Instead, I found the the answer – I didn’t recruit a full party.
Eight virtues.
Eight runes.
Eight mantras.
Eight stones.
Eight characters.
Eight segments of the ankh earned at eight shrines.
Suddenly, I’d broken my plans to complete the game without online assistance beyond what I’d remembered from videos. Even those things I’d strived to find the clues to lead me through those quests myself – and I had, aside from the skull of Mondain. Which is a stupid story all itself that I will share shortly.
In the end, I would check on a couple of other small details. I never understood how to get information from the pubs regarding mandrake root, and never followed clues for nightshade at all…because I never came across leads for nightshade. Instead, I would find out that I wasn’t paying enough for rumors at the bar. At least, that’s how I understand it.
This is also how you are clued into where the white stone was left after it was taken from Hythloth, a dungeon beneath Castle British. When I found the back door in the castle and entered Hythloth, I found the hot air balloon, a most complicated device to use in Ultima IV. Riding around the world in the balloon, I just happened to see the ankh tile in the middle of the Serpent Spine mountains, and then wrangled my way to it with careful use of a single Wind Change spell – I reloaded my game more times than I can count.
Other than that, I managed to finish the game using my own notes. Sure, I am pretty disappointed that I didn’t pull it off entirely on my own, but I’m happy to have pulled it off regardless.
The notebook I collected my journey in can now be used in any play through I do from here forward, amended with the few details I didn’t maintain throughout the game – maybe I’ll even find the nightshade next time! I can even include that the skull of Mondain is in the area with the three splotches of fire. Early on, I thought that this was where the HMS Cape sunk, despite the clue listing that it was in the Cape of Heroes.
It would be two more days before I actually found the wreckage of the HMS Cape.
My second trip to the Abyss was almost as hard earned as the first. I had to collect enough supplies to safely make the trip, and bring four more party members up to a reasonable level so that they were at least somewhat combat viable. This constituted another weeks worth of play, spread out around long sessions with Xenoblade.
The Reward
Convincing anyone to play a 40 year old PC RPG is nearly impossible unless that person is already an enthusiast, and doing so with as little assistance as possible even more so. Playing any game that is nearly bereft of any modern conveniences is more than most want to put up with, even if it’s far simpler to save and reload than it could ever have been in 1985.
Ultima IV isn’t an impossible game to grasp, nor is it difficult in the usual sense in which we use the term to describe gameplay. It has specific rules that you will learn through play, and it subverts certain expectations that you might bring from playing nearly any other RPG made in the 45-plus years that the genre has lived. It’s more approachable than you probably expect.
So I challenge you here, friends – take up your pen and a pocket notebook of your choosing. Go get a copy of the map, printed if you can manage it. Download the books from GOG, and print those too if you feel compelled. Take the journey.
I promise you that you’ve never played anything else quite like it.
WordsThing 