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Any Ultima fans here?

Started by ASFTSN, July 15, 2016, 06:06:39 PM

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ASFTSN

Any Ultima or Ultima Underworld fans here?

As a whelp I was quite obsessed by Ultima Underworld 2 – and still consider it to be my favourite computer game (possibly joint with Doom 2).  I'd played Ultima VI and VII on and off a few times in my mid 20's but always became frustrated with them, partially due to not keeping notes/referring to maps/trying to play while intoxicated.

In the last couple of weeks though I've begun a new, determined effort to play Ultima VII through without looking up any spoilers/walkthroughs and I'm totally absorbed.  I'm particularly impressed by the NPCs – there's a load of people in every location you go to, and even the most humdrum of them will have some interesting story or problem to relate to you, even if it's just to scoff in your face when you introduce yourself as legendary 'The Avatar' (which of course, you are!)

Particular favourite NPC interaction so far has been with a Unicorn, hiding in a dungeon because he is tired of being used as a 'virgin detector' (only virgins can touch a Unicorn).  After asking you whether or not 'Thou art a virgin' his next line of dialogue if you say 'no' is to ask you to give him a scratch between the shoulder blades.



This game world, although perhaps not as giant as modern day AAA games (which I have no experience with beyond Fallout 3 and New Vegas) is pretty enormous, and more importantly feels enormous.  I think there's two aspects to this - a complete lack of hand-holding as regards to plot and location [nb]Hell, 99% of the signs in towns and cities are in 'runic' which you'll need to refer to the game manual to decipher.[/nb] (see aforementioned necessary note-keeping) and the other is the inclusion of stuff that is 'irrelevant' to adventurers, but exists as part of the game world.  This includes the day-today concerns of the NPCs as well as the many hundreds objects which have no real game purpose, but can be picked up, moved around etc.

Overall a great experience so far and I'm looking forward to journeying onward.

Any fans of these games?  Obviously you'll need to get past the graphics if such things bother you – for me that's always been second to the gameplay and 'feeling'.  In any case, I think Ultima VII looks quite beautiful - in terms of colour palette and mood at least.



[nb]Both screenshots here are nicked off the internet as I'm typing this at work and wishing I was playing Ultima VII[/nb]


Hangthebuggers

Ultima online ex-player here.

God I loved that game when it was at its peak. It was breath taking, refreshing and gave you so much freedom.
So naturally I was a cunt.

I had a house on an isolated island infested with venomous snakes. Like a lot of other players I dropped rune stones that advertised my vendors wares, which players could click on and be teleported to my house to buy shit. However all I sold was snake anti-venom for extortionate prices, which basically gave the player two choices. Get bitten and die (thus letting my loot their corpses) or they'd get bitten and buy my overpriced snake venom. Quids in.

Top game. I really miss the MIDI music from the early games.

ASFTSN

Quote from: Hangthebuggers on July 15, 2016, 07:14:59 PM
Ultima online ex-player here.

Oof, this game was like crack to my younger brother and his mates.  I remember being awed by the concept when I read about it and then seeing him and his mates using it to just stand around in a fantasy universe and insulting each other as if they were on MSN messenger and being crushed! 

We were always getting in fights about who would use the computer until my parents had to 'ration' how long we were each allowed to play.  Once, after a huge argument about whose turn it was I walked into the room and he was nowhere in sight, having fucked off down the park and left a paperweight holding down the space bar so his character could perform the 'mine' action or something over and over again. 

ASFTSN

Quote from: Hangthebuggers on July 15, 2016, 07:14:59 PM
Top game. I really miss the MIDI music from the early games.

One thing that sucks about seeking old game MIDI tunes for a nostalgic thrill is odds are your current machine will have a different bank of instrument sounds to the one you first played the game on.  So it'll never sound quite as piquantly crap again.

Hangthebuggers

Quote from: ASFTSN on July 15, 2016, 07:25:03 PM
Once, after a huge argument about whose turn it was I walked into the room and he was nowhere in sight, having fucked off down the park and left a paperweight holding down the space bar so his character could perform the 'mine' action or something over and over again.

My mate did something very similar with a version of Flight simulator, just held some key down with a heavy blue-tac blob and then went (I was kipping on the couch at the time). He said help yourself to tea and toast and whatever but don't fucking touch the computer. Apparently he was flying to Moscow on some autopilot.
He went to bed and left me to chill and eat toast.
He got up at about 6am to land the plane and then went to work.

--

As for UO - Yeah Brittania bank was the hangout ground from what I recall. Although at one point, all the bastards and murderers and thieves and criminals either hid in the woods and mugged players (or when they split the shards, they hid near the portals!) or headed south(?) to the Pirate place and built some sort of 'land' using boats all locked together to create an artificial island of sort.

I remember my greatest 'scam' was wandering into some guy's house in-game. He was trading some rare statues or something worth a few grand. So I came up with a plan. Basically I told him I'd be back in a few minutes and then basically set up a macro, that made it look like my character had teleported out of the room. But in reality, I'd used an invisibility spell and cast a /voice macro that gave the exact 'text' that a teleporting character would say (Something like VOS REL POR?) or something.

Anyway, I went back to the guy's house and said 'Yeah mate, ready to trade, no bother... But on one condition, I don't want to trade here, I'd rather do it somewhere neutral like Brittania bank'.

He said 'cool, no bother' (as it would be safer for him to 'unlock' the items that were on display in the house with nobody around). I gave my farewells and told him I'm teleporting to the bank, see you in 2 mins'.

And of course, I hit my macro and my character vanished with the magic words above my head and as far as he was concerned he was safe to start unlocking the items. And so he did. And so I snatched about three statues before he realised what was going on. Then I genuinely teleported out of his house before he could attack me.

My best in-game heist ever.

--

Oh and you could follow big level adventurers into dungeons and when they're fighting big fucking dragons or elementals and stuff, you could hit the dragon once or twice with your shitty staff or shitty sword and then run to a safe distance and you'd get loads of XP when they killed it. And quite often high level adventurers wouldn't bother even looting the local corpses, but I'd end up with mega-loot for doing fuck all.

Then you could drop a rune down in that high level dungeon and advertise that rune as being a vendor. Teleport out, go to the city, drop copies of that rune everywhere (Great shop, cheap prices, magic weapons), give it ten minutes and then teleport back, activate invisibility or the hide skill, loot the pile of bodies of confused, dead players and teleport out.

I was a right bastard.

Viero_Berlotti

I played Ultima IV on the C64 way back when. I was only young but recall being throughly engrossed by it. It was the first game I remember playing that gave a feeling of being in inside a living and breathing world. The exploration aspect of it was ground breaking too. Most crpg's I had played before this we're all dungeon based, but having a whole planet to explore was just mind blowing.

It was certainly a very influential game series. Even now I play crpg's and I think I'm still subconsciously comparing them to Ultima IV.

samadriel

I'll second Ultima IV. I've only completed it once (the dungeons are a bit of a sticking point for me), but I've played it more than any other game, I would say. In particular, I love the music, just beautiful. I liked that the main struggle of the game was to live by the virtues, rather than going through a linear story with a main baddie. That's what puts me off Ultima V, Lord Blackthorne or whatever it is. I haven't given the latter Ultimas a proper go though, for all I know they're great.

ASFTSN

Finished this epic fucker at the weekend. Overall thoughts:

- Extremely immersive overall, and a great atmosphere.  I go a mate to start playing it and I think he was right when he described the overall feeling as 'tranquil'.  Probably sounds a bit woo-woo to describe a CRPG as that but I felt it was on the nail, especially with regards to the faux medieval/folksy/baroque/counterpoint-y music[nb]One exception to this is the fucking horrible sea-shanty song that plays when you are on a boat, near a boat, or seemingly even thinking about a boat.  It lasts 5 seconds, then a huge gap of yawning silence, then re-starts.  Awful.[/nb] (as others have said about Ultima in general). 

- Packrat tendency in full effect.  Hundreds of little fiddly items and it's fun just pointlessly collecting shit and stowing it in the ships hold.  At one point I nearly threw away a totally useless 'gargoyle wing scratcher', but balked because I paid good money for it dammit.

- Side quests are really nice, but mostly conversational, and there's never really any material benefit or XP gain to doing them that I can see.  I'd see that as a good thing in some ways, it's nice to just feel like you've done something because it feels 'right'.

- Combat is somewhat shite.  It's far too difficult, then suddenly once you have a full 8 party members with semi-decent it, reall easy, and your only real input is to to tool everyone up, pre-set their 'tactics', and press 'C' when you see an enemy.  Then it plays itself, apart from you casting spells or doling our potions.  Normally over in literally 3-5 seconds - you either win, or you just reload a savegame and try again.  It's a shame because the neon gore is quite fun and leaves some satisfying carnage.

- Dungeons/puzzles are also not much cop.  You can burn through most of them using a spell that flips levers through walls/doors, but then occasionally you'll get a puzzle which seems to be the game just taking the piss out of it's own engine.  One of them was just stacking boxes to reach a ledge about 10ft above me in game terms, while my eight party members stood around unable to give me a leg-up like you would in a tabletop D&D game!  Not enough scope for riddles and the whimsy I like in RPGs.

There's Ultima VII Part 2: Serpent Isle to play too, which is meant to be as big, but with better characters and storyline.  I find it interesting that some very old school people on the internet seem to consider Ultima VII to be the decline of CRPGs in general, with a focus on story, exploration and 'talking', and the slipping away from tactical, turn based combat in favour of collecting loads of gear and real-time fights.  I'm of an age where it was always talked about as the absolute peak of CRPGs, so it as interesting to play through and see its flaws first hand.

Thanks to everyone else for comments on the previous games, I have downloaded 4-6, not sure when I'll get a chance to fit them in though, just started Wizardry 7...