Random thoughts on Ultima 5

Aug-12-09, 2:09 pm by Hanford
File under: game design, Video games, Ultima, fun, tech

Ultima V Warrios of Destiny

I've played a LOT of Ultima. It's my favorite game series of all time. My personal favorite was Ultima 5 (U5). I know not as many people played 5 as 4, but starting with 4 all of them had this concept of "living by the virtues" -- meaning, not randomly killing, stealing, hording, etc. Being a Hero in the world, not a villain. Each Virtue (there were 8 of them) represented a commandment in a way.

U4 introduced those Virtue concepts, and U5 turned them on their head. U5 showed how taking the virtues to the extreme could have negative consequences. Poor people going to jail for not giving to the church (or was it the state? I'm not sure). Etc. U5 is sited by many as one of the best in the series plotline-wise because of this.

The game was also substantially more difficult to succeed in than U4. But what I never understood originally, was this difficulty was supposed to force you to break the virtues. Force you to steal. Force you to be bad. That was in part why it is very difficult to get going at the beginning.

I never got this as a kid, and it pissed me off. The virtues acted like rules that weren't *programmed* into the game, but existed to me anyway (you were punished if you broke them, but it didn't not KEEP you from doing bad things, like some games do). Starting off in the game, it was near impossible to stay alive. The amount of gold you got for killing the basic monsters was not enough to keep you fed, healed, and supplied. Food was the big issue for me. If only I didn't need to spend my money on food, I could save up for better weapons!

I started to steal food off of tables, and looking to see if the engine counted it as stealing. I started going into the farmlands and stealing food (did you know you could do that?) and I kept going back to my house at the beginning and taking the food there, too.

Looking back it was a clever thing for the designers to do, but since there was nothing in the game that pushed you that way -- nothing that gave you a wink and an nod that perhaps you needed to steal to make ends meet -- it pissed me off internally; it bothered me I was resorting to this.

Perhaps it was better that way; if I knew the designers had intended that, I wouldn't have felt bad. But since I really did think I was supposed to stay true to the virtues, I had a lot of mixed feelings about playing the game in the manner I did.

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