Richard Garriott was pleased with the success the Ultima series had enjoyed thus far, but something was starting to bother him about it. He was noting that players were spending dozens, if not hundreds, of hours playing his games, which is a considerable amount of time to say the least. And what were they doing in those hours? Well, playing the game, obviously, but it was the way they were playing that was beginning to concern him. They were finding ways to loot and ransack towns, murder soldiers whose only “crime” was in blocking access to secret areas, and even finding a way to do away with Lord British himself – just to say they’d done it. In effect, Garriott reasoned, the players were causing almost as much death and mayhem in Sosaria as his Evil Wizards were… perhaps more, because none of Mondain, Minax, or Exodus even factored into the plot until the very end of their games!

Then there was the demon… The original cover art of Ultima III depicted a winged creature of obvious evil intent, causing many parents groups and religious leaders (including the infamous fundie group BADD, “Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons“) to get into a tizzy over how video games were leading kids into sin and corruption. (Jack Thompson would’ve been so proud…) This really bothered Garriott, who knew he wasn’t the Satanist some of these people were making him out to be. (He also knew that Exodus wasn’t the demonic creature depicted on the box – he should, since he’s the one who wrote the game in the first place – and even if Exodus was such a being, the goal of the game would be to destroy it, not join with it.)

When he put it all together, he started to realize something. If players were going to spend a good portion of their young lives playing his games, he may as well make sure they took away something worthwhile from the time spent, above and beyond the visceral satisfaction of solved puzzles and a long string of dead monsters. And since he was getting reamed by the Moral Majorities of the world for his percieved “evilness,” what better lesson could be taught than in the proper way to live and act?

Thus was born the concepts that would define Ultima for the remainder of its lifespan, as Garriott began to envision an RPG in which there would be no Evil Wizard to defeat, no killing of innocents, no looting of towns, and no other actions of questionable morality by the player. Instead, the player would be on a quest to improve herself as a person, with the ultimate goal of becoming the living embodiment of the Eight Virtues of Honesty, Valor, Compassion, Justice, Sacrifice, Honor, Humility, and Spirituality… the Avatar.

And thus did Ultima come of age, with the release of the game that would become perhaps the most celebrated of the entire series…

Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar (1985): After the defeat of Exodus at the end of Ultima III, Sosaria underwent massive tectonic upheaval that completely reshaped the land. It was only thanks to the leadership of Lord British that the people were able to survive and rebuild their civilization; thus, it was decided to name the reborn country “Britannia” in his honor. However, much like his real-world counterpart, British soon began to question whether the people in his kingdom were indeed following the right path. He devised a test, whereby individuals deemed worthy would be given the opportunity to prove themselves, not only as a brave and noble warrior, but also as a kind and giving person, who would then become his chosen champion – the Avatar – to represent his beliefs. The summons for such a champion to step forward has reached out to Earth, and specifically, to you.

Ultima IV introduced the unique “Questions of Virtue” character-creation system, whereby your job class and starting stats are determined, not by randomly-rolled numbers, but by your answers to various either/or situations where you must make an ethical decision based on what you personally believe to be “the right thing to do.” (Example: Your liege lord has assigned you to retrieve a stolen bag of uncounted gold coins. You do this, but on your way back a beggar comes up to you and asks for a single coin, with which he can pay to feed his starving family. Do you show Compassion by giving him a coin, knowing it won’t be missed, or do you Honor the trust placed in you and return the money bag exactly as it was when it was stolen? There is no right or wrong answer, save for whatever values you yourself bring to the table.) While a wonderful idea in theory, it unfortunately proved a bit too easy to manipulate; wary gamers quickly discovered that all you had to do was keep selecting the virtue representing the job class you wanted (Compassion = Bard, Honesty = Mage, Honor = Paladin, etc.) whenever it came up in the mix, and ignore anything else. Still, the situations presented by the Questions are thought-provoking to say the least, and if you play them the way they were meant to be played, you just might learn things about yourself you never realized.

At first glance, the world of Ultima IV seems little altered from that of III. You start out alone, of course, but you can find other potential party members to join you later on. (This would be the first proper appearances in Ultima of famous characters such as Iolo, Dupré, Shamino, Jaana, Mariah, and Katrina, many of whom were based on Garriott’s friends and fellow Origin staffers. Some had cameos in earlier games, but this was the first time they were full-fledged characters.) You walk around the world, buy weapons and supplies, and fight enemies in the wild. There are some niceties that Ultima III didn’t have, such as a group supply of food and money, but for the most part… it seems like Exodus all over again, only this time there doesn’t seem to be any Big Baddie to fight. What’s going on here?

Things become clear once you visit Lord British in his castle, which is your first objective. You learn from him about the Quest of the Avatar and how he’s looking for a champion that represents what a true “hero” should be, not merely a monster-slayer. Only after mastering the Eight Virtues will you be considered worthy enough to seek out the game’s physical goal – the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom, located at the bottom of a deep dungeon within a volcanic island.

And make no mistake about it – British is deadly serious when he says you need to live up to the principles the Virtues represent. Your every action in the game is being watched and judged, by way of a hidden statistic known as “karma.” It’s actually pretty simple in concept; “good” actions raise your karma, while “bad” ones lower it. Only if your karma is high enough will certain people talk to you, join your party, or give you necessary items. You are never shown exactly how much karma you have; only by talking to Hawkwind the Seer in Lord British’s castle will you be given some idea (based on what he tells you when you ask about one of the Virtues) as to how you’re coming along.

And how do you keep your karma high? By not opening treasure chests in towns without permission, by not attacking non-evil creatures (this includes town guards), by giving blood to Healers and spare gold to beggars, and by allowing fleeing enemies to escape combat (you’ll still get their EXP and gold). The game, incidentally, gives you the opportunity to ignore all of this and go on exactly the sort of looting and pillaging sprees you enjoyed in previous Ultimas (and competing RPGs), but you’ll only be shooting yourself in the foot if you do…

Ultima IV introduces what I call the “Keyword System,” allowing you for the first time to hold actual (albeit simplistic) conversations with most of the NPCs you encounter. By way of explaining how it works, let me describe a fictitious example: You encounter a woman in a town and decide to talk to her. She might tell you her name, but if she doesn’t you can type “name” to prompt her for it. The other major keyword to remember is “job,” which propmts her to tell you what she does for a living. You can then ask for more information by typing her occupation, and her response contains another keyword you can ask about, and so on. Sometimes she will ask you a yes/no question, which you can answer appropriately (remember, however, that an Avatar does not lie, and your responses do count toward your Honesty score). She might say something like “Ask Matthew about the mantra,” which suggests that you should find Matthew somewhere, talk to him, and type “mantra” as your keyword (speaking to the woman first may be the only way you’ll ever know he knows something about it). Typing “bye” at any time will end the conversation.

Another innovation in Ultima IV is in its magic system. It is no longer enough to simply know the spell you want to cast, and have enough MP to cast it; you must also have an appropriate supply of reagents on hand. Each of the spells in the game has its own “recipe,” using ingredients such as sulphurous ash, mandrake root, spider’s silk, ginseng, and more, most of which can be purchased in shops. (There are some rare ingredients that can only be found in the field, and then only during certain phases of the moons.) This added touch of realism may make spellcasting a chore, but it adds one more level of believability to the game and the world it’s trying to draw you into, suggesting that here magic works, and this is how it works. It all makes sense within the context of the game, something that helps sell Britannia as a living, breathing world of its own.

Admittedly, Ultima IV is not for everyone. There are many people who feel like they’re being handcuffed by the game, which tempts you with rooms full of easy treasure in towns but punishes you if you try to get them, or gives you the option of taking shortcuts that serve only to sabotage you on your path to Avatarhood. But then again, that’s part of the point. Ultima IV is a game about choices, in a world where actions have consequences just as they would in real life. The game itself is like one giant puzzle, one in which the obvious solution is virtually never correct and you must think in certain terms in order to find you way through. Rest assured, there is no time during Ultima IV where you must resort to robbery and deceit to achieve your goals; those chests contain nothing that you can’t easily find through more Virtuous means elsewhere, so you’re not missing anything. The point of such “tricks” is to see how well you respond to temptation, and your response is meant to make you think about who you are as a person, not merely someone pressing buttons on a computer to play a trivial game.

It seems fair to compare Ultima IV to one of Wisdom Tree’s infamous “Bible” cartridges for the NES. Wisdom Tree, as you may or may not know, was a maker of unlicensed NES games that all had a religious theme to them, with the intent to tell Bible stories in a video game context. The games were, on the whole, horrible hacks of equally horrible games from the company’s previous incarnation (Color Dreams) where you fought your way through the heathen populace of your town, with random Bible quotations and quizzes popping up here and there. They sent an overall message of “You can do anything you want, even kill or maim people, as long as you’re doing it in the Lord’s name.” (If you’ve ever seen Adult Swim’s Moral Orel, it was sort of like that, only played straight and without the irony inherent in such a statement.) Conversely, Ultima IV has no religious pretensions about it, yet it actually rewards “good” behavior while punishing you for acting out of line, even if your cause is just. It does make you think…

Ultima IV caused a sensation upon its release – only fitting, because Ultima III had been such a huge hit and IV once again pushed the boundaries of what could be expected from one of these games. It was a refreshing change from the typical “Kill The Foozle” plot of computer adventures, which even by 1985 had begun to grow a wee bit creaky. And most importantly of all for the future, it established the world of Britannia, to which the player would return again and again throughout the rest of the Ultima series, each time finding it constantly evolving and changing in a realistic fashion between visits. Perhaps no other game series can boast of such a self-consistent history. It remains, to this day, probably the highest-rated of any Ultima among fans of the series (only Ultima VII comes close, and arguably surpasses it in popularity, though it’s pretty much a photo finish either way).

The full PC version of Ultima IV has now been released as freeware (that’s “free as in beer,” GNU folk), and is available legally and officially from various Ultima fansites around the Web. It runs perfectly in DOSBox as-is, but there is a port for modern OS’s called xu4 that allows the game to be run natively in your choice of Windows, *nix, or Mac. It’s not quite complete yet, but you can play the game through to the end, and it features an option for enhanced graphics and music. What I’m basically saying here is that there’s no excuse for not at least trying this game and seeing if it’s up your alley. 8^)

Next time: Ultima V shows us what happens when a good idea gets taken too far, and the Way of the Avatar is signed into law by a misguided king.

If you liked that, try...

1. Retro-Active Special: The History of Ultima, Part V: Lord British Takes a Holiday
2. Retro-Active: The History of Ultima, Part VIII - Balance Game
3. Retro-Active Special: The History of Ultima, Part III: The Exodus to Origin
4. Retro-Active: The History of Ultima, The Finale: Stark Raven Mad
5. Retro-Active: The Better-Late-Than-Never History of Ultima, Part IX: Super Avatar Bros.?

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