It’s been a while. Let’s get back on the same page.

In 1980, a man named Richard Garriott, known to friends and fans as “Lord British,” created a game for the venerable Apple II called Akalabeth, one of the very first computer RPGs that would be recognizable as such to today’s gamers. Akalabeth’s success led to the original Ultima, which begat one of the longest-running and most iconic RPG series of the digital age. It is no exaggeration to say that without Ultima’s many innovations (the first game to use tile-based graphics to draw its world, the first game where your actions had definite consequences on your ability to win it, the first game where NPCs had daily schedules, the first game that let you manipulate anything and everything in the world), the RPG genre would not be what it is today.

I’m reminding you of this for two major reasons. First, it has been over four months since I left this series dangling after my look back at Ultima VII Part 2: Serpent Isle, and I needed to bring new readers up to speed. (If you missed any of these, just use the links at the bottom of this article to go back through my Retro-Active articles.) And second, I wanted to stress exactly how important Ultima is to the history of the computer game and how good it always was… because this game, officially the eighth in the cardinal series, might cause you to wonder what the big deal was all about. Simply put, it’s not good. It is, however, part of the official Ultima canon, so discuss it we must…

Ultima VIII: Pagan (1994): At the end of Serpent Isle, you, the Avatar, were in a bit of a tight spot. Sure, you had restored the precarious scales of Balance to the chaotic titular land, divorced that traitorous slug Batlin from his head, and had once again thwarted the Guardian’s planned incursion into Lord British’s realm. So everything should be going great, right? Well, except for the fact that the last image of the game was of the Avatar getting grabbed by a giant hand and pulled off to God-knows-where.

That’s where this game opens, with the Guradian literally tossing you like an empty bottle of Bawls into the barren, nightmarish world of Pagan, which he’s already conquered. Here, he hopes to keep you occupied while he sets about conquering Britannia and Earth without your interference. The goal of the game is simplicity itself; you need to get off this forsaken rock.

You should know by now, of course, that things in these games are rarely as simple as they sound.

The only way to leave Pagan is to defeat the Titans, four elemental beings of immense power that are worshipped as gods by the people of Pagan. Although Pagan’s history has it that these Titans once saved the world from the powers of Darkness, their victory came at a price for the people; their saviors demanded to become Pagan’s new gods, and soon became worse despots than the Dark forces had been. Entities such as this can only be defeated by someone of at least equal power… so the bulk of the game has you running around trying to appease the corrupt Titans, doing your best to get yourself considered “worthy” of their great power, then turning around and using that power against them. Quite a change from what you, as the noble and virtuous Avatar, would normally be doing in an Ultima game, going around being Mr. Nice Guy all the time! In Pagan you have no choice but to become the enemy in order to defeat your enemy.

Garriott (who once again served primarily as the scenario designer for this game, leaving the programming to others at Origin) intended for this whole situation to make the player uneasy, to take away his or her comfort zone and present an extreme situation. In a 1999 interview he likened the game’s plot to a monk, dedicated to a life of peace, suddenly being dropped into the middle of an urban gangland, with no choice but to pick up a gun and start shooting if he had any hope of survival. It’s a good, if unsettling, concept, and the game (to its credit) doesn’t shy away from it; you do what you have to do to survive, even knowing (as the Avatar) that it’ll cost you dearly in the end, but in this one instance the ends (escaping the Guardian’s trap so you can prevent him from conquering Britannia and Earth) must justify the means.

Not so fast, my little miscreant… Just because the traditional Ultima virtues are thrown out the window, don’t think you can just waltz through the game all willy-nilly, looting towns and killing NPCs for the hell of it. Pagan may be a world consigned to eternal darkness, but they do have laws here, and you’d better abide by them if you know what’s good for you! There are many “crimes” you can commit, from murder to larceny to even just failing to show proper respect to authority figures, but all carry the same penalty if caught – death. (Obviously, prison overcrowding and repeat offenders are not major problems in Pagan.) So do what you have to do… just make sure nobody’s looking at you when you do it.

This is the recipe for an intriguing and deep game, full of moral dilemmas and difficult choices. Unfortunately, thanks in part to the interference of new Origin owner Electronic Arts (who, among other things, presented the Ultima VIII team with what was described as an “impossible” deadline), the resulting game is disappointing on numerous levels, and to many it doesn’t even feel like an Ultima at all. The game is presented as an isometric “action RPG,” laden with difficult jumps and timing puzzles that ran counter to any and all fan expectations of what an Ultima game should be like. The party is scrapped entirely, returning to the lone adventurer concept of the first two games in the series, and mouse control was generally considered klunky and awkward for the type of game this was.

Oddly enough, about six years later Diablo would become a huge hit in the PC gaming world based largely on a gameplay mechanic not at all dissimilar to Ultima VIII’s. In that respect, you could successfully argue that the game was ahead of its time. Even so, in 1994 there were certain expectations for a CRPG, and Ultima VIII was percieved as not meeting many of them at all, if any. Some wags went so far as to dub the game, derisively, “Super Avatar Bros.” due to all the running and jumping necessary! Making matters worse was the fact the finished product still contained many fatal bugs in the code (again, EA and their deadlines can be blamed for this), causing many crashes and much frustration.

If this game carried any other name, or even if it had been a side-story much like the Ultima Underworld games, all of these flaws might have been forgiven. But this was a cardinal game in the long-running series, and the flagship franchise of Origin Systems, a company that until this point had always been known for the high quality of its products. As a result, not only did Ultima VIII serve to strip away a great deal of the luster from the series, but Origin’s own reputation took a major hit as well, even though many within the company (including Richard Garriott himself) point the finger of blame squarely at EA for both insisting on the “action-oriented” format and imposing such a strict deadline on the game.

In fairness, an official patch for Ultima VIII was later released that not only fixed most of the bugs, but made many of the much-maligned jumping puzzles much easier to navigate. All modern re-releases of Ultima VIII contain this patch by default, and it is considered all but essential for playing it today. Sadly, by that point the damage had already been done to the game and its reputation. A planned (and mostly completed) expansion pack, The Lost Vale, was scrapped due to poor sales (and even poorer reviews) of the game. Even more potentially damanging, many longtime Ultima players began to actively turn on the series, lambasting EA for their interference, Origin for putting out such a mediocre game, and even Garriott for allowing it to happen.

In the end, Ultima VIII is very much a flawed masterpiece. There are flashes of brilliance in the game and its plot, and its concept is certainly enough to make you stop and think. Unfortunately, a greatly changed gameplay mechanic, a percieved lack of true depth in the game, and the buggy nature of the initial release all combine to create a somewhat less than rosy picture. It’s probably worth a play-through if you’re used to the Diablo school of PC RPGs, but diehard fans of the old-school Ultimas should be forewarned.

Following the release of Ultima VIII, the franchise seemed to go into hibernation. Not counting the spinoff Ultima Online, it would be over four years before another game bearing the hallowed name would appear on store shelves, and the story of its development would almost fill a book all its own. (And if you thought VIII was a departure from the norm, or was poorly-recieved by the series’ diehard fans, just wait…) And that’s the game we’ll be taking a look next time, as Garriott and Origin marked the 20^th anniversary of the original Ultima with what would prove to be the final game in the legendary series…

If you liked that, try...

1. Retro-Active: The History of Ultima, The Finale: Stark Raven Mad
2. Retro-Active: The History of Ultima, Part VIII - Balance Game
3. Retro-Active Special: The History of Ultima, Part V: Lord British Takes a Holiday
4. Retro-Active Special: Rule Britannia! The History of Ultima (Part the Second)
5. Retro-Active: The History of Ultima, Part VI: Prophet Motive

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