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Ultima IV: Quest Of The Avatar
Darkness has fallen anew upon Britannia, and Lord
British calls for your service again. You start out alone, accumulating
traveling (and fighting) companions along your journey, striving to live by the
Eight Virtues that govern conduct in the kingdom. Along the way, numerous
creatures, both evil and simply pesky, challenge you. As you go forth on the
quest, you must also collect the mantras of each Virtue, travel to the
corresponding Shrines, and meditate there until you reach enlightenment. With
enlightenment and experience come the strength to rid Britannia of evil - but,
to quote a little pointy-eared green guy, beware the dark side...
(Origin Systems, 1986 / reissued in 1999 as part of The Ultima
Collection)
This is a bit of a stretch for a Retro Revival Review, but no more so than,
say, Dune 2000 or Monopoly. Richard Garriott's fourth classic
role-playing installment was one of the most addictive games I ever
played on the Apple II computer. I kid you not, I spent
hours playing Ultima IV. Then, and I'm sure you know this story,
I moved a few times, lost track of my original floppies, and missed the game
terribly the next time it crossed my mind to play it. I still have my old Apple
computers in working condition, and I'd probably have one set up and running if
I still had the Ultima IV disks.
Fortunately, the release of a major, much-hyped new Ultima game
brought about a Star Wars-like renaissance of the older
material, and Origin included Ultima IV on their CD-ROM of the first
seven or eight games in the series last year. Thank you, Origin! I couldn't
give a rat's about the new game - and judging by the frequent reports of
massive, game-ruining bugs and glitches from other members of the gaming public,
I suspect the only thing the new Ultima was good for...was this truly
nifty, lovingly-translated rebirth of its predecessors.
I shall now spend hours waxing rhapsodic about why this is still my
favorite computer RPG of all time.
Ultima IV provided players with an vast world to explore, and
that world was populated with a rich tapestry of characters, evils beyond
comprehension...and good, good beyond anything that anyone had ever put
into a game before. This is pretty important stuff. The game opens with a
series of ethical questions asked by a fortune teller. There are no right or
wrong answers to these questions, but they do determine your character's
moral makeup by weighing which of the eight virtues (compassion, honesty,
justice, valor, honor, etc.) plays into your character most strongly. Your
character in Ultima IV is an extension of you - your judgment
calls on the fortune teller's questions are a reflection of your real life
values.
In a day and age when most contemporary RPGs were obsessed with hackin',
slashin', stealin' and killin' everything on the map, this was most
impressive.
To give an example of how intricately this moral ecosystem was integrated
into the game: there are two classes of attacking creatures, evil and non-evil.
Evil creatures include thieves, raiders, undead, dragons, and other horrors.
Non-evil creatures are simply doing what comes naturally to them, with no moral
inclination either way: snakes, rats, spiders, slimes, and so forth. When any
creature of either class receives a certain amount of damage, they begin to
retreat toward the edge of the meleè screen, and you can either pursue
them and kill them (if they don't escape first), or you can allow them to leave.
Evil creatures must be dealt with using whatever force is necessary and
available. But if you make it a habit of wiping non-evil creatures out at
every opportunity, your Compassion rating goes down, and non-player
characters react to you differently. If you lie in casual conversation to
those you meet in various towns, villages and castles, it will cost your Honesty
rating dearly. It's a very complex and subtle system - one designed to put the
brakes on the "kill 'em all" mentality and make players think
about their actions - and the consequences of those actions.
That alone makes Ultima IV one of the most important milestones in the
evolution of video and computer games as a social force. In a day and age where
we're blaming Doom and Duke Nukem for everything from low grades
to Columbine, I think it also needs to be pointed out when a game does
right by society.
One of the reasons I got out of paper/pencil/dice RPGs in my early teens was
that the mentality of it bothered me. There was no honor system in the swords
and sorcery genre games, and any honor system was frequently abandoned in other
genres of RPGs as well. Even Ultima III bugged me a bit with its
enormous emphasis on evil, a game where stealing was only wrong because you'd
get caught, not because it is a moral offense.
Ultima IV did right. What an incredible game.
Rating: 
One dollar - top of the line. Go trade it in for more quarters, you'll
want to play this game several times.
Reviewed by Earl Green
theLogBook.com editor/webmaster
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