| ULTIMA IV: QUEST OF THE AVATAR |
 
In 1984, I feel the United States, under direction of the Republican Party, really started on a massive moral legislation barrel of insanity - so why am I bringing up Politics? Well, we know the "Right" tends to favor Christiannity being an integral piece of politics, and thusly we had 2 things that affect me as a gamer and a musician - the PMRC hearings where Dee Snider of Twisted Sister kicked ass looking like a high school rocker with a crumpled up book report that extolled more virtue, political intelligence, and logic than any of the Washingnton Wives could put out with a professional speech writer with a MBA from Harvard could. But on the gaming side - RPGs were under fire. Did you see Seasonn 4 of Strtanger Things? Eddie Munson ring a bell? Well, this also ATTACKED computer RPGs, including Ultima, as well.. and I have a feeling, that this was the inspiration for Richard Garriot to create the next triology in the series, which were far more story driven - starting with this, Ultima IV, progressing through Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny (1985) and the mega-hit cult-classic Ultima VI: The False Prophet (1990) - that last one being a HUGE step forward technologically as well. This trilogy became known as the "Avatar Trilogy".
Let's start with the "Avatar Trilogy" concept. Instead of just being a lone traveler from another world who gathers a bunch of objects and kills some "big bad guy" you never actually interacted with before in your life directly....now you were created, in peace-time, as a symbol of the eight virtues of the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom, a book on Fire Island that created a virtue system without any sort of actual made-up deity to control it. It just is. The eight virtues had eight shrines to correspond to them, and were assigned to the larger cities within this new world known as "Brittania". I believe this was devised as a way to prove to these right wing christian fundie wingnuts against RPGs that there IS VIRTUE in these games. Ultima IV was a HUGE step ahead technologically, with a virtue system slipstreamed in in the form of a Karma counter that can also affect your interactions with other people in the game - act like a bad person, people will try to stop you, act like a good one, people will try and help you. Now just imagine the insane level of coding for 1984 that would have been needed to mark all of your deeds in the virutal world and make that work. Anyway, onward. The Plot of Ultima IV is not that of a big bad guy terrorizing Brittania, but rather, a "Spiritual Quest" of sorts. You have to prove yourself in each of the eight virtues while carrying out side quests to prove yourself as a good person, or a symbol of a good mortal among mortals - an "avatar". There is no big bad guy, there is fetch quests aplenty, but with a purpose, and there's even some inward observation on human folley in creating of a value system in the form of a certain island town that got too "Prideful", and is now an island of ghosts, corpses, and a few living, all suffering the fate of being too prideful - that town would later have it's "virtue" associated with it changed to "Humility" in later installments. Anyway, it's marked as one of the BEST Ultima games ever released for being something more than the first three, and pushing the genre forward. That said, I have a feeling, based on the subjects in Ultima V, it still did not appease the FUndies much, because the "virtue system" was not based around a magical cloudman telling everyone they have a "destiny" in "his plan" an there was not a 1000+ page "King James Bible" embedded into the Lycaeum somewhere. But that bit has to wait until we start talking about Ultima V.Where's Alejandro Jordowowsky when you Need em' - My Experiences Ultima IV was another game I was aware of on the NES before I was aware it was a computer RPG. However, I shied from it because of that Scuba Warrior RPG full of buckethead guards that would attack you at the least provocation that came before it (Exodus), I never wanted the other Ulitma Game for the NES which I thought was way better. So I definatley missed out. So then I bought the "Ultima Collection" CD from a pawn shop in 2001 and so began my deep-dive down the Ultima rabbit hole. Ultima IV is really when the series started getting good IMHO. And the fact you don't have some evil human or mythical creature breathing down your neck the whole time in the plot is a breath of fresh air. What makes it insteresting is it's the first Ultima game that starts you off with the Gypsy asking you a series of questions with some Tarot cards to determine your character's stats (and in this case, what TOWN you belong to), as the towns follow the 8 virtues of the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom, save for one town that has been turned to ruins and has ghosts everywhere due to "Pride" being sort of a "false flag virtue" of sorts (later that town would be called to the virtue of "Humility"). Then your quest is basically to run around chanting mantras at the eight shrines and "proving" yourself to have the title of the "Avatar" - sort of a Jesus-like figure who walksa long the land of Brittania as a symbol of virtue. As such, it implimented a Karma system that watches every little tiny thing your "Avatar" does.....whether or not he asks people's names, occupations, health, gives to the poor, steals objects that don't belong to him, and apparently, there are some pretty dire consequences past a certain point. VIDEOS
Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar - Comparison Between the original EGA, VGA, and NES Versions (2007, DOSBox/FCEUx) |
