What do I mean about all of this? Well, while not the first game with a Day/Night Cycle (that was Ultima IV), and not the first game with people on their own Schedules (Ultima V), it was the first game in VGA, the first game with a full Adlib music score, first game where you could manipulate almost any object on screen - like in real life. Conversation trees got more complex, the inventory system was graphical, you could use a mouse! There were many written works of literature in the game you could find all around that were pages upon pages long - including the book you cast spells from. Characters now had portraits (albeit sort of PBS cartoon level at this point in the series, like pictures from a book on Reading Rainbow), and it seems more effort was put into personalities of the characters. And the cherry on top - towns and dungeons were no longer separate entities represented on a larger world-map launched by "icons" - they now were integrated into the landscape like in real life. YOu left Brittania, and walked the pathway to Trinsic, or Yew, or Paws - not walked out of town, press "E" to exit, and then wander a smaller rendered path. To a modern day RPG, this may seem like nothing - but in 1990, when most PC games were still EGA, had internal speaker sound, and an "RPG" looked almost like the original Dragon Quest for the NES despite being on 16-bit hardware - but this? This was a huge step forward. And we have not even gotten into the plot yet.

The plot is a complex "Social Tolerance" plot. I have to wonder if Richard Garriot, living in Texas and all, had to suffer some of the ills I had to in the Deep South (I lived in Alabama when this game came out). At first you are introduced to a plot where the shrines are being attacked by Gargoyales coming up from red moon gates. And part of how you wound up in Brittania was because these Gargoyales open one by your house while you're watchingn TV on a rainy night, and capture you for a blood sacrifice at an alter in what looks like a backrooms meme. But the "undertow" if you will is that the Gargoyales are their own race and species who, by sealing the door to the underworld, as well as basically speciesism and racism, lead to the oppression of the gargoyales. So your REAL quest is to de-segregate Brittania and integrate Gargoyales in socity, building peace between the two, when only a game prior you were chopping their heads off like you would any other enemy.

It took me a bit to connect this to the NES game I had. To me at the time, Dragon Warrior, Ultima: Exodus, and the like, were much the same, you played as tiny sprites with a limited set of control and parameters, and almost nothing made sense, and dialog was so short and poorly translated in some cases you were not sure if you were supposed to do something or not. But here I was, holding full conversations with characters in 256 color VGA, stealing deeds for ships, executing Shopkeepers chastising me for not having enough gold, running from hordes of Garboyales when I'd try to approach a shrine, hanging around with a Headless in a Lighthouse I'm trying to destroy like that lunatic muppet with the TNT with a inventory full of powder kegs. Plot? Who cares? Wanton destruction, death, and serial kleptomania for the win in this game! Most kids had to wait until GTA for this kind of maniacal gaming behavior - not me, I was stealing transporation and sleeping with gypsies before I even knew what it meant! I could make bread, steal skiffs, and sail to the edge of the world if I wanted to. I took my digital psychopathy so far in this game Lord British refused to revive me (must have had a negative Karma score so bad Hell would have vomited me back on the earth), yet despite his efforts to keep me dead, I still could be killed, even thougI was a floating corpse roaming the streets of brittania, still attacking townspeople, stealing horses, stealing food, leaving Iolo's wife a widow, and inciting the wrath of Brittanian guards on levels that would leave a punk rocker going "hey, hey hey hey - ENOUGH with the Rebellion dude, c'mon, relax man, you don't always have to be inciting riots!" but here I am on such a riotous level I'm surprised

But eventually, over time, I matured, and started to play this game properly. And while the main gmaeplay and story is simple - you go through a bunch of fetch quests in the towns tethered to shrines (Britain, Trinsic, Yew...etc) to retrieve the rune and mantra to close the moongates to the underworld to keep the gargoyales from killing any more people, there's a LOT of othere subplots and finer points to appreciate. You have the town of paws with a barkeeper that has cats around, Gypsies in the castle town of Trinsic, a ghost in Jhelom, a magician who you can buy spells from who speaks in riddles, the beekeeper, winery, and artisanal guild in Empath Abbey, that stone faced B**** that runs Yew like a Southern schoolteacher, a lighthouse with a Cyclops family, robbing corpses in catacombs, and the list goes on nd on....there's a lot to appreciate by taking your time and getting involved.