The year is 1988 and I’m sitting in a room in a trailer with cat litter on the floor. My fingers hover over the keys of an Apple IIc. I pop in a 5.25” floppy, close the side hatch and flip the power switch in the back left of the machine. The monitor lights up, the computer beeps at me through a tinny PC speaker, and then the hard emits its quintessential rumble. The Ultima 5: Warriors of Destiny boot screen slowly renders on my screen. Ok, it’s my friend’s screen. I couldn’t afford a computer so I mooched his during the many, many weekend sleepovers.

Ultima 5 is a game that I’ll never forget, partly because it took me 15 years to beat it, literally, however, think of the pull a game has that draws back a player for 15 years. Ultima presented such a challenge that finishing the game became an obsession for many. And it was never so much fun.
So what made Ultima 5 succeed in holding my attention far longer than games like GTA4 and Metal Gear Solid 4?

First, back in 1988 my expectations of what a good game was lower than today. Only a couple years earlier, the best game in the world was Super Mario Bros. Secondly, I had limited options. Today I can have almost any game I want – back in 1988, I had zero income so whatever friend had the game of interest was my best option. But 15 years after the fact, these issues were not concerns. Ultima 5 remains a phenomenal game. Let’s examine.

Ultima 5 mastered the idea of consumption – exploring all land for the sake of exploring it. There were no mapping features in games at the time, but a nice cloth map, yes cloth (!), came with the game. Britannia was like a real globe, there was no end to the world – it would wrap around on itself. Travel in Ultima 5 was difficult. It was as if you were traveling in real life. You needed a means of transportation unless you wanted to walk. If you resorted to walking, time passed by very quickly because walking on foot is slow. This meant that you had to make camp and sleep more often, and consume more meals between travels. Resting was also a dangerous prospect in Britannia. If you wanted to truly have a chance, you had to post a watchman every time you slept such that if you were attacked, you could be alerted to the threat before it could surround and attack you. During certain moon phases, a wandering spirit would heal you if you rested enough. The mere fact that the game progressed in minutes and seconds, days, nights, and the natural phases of the moon was amazing. Seriously. If you bought a pocket watch and looked at the time, then pressed the space bar on the keyboard, and looked at the watch again, it had progressed a few seconds. Very detailed. Every NPC (non-player character) in the game lived on a daily routine. Come 6 a.m. villagers would start to wake up and go for breakfast at the town hall. Shortly thereafter, they’d proceed to work. This included the merchants whose stores you wished to purchase from. At night, everyone would proceed to bed and occupy the beds in the town. If you took rest in a bed during the day and decided to sleep 8 hours, its occupant’s kick you out of bed come nightfall.

Another amazing aspect of Ultima 5 was its spells. There weren’t many spells, but that didn’t matter. Even the basic spells were cherished. To cast a spell, you first had to know the spell even existed, which meant that you had to have adventured somewhere to find someone knowledgeable enough to inform you of the spell. Next, you needed ingredients. Ingredients were not easy to come by. To get a full load of all the ingredients in the game of Ultima 5 would require trips around Britannia to at least a few cities, which specialized in each type of reagent.

Photo: The Map of Britannia

Even having the reagents and the knowledge of the spell’s recipe wasn’t enough. You then had to successfully mix the reagents together to create the potion, which could be used to cast the spell. You had to become an alchemist as well as a magician.

Photo: Ultima 5 screenshot

Ultima 5 didn’t give up its secrets easily; you had to work very hard to progress. Finding better weapons was very difficult. Often many hours of dungeon crawling were required to find a great weapon, such as the magic axe. Fighting was also difficult. Often, your player would attack during his turn only to completely miss the enemy. There were no registered hit points on enemies. You only knew the condition of the creature. When a creature was killed and left a treasure chest behind, it was possible that the treasure chest was rigged with a trapped that needed to be disarmed. Every step of the way, Ultima complicated progression without feeling unfair. This made attaining goals ultimately satisfying.

The Ultima 5 storyline could also be ignored. The story was not linear at all. Many of the dungeons could be explored out of order. The primary goal of the game was to save Lord British, but the intermediate goals were to find the three items of Lord British, his crown, scepter and amulet. Another intermediate goal was to pray at shrines and gain stat points, which was a task taken seriously as any boost to your fighters possible was worthy. However, at times the storyline would be pushed aside and I’d mess around. For example, there was a town right next to Lord British’s castle (British himself is missing, and so the throne is occupied by a daemon). Britannia therefore is in relative chaos, though the rule of law remains strong due to very aggressive and authoritative guards. However, this town only had several guards. At night you could sneak into the guard’s sleeping quarters and strike and kill one of them. But then you had to high tail it out of there before the other guards woke up and chased you in pursuit. As long as you made it successfully out of town without incident the guard would be gone forever. Slowly, I killed every guard in the town. My wrath descended upon this township. I was now ruler. How many games today allow you to kill all vestige of authority and truly rule a land? I pillaged the farmland stealing all the farmers planted crops. This prevented me from having to buy food indefinitely. The sense of exhilaration from the opportunity of being able to kill all the guards and take over a complete town felt amazing. Another aspect to this is that it felt like the game never planned on players even attempting such a thing. As a player, I felt like I had discovered a hidden aspect of the game. This resulted in a genuine feeling of discovery. I believe that even few games today feel as limitless as this felt. Even more, once I conquered the three town’s surrounding British’s castle, I started my career as a pirate.

Sailing the open seas in Britannia is no easy chore. Shallow waters can be traversed in a rowboat but the deep waters require a serious vessel. Buying a boat is super expensive, so the easiest option to us adventurers was to lure a big pirate vessel toward shallow waters, avoiding the canon fire, and board and usurp the vessel. This earned me my first ship. Sailing is another task, which requires an understanding in Ultima. Rowing is tiring and slow, so utilizing the wind direction allows for faster travel. You must be mindful however or else you can run into land and damage your ship. There are many pirates on the open seas of Britannia. Exchanging cannon fire is never preferable to boarding the enemy vessel and dispatching its crew. The ancillary benefit is that you get an additional ship, which stays on the open seas until another pirate crew boards and overtakes it, sometimes taking weeks. Saving the game recorded details such as this. Eventually I had reached my height. I managed to dock 17 full ships at the dock to Lord British’s castle. Slowly pirates stole these ships, but the golden age of my ventures into piracy will never be forgotten.

Ultima 5 was amazingly charming, even in the simple text conversations you had with peasants, merchants, and villagers. One thing was clear: the residents of Britannia do not enjoy foul language. Uttering the “F-word” to anyone in the game led to the reply, “With language like that how did thou become an avatar?” The F word was not the only word recognized. Even the C-word was recognized! (C-nt). I was surprised that such a simple game would go so far.

Exploring dungeons and the underworld was major chore as well. You could obtain these gems that would allow you to see a map of the surrounding area. Mapping information was scarce and valuable. Having mapped a dungeon could make you popular with friends also playing the game. It was timing consuming and treacherous to undertake mapping he underworld. Eventually you would run out of food, or be weary from surprise attacks upsetting your party’s rest. Sometimes you could actually become trapped in the underworld, and forced on a march to find anyway possible back to Britannia. Sometimes, you’d be caught in a whirlpool in the ocean and your ship would sink down to the underworld far from a portal. Other times, you’d reach the bottom floor of a dungeon only to discover that the entire dungeon was a door to the underworld – the adventure wasn’t ending, it was just beginning!

Ultima 5 had difficult puzzles, requiring players to map and record information. Even the language in the game at times had to be translated, much like the language in Lord of the Rings. With 8 dungeons (64 levels total) a complete over-world and underworld with dozens of towns, keeps, and castles, both land and water travel, Ultima 5 felt truly limitless. This doesn’t even take into account all the characters you could meet at a pub or wherever and convince to join your party.

Today, games work hard on creating elaborate worlds, visually rich and aesthetic, but few worlds despite consisting of primitive tiled graphics, felt as vast and wonderful as Britannia.

References:

http://www.kehlet.cx/articles/87.html