I was 8 years old, and new to PC RPG adventure games. I was also young and stupid, and often became stuck. Every week or so, I would handwrite a letter to EA asking for help and, 3 days later, would always be waiting with great anticipation for the postman, who would have a reply in the mail from a guy called Simon, giving me hints, encouragement, and sometimes including a scan from the guidebook (repeat for Serpent Isle). I remember running downstairs to tell my parents when I finally finished it. Loved this game.
That is awesome. Origin was really proud of the series back then. Also wonder if he's the real life counterpart of the "human" Knight Simon in Serpent Isle like a lot of the other characters in the series.
I was worse than you were I would call the hotline back to back and needless to say I ended up progressing however when that phone bill arrived I was always in deep shit😂
That reminds me on another note I eventually ended up getting the guidebook. I still have the gem in my closet I even have the ultima collection. Damn I miss playing this game they should def do a remaster and bring it to current consoles. If they did that my life would be complete and I can finally die a happy person.
Same here, minus the part of sending letters! I played this game FOR YEARS and it never lost his charm. It was a great experience, i also learnt a lot of english language vocabulary just clicking on items! It formed my taste in games for sure :)
I love it when people who aren't very educated in the subject think that Oblivion invented NPCs with schedules. Yeah, no, just like everything Bethesda does, someone else did it 10 years earlier. Ultima 7 was really a milestone that remained the pinnacle for 15-20 years. Serpent Isle was my favorite though, the story is just that much stronger.
This was in 1992, pretty amazing feat to have such a large living open world with NPC dialogues, interactive questlines etc. Truly a masterpiece in both coding and gfx.
Very few RPG’s nowadays have as much interactivity as Ultima 7, Divinity Original Sin 1 and 2 come close but seriously more games should be aiming for this level of interaction beyond the typical “level up and min-max your character” RPG’s that are way too common now
I really like this channel. As cool as Spoony's video on this game is, you shed light on details he never did and your approach to talking about games in general is refreshing. No tryhard pseudo intellectual analysis or forced rage or forced positivity.
I'm glad you're enjoying the vids, thanks. I like Spoony's Ultima videos, but I've also always liked channels just talking about their opinions on their favorite series without the latter stuff you mentioned.
@@VoidbrandGallery Yup, loving them! Rooting for you to be the next gaming UA-camr that makes it to 100k. Spoony's Ultima retrospective is amazing and I love it, but it's more comedy than informative. Your videos are more informative than comedy and are a perfect contrast.
Well, to be fair a lot of the "pseudo intellectual analysis" you mention was done for comedic effect. Spoony is from a bygone age of "angry reviewers"; this a more straightforward 'essay' on the game, and I'm really enjoying all these intelligent people coming out and reviewing old CRPG games and Dungeon Crawlers.
At the end of the Ultima IX review though, Spoony does give one of the best monologues on why the dumbing down on Ultima (and any franchise) was a total betrayal to long time fans and why it does matter.
Boomer gamer here. A boot disk was a way of changing settings on your PC to allow a game or other piece of software to run properly. It would set the memory and other parameters for the game. On old PCs when you started them up, the PC would check the floppy drives for an inserted disk. if you had the boot disk inserted, instead of going to windows or MS-DOS, it would load whatever game you wanted to play.
Picture my 8yo self trying to translate the instructions on the english Origin Collections manual in order to properly setup a bootdisk to play U7 on my father's 486 😂 only to get SCARED by The Guardian EVERY TIME
Magebane is helpful for fighting the liches in this game and the vampire in SI. Getting hit with it prevents them from casting spells for a bit. Great video, by the way. Always nice to hear other's perspectives on one of my favorite games. :)
It is worth playing through, to be sure. But do yourself a favor and read the manuals first, or even better, playing Ultima VI before hand. For maximum enjoyment of U7 you should understand Britannia, its history and its religion before you play.
@@stephenmccabe1489 That's fine. If you don't read the manual then you won't understand the game, then you will play it and tell people it sucks. So I would rather discourage players by telling them to make a tiny effort than encourage them to play with no effort at all and hate the game. Anyone who thinks reading is too much effort should not be playing Ultima at all.
I never had the pleasure of playing the Ultima series but it has always fascinated me. Particularly the Black Gate. I feel I missed out not knowing about it in my childhood. Great video, great series you've put together and great channel! Very glad I found it!
The best way to break the economy was to start the roulette wheel spinning, then save the game. Note where it stops, load the game, then quickly bet all your money there. Somehow you're allowed to bet while the game is playing, but the result always matches what it was during the save.
I have played Ultima VII: The Black Gate since it’s release. Absolute Titan of a game. Love how this game still has a loyal following. There’s a mod for Ultima 7 now to play Ultima 6 in Exult.
Thank you for this retrospective. U7 (along with Star Control 2) is one of my most fundamental formative game experiences; it opened to me the world of CRPGs back in 1993 and started a lifelong love for this genre. And yes, getting it to run back in the day was a PITA - but on the other hand it was yet another learning experience of config.sys and autoexec.bat that allowed me to move from boot disks to boot menus to creating a lean and universal DOS setup (and then ruining it with Win95 ;-).
Also, just to show just how much I enjoyed U7 - I have the cloth map (yes, the game came with a pysical map printed on cloth) framed and displayed in my study. One of the best game mementos ever.
Going from Sega games to a game like Ultima VII was something else for me back then. Though I do still love the Genesis even today despite that. Didn't know games could even do stuff like what Ultima VII did.
I unfortunately lost my cloth map... The only Ultima thing that survived multiple moves were the virtue tarot cards from the Ultima IX big box, which I've done the same as your cloth map, framed forever. Despite the game the cards are rather nice.
I have fond memories of watching my brother in law play this game and just be in awe of the "open world gameplay" and the ability to steal things and loot corpses. Blew my mind, because all I've been playing was side scrollers, shoot'em ups, and fighting games. It was like medival GTA.
Hey, I just wanna say that I really appreciate you making this video in 4:3 since it's about a game that is originally rendered in that aspect ratio. It makes watching this video on a 4:3 monitor much more authentic! (Yes, my second monitor is an age old CRT lol)
playing this again now! i was telling someone "it's like if skyrim had a GTA 1." it's still unsurpassed in many ways. no loading screens. screen wrap map. i wonder if i spend more time scrolling through my inventory in fallout, or drag and dropping crap around in my back pack. i find "fast travel" to be a cop out in game design. ultima handles this with a magic spell. i played this a kid and mostly just wandered around hunting for cool stuff. it was the first game i played that you could just "hang out" in. i'm on the regular "gog" version. i played on "exult" once and some things didn't work right. combat was all messed up, and the fire sword didn't have torch power. the version i'm on now runs as good as it ever did. i have been grinding stats this time around. Spark is 30/30 and actually kills stuff! great video!
30/30! That's a strong Spark. I wish more games did mark/recall like Ultima VII and Morrowind. It felt like you had to earn "fast travel", and it's more immersive overall. Other than that I rarely even use the magic carpet in VII anymore as I feel it takes away from the exploration if you can just bypass mountains and oceans and such.
Thank you so much for this video. Ultima 7 was the first role playing game I dared to immerse myself into as a kid. I even got into learning English for understanding the dialoge and story. I remember long evenings exploring Yew, being frightened on Skara Brae etc. Even the virtue system had a huge impact on me. Also, I got so obsessed that I even went to our local German "hobby lobby" equivalent and bought colors for painting my shirts with the Ankh. lol... Yet, I never finished the game. I rather used it as a sand box for exploring a virtual world. Some years later I played The Serpent Isle and finished it.... With Ultima 8 I got dissapaointed since I wanted to get back to all the mini activities like making bread etc. Something I waited then for many years in Games to be picked up again. Long wall of text for just telling you thank you and "liked and subscribed".
I read it all, thanks for the support. 💀 The sandbox nature of VII is something I mostly messed with too, just wandering around and doing funny stuff like fishing and hoarding loot in a cave somewhere. There was a long lull in my life where I wasn't able to play it again since computers moved on from DOS. Didn't get back to it until Exult worked at keeping the game alive.
Excellent video review of one of my all time favorite games! As you mentioned, it is truly incredible how much you can explore in this game given the hardware limitations of the day. Even now, I still find new things in the game that I never discovered before. For example, my last playthrough I decided to put on some swamp boots and explore the swamp portion of Locke Lake, just to see if anything was there. Lo and behold, there was the ruin of Stonegate! I couldn't believe I'd never discovered this in my many previous play throughs. Of course, it does then make one wonder who the hell rebuilt it for our return to Britannia in Ultima 9.
Thanks. Still my favorite CRPG of all time. I think I realized Stonegate was there when I replayed it a year or two ago. The devs really hid it pretty well.
Excellent video, your early experiences with the game very much mirror my own. The game has always been one of my favourites, I even use the same trick as you to get through the chimney and acquire all the good equipment at the beginning of the game.
This was peak Ultima. 1992 was the pinnacle year for the series. Ultima 7 peaked the main series. While Ultima Underworld also came out in a same year and it was a groundbreaking stuff for became the 3D ultima. Ambitious and immersive spinoffs title
Peak Ultima is correct, even Garriott would agree. Very immersive games. I can still hear the waves of the ocean whenever the Avatar is near the shores.
My first Ultima was Serpent Isle when I was 8 and didn't speak english. Needless to say it went over my head except for the (very loose) translation my dad would give me. But I remember learning english clicking on everything to get the name of items and stuff in houses and killing guards for money. We never did beat it back then, got stuck because we didnt have the Hound of Duskar sniffing Batlin's medalion, which means you cant open the doors in the snow cave. Only beat it many many years later! Good times
Batlin's first job for you is key to an infinite XP glitch, and an item-duplication exploit. The trick is to say NO the first time he asks you to deliver the box to A&E -- it won't work if you say yes. So say no, then talk to him again to get the offer; when you say yes, everyone gets 100 XP. Trick is, as long as you don't deliver the box, he'll offer it AGAIN (giving you another 100 XP) and keep doing so. The item dupe: Once you do the steps above, take something in your inventory that has a quantity -- arrows, gold, spell reagents, anything that pops up a "how many" prompt when you move it. Go move it somewhere, pick the full amount, then talk to Batlin again. Take the job, and the item you moved will now be back in the original spot AND where you moved it, so you doubled the amount. You can do this as much as you want as long as you don't deliver the box.
First played Ultima 6 at my cousins house and loved it, they did also. So when Ultima 7 came out we all went out and bought it and every weekend for about a month or two we would all play phonetag asking each other for help and telling what we had found. It's one of the few games I've revisited multiple times and still ranks in my top 3 favorite games of all time (maybe top 5 now that BG3 exists).
My first playthrough of this game when I was 12, I skipped the main town to the north. Just kept walking north and then found the flying carpet up there and I thought I found the coolest treasure ever. I could just fly anywhere! Was sometimes tough to get party members to fit onto it haha
Given the way the Guardian was introduced, I always thought he was meant to be the Avatar seen through a dark lens in the sense that he was of similar origin, possibly even a human from Earth given access to Britannia by Lord British, but had used that chance to integrate into the world of Britannia as its master rather than its protector, like the avatar had done. I thought it was the origin which made the most sense and highlighted the nature of everything the series had been striving toward since Ultima 4; morality necessitates choice, and where the Avatar had made their choices in alignment with the virtues, the Guardian had made choices against them. I still interpret his origin like that when I'm playing Ultima 7, even though (and partially because) it flies in the face of revelations made in Ultima 8 and 9.
Forgot about boot disks. Wow. Yes many games required you to run the PC on start=-up with it in their disk drive just to play teh game to load the front ram
Oh man. Ultima 7. I don't know how many hours I put into this at about age of maybe 12 to 15. Why does the age matter? Well simply cause English isn't my native language and obviously my vocabylary was very limited back then and the writing style of Ultima for sure didn't help at all. But back then I was really sure that Fellowship was very evil. Anyway, even the huge amounts of misunderstanding of events, game world really sucked me in. It was nothing like I'd seen before and world insanely hard and detailed. The latter actually still stands. It's one of the titles still now in my forties is something I've planned so many times to re-visit and experience with todays knowledge of English. Now that being said... 🧐
It's still excellent to this day. Also I can see how the old English text would be challenging back then. And their choice of text doesn't help for a lot of people. 💀
i was 12 when this game came out and i remember my father creating the boot disc, writing a script and config file that changed how memory was allocated. the reason a boot disc was needed was due to how memory was allocated. systems at the time were 16bit and U7 required a faux 32bit setup. basically made memory addresses reserve two locations to make this faux 32bit and the default 16bit system didn't do this.
In its early days, Electronic Arts *was* actually pretty beloved. But they went the same way as every other game company. Either die in an acquisition, or live to see themselves become the villain.
Oh yeah… Origin had their own memory manager for U7 called Voodoo. In the early days you had to decide if you wanted music, or mouse support, you could only load so much into himem. But luckily there were small mouse drivers you could use to finally play U7 with all the bells n whistles. I think I still have a boot disk stashed somewhere still heh. Be thankful you never had to mess with that nightmare. Still one of my top 10, even top 5 rpgs. I loved the darker story, the interactive world… definitely the peak Ultima before going downhill with 8. If I have my grips it was combat. The odd isometric view made everyone almost stand on each other all shouting and just turning into a chaotic mess. Nothing worse than an injured companion fleeing the fight leaving a trail of dropped items in his wake. There was an early mod someone did for Exalt, a proof of concept, rotating the screen 45 degrees I believe. Actually made the isomeric view look worlds better… sadly it was never finished.
I've seen that mod you mentioned. Too bad it never took off. With Exult someone (Total Immortal on UA-cam) is working on Ultima VI in the Exult engine which I'm really interested in.
I remember my dad spending countless hours trying to get everything perfect for it to run. We updated to windows 95 and then I assume it overwrote the mouse driver or something and I couldn't get it to run with both the audio and mouse at the same time even when booting to dos
ems is the expanded memory system to enable more ram than the 640kb limit on dos, the reason for the bootdisk is to only load drivers you absolutely needed to play the game (mouse, soundcard and whatever) to free up every available kilobyte of memory.
Thanks man, now I have to play this game again. A propos combat system, I find it erratic yet dynamic and fun. Personally I much prefer the turn based combat of Ultima 6/Savage Empire/Martian Dreams. Great video!
Appreciate it, thanks. 💀 Most players dislike the combat, but I'm not bothered by it. I think I'm entertained by the companions' taunts and how chaotic it looks. Then I get to loot bodies. Anyways, it's always a good time for another Ultima VII playthrough.
I absolutely LOVED Ultima VII, and I got it on release weekend. I had endless trouble getting it to run because it wasn't known that it crashed on 386SX computers (it ran on 386DX). I still played it through even though it would crash about ever 20 minutes or so. That being said, I disagree with your assessment of quest markers being a detriment to games: I'm 46 now, I have ADHD, and it's incredibly easy to forget what my next objective in a game is if I even take a couple days off. Gaming is my favorite hobby but I have so much more occupying my brain space these days that I can't necessarily remember who told me to go where and talk to who about what... I'm playing the Trails series of games now, and I'm very thankful for quest markers.
Nice vid man, love this game too. Maybe my top game ever... I totally agree the exploartion and interaction within this game really made it feel special. Maybe its just me but I remeber playing Oblivion for the first time and thought, this looks pretty and the world is huge. Went into someones house and theres furniture and items that you can physically move about, but thats it, no real interaction...?! I was disappointed 😂
I discovered the game through Spoony's epic retrospective (I was a graphic adventure player mainly back in the day). Played it, loved it, never managed to finish it though. I wish someone would make a game with a story and quests as interesting an involved as Ultima VII but with good combat. Current cRPG stories are awful and combined with, like you mentioned, terrible "QoL" changes make the games little more than pretty skinner boxes.
Nice. Spoony's Ultima videos is how I got exposed to the earlier games (at that time I haven't played the ones prior to VII yet) Ultima VII is still my favorite to this day. I also wish someone would make an "Ultima 7-like" with all the interactivity of The Black Gate/Serpent Isle with + the questing, especially on the indie side. It's either phenomenally tough to create or just hasn't been done yet.
@@VoidbrandGallery Mechanically it isn't hard with modern engines and what not, but making a big unique indie game is almost impossible due to the time needed for unique asset/world bulding. Also 99% of the current people involved in vg writing should never be allowed near a text processor (and this applies to the indie and AAA scenes).
8:09 - Another thing is that Spark's portrait changes from crying to happy if you allow him to join your party. You are correct, with high base stats (probably even too high for a 14 year-old) at just level 1. Once Spark gets to level 9 and the correct training, he will have more useful stats than every party member except the Avatar. One of the things I didn't feel was realistic, since Dupre should be next after the Avatar. 10:29 - Mark & Recall is used to fast travel.
Yes, Mark & Recall is used to fast travel. And it requires reagents, a certain level+ to cast, and virtue stones. It is completely immersive, and takes effort to earn. Which adds to the immersion that I mentioned not long after that timestamp. I'm talking about fast travel like in Skyrim, where you click on a map to go to a point.
As I recall it, Spark also turned out to be a giant eater ("I don't eat much", he said to convince you to take him along), but I could never send the poor lad away because his portrait would change back to crying mode again as soon as I suggested him to 'leave'.
I don't have the box to IX anymore, though I still have my virtue tarot cards. I haven't played IX since it came out so that's going to be interesting to go through again.
@@dungeonchill Always thought the class fits the Avatar the best before he became the Avatar. Or can just refer to him as a Fighter/Mage/Bard afterwards. Then again he's basically all the classes at once.
@@dungeonchill"what's a paladin?" Is an old meme. A guy called Spoony made a ultima retrospective back in the day and in Ultima 9 "what's a paladin?" was a line he made infamous.
Well everyone said it but, this piece plays in the city of Britain, capital of Britannia, all ruled by a man named Lord British. Sounds weird when I read that back to myself but there you go.
Every time I tried to play this game, I get turned off by the constant demands of the companions for food. Any tips on how to deal with this? I know you stockpiled it, but where did you get enough money to do so at the beginning of the game?
I hunt deer. There's a deer just outside to the south of Trinsic near/past some wolves. If you kill it, loot the meat, then move away and come back, it respawns. I fill up a bag or two and it lasts me awhile until I get some gold later on.
As a person with ADHD, some of the older mechanics, UI/UX elements of older games just feel like a huge barrier to me. This game is one of those for me unfortunately :( Wish I had the patience to actually immerse myself into it, but I can't. Doesn't mean I cannot respect it though. Wish we had remakes of these games...if EA bloody knew anything....but I am also super disappointed that Garriot could make some of the Ultima games by himself/small groups of people and yet couldn't do make anything remotely close to it today with more resources and more accessible game making of today. Shroud of the Avatar is a sad stain on his legacy!
That stinks, it's a great game! I'd love to see a remake of it. But yeah, EA. Seeing the Shroud of the Avatar development off and on over the years since announcement was something else. What a shame. I wish he would've gone back to his roots and made a single player spiritual successor instead, but at least Exult keeps this game alive.
Oh the boot disk. Basically MS-DOS couldn't handle memory (or wouldn't) so yeah Origin had this thing where you could setup a boot disk and basically run their own miniOS instead essentially to play the game Getting this kind of game out of pre-Pentium computers be crazy lol
your point on how finding out the story is an allegory ruined it for you is fascinating to me. I don't identify with this feeling at all, yet it maybe helps explain the whining elsewhere about politics in games. do some people just hate finding out there was subtext to the art they "consumed"? please don't take this the wrong way, I really like your videos. I'm sharing an interesting moment I had with it.
also, having only some characters be immortal, survive a game-breaking spell, and so reveal their hearts to you since it's all been fucked anyway, is GENIUS. thank you for featuring that detail
I found The Black Gate a bit too railroad-y compared to the earlier games, and the world very small. Beautiful, but small. At least it didn't have the soft locking issue in Serpent Isle, where you got stuck if you exchanged the gold bars before using them to bribe the guards. I suspect everyone's first ultima always has a special place in their heart despite any flaws... And they all had flaws in addition to their virtues :) Pretty much everything creative has inspirations, if that bothers you, try to avoid any and all analysis. Things we see as children we view uncritically, and with complete innocence. You can never recapture that state. It's like finding out about Santa Claus in that way.
It's small but you have to consider the hardware limitations of the time. The game released on 8 floppy disks, and was tough to get working right even when it was working right. If CDs became standard when the game released, we'd likely have a pretty large world to explore, but despite the compact size there was a lot to do. For the gold bars, they only become available from the key from Selina after dealing with those greedy Pikemen near the Sleeping Bull, so you really shouldn't be exchanging them anywhere in the first place once you get them. As far as everything creative has inspirations, I already mentioned that in the video. 🤦♂ In fact, you missed my point because I said it's "too on the nose" in this game that it "kind of" takes me out of the experience. There's no subtlety to it. And get out of here with your preaching. 😐 I'm sharing my thoughts and feelings of games I played as a kid through my videos, through the lens of an adult. Not to mention the fact that this is a UA-cam video. It's meant to have analyzations in it. We naturally get more critical as we get older, especially for stuff we care about. If you don't like what I said, fine, but don't shut me down and tell me what I can or can't share in my videos. Go make your own or watch someone else.
@@VoidbrandGallery Personally I think they made the move to single mode rather than having a split between overworld and town level too soon considering the constraints of the technology of the time. Yes they packed the world they had, but it was too small and busy compared to earlier games IMO. Not for you, and that is fair. I started on his earlier games when they were initially coming out. Seeing if you could actually run the new Ultima game was a huge deal, LOL Too on the nose and lack of subtlety is pretty standard for Garriott. He liked to have players in on jokes, references, and inspirations. I'm sorry I hurt your feelings. You seem very hurt by seeing his joke/message, and I have experienced similar things when I started to revisit things from my childhood... We see it with adult eyes as pretty much beating a dead horse, but we didn't see them at all before. So the effect is jarring. You might want to nominate some things as too special for this, there is no shame in wanting to preserve somethings in innocence. What you choose, if anything, to preserve is entirely up to you. Where the line is between "too on the nose" and way too vague is hard to tell. The amount of people who fail to grasp the meaning in some popular media has me more sympathetic to creators being more blunt. (Heck, I turn off satirical shows these days because even though they are patently absurd, there are people who won't get it and conspiracy theories get spawned... I had to debunk one of them years ago, and it was very sad for the guy who'd fallen for it.) I am not telling you what you can or can't share. I am trying to respond to what you presented and through that boost your algorithmic spread. Have a good day
@@kericmason Busy is how an open-world game should be. Compare The Black Gate to something like Skyrim. Still a good game but missing something Ultima VII had despite how small it is. Too many open world games (not Skyrim) focus more on the openness and sights versus the things The Black Gate offered. They made the move too soon because Origin had a need to innovate on every entry, they had to make great strides over previous Ultima games. I think I mentioned some of this in my video which you don't seem to be understanding. And you didn't hurt my feelings. You're annoying me by making a lot of judgements and preaching about someone you don't know even know from a 30 minute video. I usually ignore comments like these but I've been having a bad week so you get my attention. And I don't get how you thought I "seemed hurt" by the story bits. You're the only weirdo on here who thinks so. I read this entire video off a script with the most driest, monotone, robotic voice that has ever been seen on UA-cam. I'm not even going to touch the rest of your post with the way you're moving goalposts and doubling down. You can have the last word to help the algorithm. Don't forget to like and subscribe.
So I saw and dont want to comment on Noah's version. I really liked the game. But I only got maybe 30 percent into the game before I could not continue. I had a new AMD Slot A processor. After the crash i just couldnt play further. I dint know if replaying would solve the problem or I needed a patch. I had to just abandon the game. sucked
Electronic Arts. Today better known as EA Games. Change the logo and hope people don't remember how many good gaming companies they bought out and destroyed.@@everythingpony
Looking at it now, it's just the animations and combat that really bothers me. At the time it was ok, but even then it seemed janky. And normally I honestly couldn't care less about bad animations. But this was too much. Maybe soon there will be an AI exhult edition with tweened animations between the 1-2 keyframes they have.
Always saying how easy combat is... meanwhile you know about the hoe, all free hidden magical item stashes, and went through FOV first. FOV was an add-on expansion where the sword was meant as an ultimate reward for finishing the last quest. Using the blackrock sword is almost a cheat because it clearly breaks the game's combat challenge. Playing normally certain enemies do pose a threat.
I was 8 years old, and new to PC RPG adventure games. I was also young and stupid, and often became stuck. Every week or so, I would handwrite a letter to EA asking for help and, 3 days later, would always be waiting with great anticipation for the postman, who would have a reply in the mail from a guy called Simon, giving me hints, encouragement, and sometimes including a scan from the guidebook (repeat for Serpent Isle). I remember running downstairs to tell my parents when I finally finished it. Loved this game.
That is awesome. Origin was really proud of the series back then. Also wonder if he's the real life counterpart of the "human" Knight Simon in Serpent Isle like a lot of the other characters in the series.
What a different time we lived in. Slower paced it seemed. Better for it.
I was worse than you were I would call the hotline back to back and needless to say I ended up progressing however when that phone bill arrived I was always in deep shit😂
That reminds me on another note I eventually ended up getting the guidebook. I still have the gem in my closet I even have the ultima collection. Damn I miss playing this game they should def do a remaster and bring it to current consoles. If they did that my life would be complete and I can finally die a happy person.
Same here, minus the part of sending letters! I played this game FOR YEARS and it never lost his charm. It was a great experience, i also learnt a lot of english language vocabulary just clicking on items! It formed my taste in games for sure :)
I love it when people who aren't very educated in the subject think that Oblivion invented NPCs with schedules. Yeah, no, just like everything Bethesda does, someone else did it 10 years earlier. Ultima 7 was really a milestone that remained the pinnacle for 15-20 years. Serpent Isle was my favorite though, the story is just that much stronger.
This was in 1992, pretty amazing feat to have such a large living open world with NPC dialogues, interactive questlines etc.
Truly a masterpiece in both coding and gfx.
Definitely pushed the envelope back then. Even after going back to the previous Ultima games. The jump from VI - VII was huge.
And every NPC had their own schedule every day, something that most games even today dont have.
This was probably the series that influenced the elder scrolls and the diablo series.
Very few RPG’s nowadays have as much interactivity as Ultima 7, Divinity Original Sin 1 and 2 come close but seriously more games should be aiming for this level of interaction beyond the typical “level up and min-max your character” RPG’s that are way too common now
I really like this channel. As cool as Spoony's video on this game is, you shed light on details he never did and your approach to talking about games in general is refreshing. No tryhard pseudo intellectual analysis or forced rage or forced positivity.
I'm glad you're enjoying the vids, thanks. I like Spoony's Ultima videos, but I've also always liked channels just talking about their opinions on their favorite series without the latter stuff you mentioned.
@@VoidbrandGallery Yup, loving them! Rooting for you to be the next gaming UA-camr that makes it to 100k.
Spoony's Ultima retrospective is amazing and I love it, but it's more comedy than informative. Your videos are more informative than comedy and are a perfect contrast.
Well, to be fair a lot of the "pseudo intellectual analysis" you mention was done for comedic effect. Spoony is from a bygone age of "angry reviewers"; this a more straightforward 'essay' on the game, and I'm really enjoying all these intelligent people coming out and reviewing old CRPG games and Dungeon Crawlers.
At the end of the Ultima IX review though, Spoony does give one of the best monologues on why the dumbing down on Ultima (and any franchise) was a total betrayal to long time fans and why it does matter.
This game is the King running on a 386DX with 2MB of system RAM :)
It is a shame on humanity if no one is gonna remake Ultima 6 to 9
Thankfully we got Exult to keep VII alive. I would really love to see a remake for 8 and 9 though.
Boomer gamer here. A boot disk was a way of changing settings on your PC to allow a game or other piece of software to run properly. It would set the memory and other parameters for the game. On old PCs when you started them up, the PC would check the floppy drives for an inserted disk. if you had the boot disk inserted, instead of going to windows or MS-DOS, it would load whatever game you wanted to play.
Picture my 8yo self trying to translate the instructions on the english Origin Collections manual in order to properly setup a bootdisk to play U7 on my father's 486 😂 only to get SCARED by The Guardian EVERY TIME
hahaha nice@@_krbrs_
It’s such a treat to find a new review video of you. Great job!
Cheers.
Magebane is helpful for fighting the liches in this game and the vampire in SI. Getting hit with it prevents them from casting spells for a bit. Great video, by the way. Always nice to hear other's perspectives on one of my favorite games. :)
Thanks, appreciate the comment. 💀 Love this game a lot.
One of these days I will get on the proper state of mind and play this gem.
I still feel it holds up. Especially with the Exult engine.
@@VoidbrandGalleryYes, Exult is a blessing for reliving Ultima 7 and part 2.
It is worth playing through, to be sure. But do yourself a favor and read the manuals first, or even better, playing Ultima VI before hand. For maximum enjoyment of U7 you should understand Britannia, its history and its religion before you play.
@@Will-xk4nmpeople leaving these type of comments are why people dont get into older games, asking them too do too much
@@stephenmccabe1489 That's fine. If you don't read the manual then you won't understand the game, then you will play it and tell people it sucks. So I would rather discourage players by telling them to make a tiny effort than encourage them to play with no effort at all and hate the game. Anyone who thinks reading is too much effort should not be playing Ultima at all.
I never had the pleasure of playing the Ultima series but it has always fascinated me. Particularly the Black Gate. I feel I missed out not knowing about it in my childhood.
Great video, great series you've put together and great channel! Very glad I found it!
Thanks for the comment. It's still my favorite (Ultima) game to this day, never played anything like it back then.
The best way to break the economy was to start the roulette wheel spinning, then save the game. Note where it stops, load the game, then quickly bet all your money there. Somehow you're allowed to bet while the game is playing, but the result always matches what it was during the save.
I have played Ultima VII: The Black Gate since it’s release. Absolute Titan of a game. Love how this game still has a loyal following. There’s a mod for Ultima 7 now to play Ultima 6 in Exult.
Agreed. I'm looking to check out that mod sometime, saw some gameplay videos of it some months back.
Thank you for this retrospective. U7 (along with Star Control 2) is one of my most fundamental formative game experiences; it opened to me the world of CRPGs back in 1993 and started a lifelong love for this genre. And yes, getting it to run back in the day was a PITA - but on the other hand it was yet another learning experience of config.sys and autoexec.bat that allowed me to move from boot disks to boot menus to creating a lean and universal DOS setup (and then ruining it with Win95 ;-).
Also, just to show just how much I enjoyed U7 - I have the cloth map (yes, the game came with a pysical map printed on cloth) framed and displayed in my study. One of the best game mementos ever.
Going from Sega games to a game like Ultima VII was something else for me back then. Though I do still love the Genesis even today despite that. Didn't know games could even do stuff like what Ultima VII did.
I unfortunately lost my cloth map... The only Ultima thing that survived multiple moves were the virtue tarot cards from the Ultima IX big box, which I've done the same as your cloth map, framed forever. Despite the game the cards are rather nice.
I have fond memories of watching my brother in law play this game and just be in awe of the "open world gameplay" and the ability to steal things and loot corpses. Blew my mind, because all I've been playing was side scrollers, shoot'em ups, and fighting games. It was like medival GTA.
Hey, I just wanna say that I really appreciate you making this video in 4:3 since it's about a game that is originally rendered in that aspect ratio. It makes watching this video on a 4:3 monitor much more authentic! (Yes, my second monitor is an age old CRT lol)
You're welcome. Actually had a few CRT users reach out about the aspect ratio so I'm glad to hear it.
playing this again now! i was telling someone "it's like if skyrim had a GTA 1." it's still unsurpassed in many ways. no loading screens. screen wrap map. i wonder if i spend more time scrolling through my inventory in fallout, or drag and dropping crap around in my back pack. i find "fast travel" to be a cop out in game design. ultima handles this with a magic spell. i played this a kid and mostly just wandered around hunting for cool stuff. it was the first game i played that you could just "hang out" in. i'm on the regular "gog" version. i played on "exult" once and some things didn't work right. combat was all messed up, and the fire sword didn't have torch power. the version i'm on now runs as good as it ever did. i have been grinding stats this time around. Spark is 30/30 and actually kills stuff! great video!
30/30! That's a strong Spark. I wish more games did mark/recall like Ultima VII and Morrowind. It felt like you had to earn "fast travel", and it's more immersive overall. Other than that I rarely even use the magic carpet in VII anymore as I feel it takes away from the exploration if you can just bypass mountains and oceans and such.
Always glad to find someone else who appreciates Ultima VII. What's your take on what Ultima IX was _supposed_ to be?
Thank you so much for this video. Ultima 7 was the first role playing game I dared to immerse myself into as a kid. I even got into learning English for understanding the dialoge and story. I remember long evenings exploring Yew, being frightened on Skara Brae etc. Even the virtue system had a huge impact on me. Also, I got so obsessed that I even went to our local German "hobby lobby" equivalent and bought colors for painting my shirts with the Ankh. lol... Yet, I never finished the game. I rather used it as a sand box for exploring a virtual world. Some years later I played The Serpent Isle and finished it.... With Ultima 8 I got dissapaointed since I wanted to get back to all the mini activities like making bread etc. Something I waited then for many years in Games to be picked up again.
Long wall of text for just telling you thank you and "liked and subscribed".
I read it all, thanks for the support. 💀 The sandbox nature of VII is something I mostly messed with too, just wandering around and doing funny stuff like fishing and hoarding loot in a cave somewhere. There was a long lull in my life where I wasn't able to play it again since computers moved on from DOS. Didn't get back to it until Exult worked at keeping the game alive.
Excellent video review of one of my all time favorite games! As you mentioned, it is truly incredible how much you can explore in this game given the hardware limitations of the day. Even now, I still find new things in the game that I never discovered before.
For example, my last playthrough I decided to put on some swamp boots and explore the swamp portion of Locke Lake, just to see if anything was there. Lo and behold, there was the ruin of Stonegate! I couldn't believe I'd never discovered this in my many previous play throughs.
Of course, it does then make one wonder who the hell rebuilt it for our return to Britannia in Ultima 9.
Thanks. Still my favorite CRPG of all time. I think I realized Stonegate was there when I replayed it a year or two ago. The devs really hid it pretty well.
Excellent video, your early experiences with the game very much mirror my own. The game has always been one of my favourites, I even use the same trick as you to get through the chimney and acquire all the good equipment at the beginning of the game.
Appreciate the comment, thanks.
This was peak Ultima. 1992 was the pinnacle year for the series. Ultima 7 peaked the main series. While Ultima Underworld also came out in a same year and it was a groundbreaking stuff for became the 3D ultima. Ambitious and immersive spinoffs title
Peak Ultima is correct, even Garriott would agree. Very immersive games. I can still hear the waves of the ocean whenever the Avatar is near the shores.
My first Ultima was Serpent Isle when I was 8 and didn't speak english. Needless to say it went over my head except for the (very loose) translation my dad would give me. But I remember learning english clicking on everything to get the name of items and stuff in houses and killing guards for money. We never did beat it back then, got stuck because we didnt have the Hound of Duskar sniffing Batlin's medalion, which means you cant open the doors in the snow cave. Only beat it many many years later! Good times
That's cool to hear. Had a few commenters mention they learned english playing Ultima games back then.
Batlin's first job for you is key to an infinite XP glitch, and an item-duplication exploit.
The trick is to say NO the first time he asks you to deliver the box to A&E -- it won't work if you say yes. So say no, then talk to him again to get the offer; when you say yes, everyone gets 100 XP. Trick is, as long as you don't deliver the box, he'll offer it AGAIN (giving you another 100 XP) and keep doing so.
The item dupe: Once you do the steps above, take something in your inventory that has a quantity -- arrows, gold, spell reagents, anything that pops up a "how many" prompt when you move it. Go move it somewhere, pick the full amount, then talk to Batlin again. Take the job, and the item you moved will now be back in the original spot AND where you moved it, so you doubled the amount. You can do this as much as you want as long as you don't deliver the box.
First played Ultima 6 at my cousins house and loved it, they did also. So when Ultima 7 came out we all went out and bought it and every weekend for about a month or two we would all play phonetag asking each other for help and telling what we had found. It's one of the few games I've revisited multiple times and still ranks in my top 3 favorite games of all time (maybe top 5 now that BG3 exists).
I never knew anyone who played this back then. Needless to say I didn't get very far into it without a guide later on.
My favorite game of the 90s.
Very nice review
Thanks a bunch. 🙏
My first playthrough of this game when I was 12, I skipped the main town to the north. Just kept walking north and then found the flying carpet up there and I thought I found the coolest treasure ever. I could just fly anywhere! Was sometimes tough to get party members to fit onto it haha
Yeahhhh now this is what I'm talking about!!
EMS was an extended memory and, yeah... we had a different boot option every time you started the computer. Play Ultima 7, or boot normally.
Given the way the Guardian was introduced, I always thought he was meant to be the Avatar seen through a dark lens in the sense that he was of similar origin, possibly even a human from Earth given access to Britannia by Lord British, but had used that chance to integrate into the world of Britannia as its master rather than its protector, like the avatar had done. I thought it was the origin which made the most sense and highlighted the nature of everything the series had been striving toward since Ultima 4; morality necessitates choice, and where the Avatar had made their choices in alignment with the virtues, the Guardian had made choices against them. I still interpret his origin like that when I'm playing Ultima 7, even though (and partially because) it flies in the face of revelations made in Ultima 8 and 9.
I would've liked that if they went in that direction.
Forgot about boot disks. Wow.
Yes many games required you to run the PC on start=-up with it in their disk drive just to play teh game to load the front ram
Love what you are doing with the channel. You're an inspiration for me to one day make some Ultima videos.
That's surprising to hear, thanks. Always good to have more Ultima videos out there.
Boot disc that brings me back!!!
great video, thanks again!
Oh man. Ultima 7. I don't know how many hours I put into this at about age of maybe 12 to 15. Why does the age matter? Well simply cause English isn't my native language and obviously my vocabylary was very limited back then and the writing style of Ultima for sure didn't help at all. But back then I was really sure that Fellowship was very evil. Anyway, even the huge amounts of misunderstanding of events, game world really sucked me in. It was nothing like I'd seen before and world insanely hard and detailed. The latter actually still stands. It's one of the titles still now in my forties is something I've planned so many times to re-visit and experience with todays knowledge of English. Now that being said... 🧐
It's still excellent to this day. Also I can see how the old English text would be challenging back then. And their choice of text doesn't help for a lot of people. 💀
really enjoying your videos. look forward to seeing more!
Happy you're enjoying them. Thank you. 💀
i was 12 when this game came out and i remember my father creating the boot disc, writing a script and config file that changed how memory was allocated. the reason a boot disc was needed was due to how memory was allocated. systems at the time were 16bit and U7 required a faux 32bit setup. basically made memory addresses reserve two locations to make this faux 32bit and the default 16bit system didn't do this.
It was always a great big hassle just getting it to run for the first time. Felt like a genius when we got it going
In its early days, Electronic Arts *was* actually pretty beloved. But they went the same way as every other game company. Either die in an acquisition, or live to see themselves become the villain.
I have a lot of good memories listening to Ace of Base and playing ultima 7 on my packard bell 486
I played this on a Packard Bell too. Those are good memories. 💀
Oh yeah… Origin had their own memory manager for U7 called Voodoo. In the early days you had to decide if you wanted music, or mouse support, you could only load so much into himem. But luckily there were small mouse drivers you could use to finally play U7 with all the bells n whistles. I think I still have a boot disk stashed somewhere still heh. Be thankful you never had to mess with that nightmare.
Still one of my top 10, even top 5 rpgs. I loved the darker story, the interactive world… definitely the peak Ultima before going downhill with 8. If I have my grips it was combat. The odd isometric view made everyone almost stand on each other all shouting and just turning into a chaotic mess. Nothing worse than an injured companion fleeing the fight leaving a trail of dropped items in his wake. There was an early mod someone did for Exalt, a proof of concept, rotating the screen 45 degrees I believe. Actually made the isomeric view look worlds better… sadly it was never finished.
"Nobody will EVER need more than 640kB base mem" xD
I've seen that mod you mentioned. Too bad it never took off. With Exult someone (Total Immortal on UA-cam) is working on Ultima VI in the Exult engine which I'm really interested in.
I remember my dad spending countless hours trying to get everything perfect for it to run. We updated to windows 95 and then I assume it overwrote the mouse driver or something and I couldn't get it to run with both the audio and mouse at the same time even when booting to dos
ems is the expanded memory system to enable more ram than the 640kb limit on dos, the reason for the bootdisk is to only load drivers you absolutely needed to play the game (mouse, soundcard and whatever) to free up every available kilobyte of memory.
Thanks man, now I have to play this game again. A propos combat system, I find it erratic yet dynamic and fun. Personally I much prefer the turn based combat of Ultima 6/Savage Empire/Martian Dreams. Great video!
Appreciate it, thanks. 💀 Most players dislike the combat, but I'm not bothered by it. I think I'm entertained by the companions' taunts and how chaotic it looks. Then I get to loot bodies. Anyways, it's always a good time for another Ultima VII playthrough.
I absolutely LOVED Ultima VII, and I got it on release weekend. I had endless trouble getting it to run because it wasn't known that it crashed on 386SX computers (it ran on 386DX). I still played it through even though it would crash about ever 20 minutes or so.
That being said, I disagree with your assessment of quest markers being a detriment to games: I'm 46 now, I have ADHD, and it's incredibly easy to forget what my next objective in a game is if I even take a couple days off. Gaming is my favorite hobby but I have so much more occupying my brain space these days that I can't necessarily remember who told me to go where and talk to who about what... I'm playing the Trails series of games now, and I'm very thankful for quest markers.
U7 and Daggerfall spoiled me so much that's it's very hard to be pleased anymore.
Nice vid man, love this game too. Maybe my top game ever... I totally agree the exploartion and interaction within this game really made it feel special. Maybe its just me but I remeber playing Oblivion for the first time and thought, this looks pretty and the world is huge. Went into someones house and theres furniture and items that you can physically move about, but thats it, no real interaction...?! I was disappointed 😂
Its a shame how many gamers will never experience what these games realy ment to us and the future of gaming. Also led the the greatest MMO ever UO :)
I discovered the game through Spoony's epic retrospective (I was a graphic adventure player mainly back in the day). Played it, loved it, never managed to finish it though. I wish someone would make a game with a story and quests as interesting an involved as Ultima VII but with good combat. Current cRPG stories are awful and combined with, like you mentioned, terrible "QoL" changes make the games little more than pretty skinner boxes.
Nice. Spoony's Ultima videos is how I got exposed to the earlier games (at that time I haven't played the ones prior to VII yet) Ultima VII is still my favorite to this day. I also wish someone would make an "Ultima 7-like" with all the interactivity of The Black Gate/Serpent Isle with + the questing, especially on the indie side. It's either phenomenally tough to create or just hasn't been done yet.
@@VoidbrandGallery Mechanically it isn't hard with modern engines and what not, but making a big unique indie game is almost impossible due to the time needed for unique asset/world bulding. Also 99% of the current people involved in vg writing should never be allowed near a text processor (and this applies to the indie and AAA scenes).
8:09 - Another thing is that Spark's portrait changes from crying to happy if you allow him to join your party. You are correct, with high base stats (probably even too high for a 14 year-old) at just level 1. Once Spark gets to level 9 and the correct training, he will have more useful stats than every party member except the Avatar. One of the things I didn't feel was realistic, since Dupre should be next after the Avatar.
10:29 - Mark & Recall is used to fast travel.
Yes, Mark & Recall is used to fast travel. And it requires reagents, a certain level+ to cast, and virtue stones. It is completely immersive, and takes effort to earn. Which adds to the immersion that I mentioned not long after that timestamp. I'm talking about fast travel like in Skyrim, where you click on a map to go to a point.
@@VoidbrandGallery - I'm not sure when fast travel was implemented. But plenty of RPGs I played in the mid 90s didn't have it.
As I recall it, Spark also turned out to be a giant eater ("I don't eat much", he said to convince you to take him along), but I could never send the poor lad away because his portrait would change back to crying mode again as soon as I suggested him to 'leave'.
I used to play this as a kid, i bought this for my pc but to my surprise it was on a game emulator I recently bought
looking forward to ultima IX, bought the game, was unplayable on my 486 dx4 100 mhz. so gave up on it, still have the box and everything.
I don't have the box to IX anymore, though I still have my virtue tarot cards. I haven't played IX since it came out so that's going to be interesting to go through again.
I think I have the Ultima 7 disks kicking about somewhere. Ran fine on the 486
Is that the leitmotif u can hear in baldurs gate 3 as well?
I'm surprised Death Bolt kills Batlin, when you can't use the Black Rock Sword to kill him and he survives Armageddon.
I remember trying every spell while dueling him as a kid, then that happened.
@@VoidbrandGallery He had it coming.
Wasn't Lord British invincible in the 6th game? I remember trying forever and never killed him.
i still consider skara brae some of the best "questing" ever in a game.
Definitely a highpoint of the game for me.
What is a Paladin?
A holy warrior. Basically a knight that can use white magic. Pretty common class in fantasy RPGs.
"I'm not entirely sure."
@@dungeonchill Always thought the class fits the Avatar the best before he became the Avatar. Or can just refer to him as a Fighter/Mage/Bard afterwards. Then again he's basically all the classes at once.
@@dungeonchill"what's a paladin?"
Is an old meme. A guy called Spoony made a ultima retrospective back in the day and in Ultima 9 "what's a paladin?" was a line he made infamous.
yeah, Avatar not knowing what a paladin is is a meme
how do you get the faces to appear on the bottom of the screen? ❤
It's from the Exult options.
Why is one of the music pieces Rule Britannia?
Because the kingdom most of the games take place in is called Britannia.
lead by the Lord British
Well everyone said it but, this piece plays in the city of Britain, capital of Britannia, all ruled by a man named Lord British. Sounds weird when I read that back to myself but there you go.
Every time I tried to play this game, I get turned off by the constant demands of the companions for food. Any tips on how to deal with this? I know you stockpiled it, but where did you get enough money to do so at the beginning of the game?
I hunt deer. There's a deer just outside to the south of Trinsic near/past some wolves. If you kill it, loot the meat, then move away and come back, it respawns. I fill up a bag or two and it lasts me awhile until I get some gold later on.
@@VoidbrandGallery thanks for the tip!
As a person with ADHD, some of the older mechanics, UI/UX elements of older games just feel like a huge barrier to me. This game is one of those for me unfortunately :( Wish I had the patience to actually immerse myself into it, but I can't. Doesn't mean I cannot respect it though. Wish we had remakes of these games...if EA bloody knew anything....but I am also super disappointed that Garriot could make some of the Ultima games by himself/small groups of people and yet couldn't do make anything remotely close to it today with more resources and more accessible game making of today. Shroud of the Avatar is a sad stain on his legacy!
That stinks, it's a great game! I'd love to see a remake of it. But yeah, EA. Seeing the Shroud of the Avatar development off and on over the years since announcement was something else. What a shame. I wish he would've gone back to his roots and made a single player spiritual successor instead, but at least Exult keeps this game alive.
Sparks decked out.
He's a strong little dude.
I had to use a bootdisc but it was worth it😅
Avatarism is basically my religion.
Oh the boot disk.
Basically MS-DOS couldn't handle memory (or wouldn't) so yeah Origin had this thing where you could setup a boot disk and basically run their own miniOS instead essentially to play the game
Getting this kind of game out of pre-Pentium computers be crazy lol
your point on how finding out the story is an allegory ruined it for you is fascinating to me.
I don't identify with this feeling at all, yet it maybe helps explain the whining elsewhere about politics in games. do some people just hate finding out there was subtext to the art they "consumed"?
please don't take this the wrong way, I really like your videos. I'm sharing an interesting moment I had with it.
also, having only some characters be immortal, survive a game-breaking spell, and so reveal their hearts to you since it's all been fucked anyway, is GENIUS. thank you for featuring that detail
I found The Black Gate a bit too railroad-y compared to the earlier games, and the world very small. Beautiful, but small. At least it didn't have the soft locking issue in Serpent Isle, where you got stuck if you exchanged the gold bars before using them to bribe the guards.
I suspect everyone's first ultima always has a special place in their heart despite any flaws... And they all had flaws in addition to their virtues :)
Pretty much everything creative has inspirations, if that bothers you, try to avoid any and all analysis. Things we see as children we view uncritically, and with complete innocence. You can never recapture that state. It's like finding out about Santa Claus in that way.
It's small but you have to consider the hardware limitations of the time. The game released on 8 floppy disks, and was tough to get working right even when it was working right. If CDs became standard when the game released, we'd likely have a pretty large world to explore, but despite the compact size there was a lot to do. For the gold bars, they only become available from the key from Selina after dealing with those greedy Pikemen near the Sleeping Bull, so you really shouldn't be exchanging them anywhere in the first place once you get them.
As far as everything creative has inspirations, I already mentioned that in the video. 🤦♂ In fact, you missed my point because I said it's "too on the nose" in this game that it "kind of" takes me out of the experience. There's no subtlety to it.
And get out of here with your preaching. 😐 I'm sharing my thoughts and feelings of games I played as a kid through my videos, through the lens of an adult. Not to mention the fact that this is a UA-cam video. It's meant to have analyzations in it. We naturally get more critical as we get older, especially for stuff we care about. If you don't like what I said, fine, but don't shut me down and tell me what I can or can't share in my videos. Go make your own or watch someone else.
@@VoidbrandGallery Personally I think they made the move to single mode rather than having a split between overworld and town level too soon considering the constraints of the technology of the time. Yes they packed the world they had, but it was too small and busy compared to earlier games IMO. Not for you, and that is fair. I started on his earlier games when they were initially coming out. Seeing if you could actually run the new Ultima game was a huge deal, LOL
Too on the nose and lack of subtlety is pretty standard for Garriott. He liked to have players in on jokes, references, and inspirations.
I'm sorry I hurt your feelings. You seem very hurt by seeing his joke/message, and I have experienced similar things when I started to revisit things from my childhood... We see it with adult eyes as pretty much beating a dead horse, but we didn't see them at all before. So the effect is jarring. You might want to nominate some things as too special for this, there is no shame in wanting to preserve somethings in innocence. What you choose, if anything, to preserve is entirely up to you.
Where the line is between "too on the nose" and way too vague is hard to tell. The amount of people who fail to grasp the meaning in some popular media has me more sympathetic to creators being more blunt. (Heck, I turn off satirical shows these days because even though they are patently absurd, there are people who won't get it and conspiracy theories get spawned... I had to debunk one of them years ago, and it was very sad for the guy who'd fallen for it.)
I am not telling you what you can or can't share. I am trying to respond to what you presented and through that boost your algorithmic spread. Have a good day
@@kericmason Busy is how an open-world game should be. Compare The Black Gate to something like Skyrim. Still a good game but missing something Ultima VII had despite how small it is. Too many open world games (not Skyrim) focus more on the openness and sights versus the things The Black Gate offered. They made the move too soon because Origin had a need to innovate on every entry, they had to make great strides over previous Ultima games. I think I mentioned some of this in my video which you don't seem to be understanding.
And you didn't hurt my feelings. You're annoying me by making a lot of judgements and preaching about someone you don't know even know from a 30 minute video. I usually ignore comments like these but I've been having a bad week so you get my attention. And I don't get how you thought I "seemed hurt" by the story bits. You're the only weirdo on here who thinks so. I read this entire video off a script with the most driest, monotone, robotic voice that has ever been seen on UA-cam.
I'm not even going to touch the rest of your post with the way you're moving goalposts and doubling down. You can have the last word to help the algorithm. Don't forget to like and subscribe.
So I saw and dont want to comment on Noah's version. I really liked the game. But I only got maybe 30 percent into the game before I could not continue. I had a new AMD Slot A processor. After the crash i just couldnt play further. I dint know if replaying would solve the problem or I needed a patch. I had to just abandon the game. sucked
I gotta say it. Spoony
Da Spoony One.
13:34 dsp
Electronic Arts ruined every single franchise they bought.
Who?
Electronic Arts. Today better known as EA Games.
Change the logo and hope people don't remember how many good gaming companies they bought out and destroyed.@@everythingpony
Looking at it now, it's just the animations and combat that really bothers me. At the time it was ok, but even then it seemed janky. And normally I honestly couldn't care less about bad animations. But this was too much.
Maybe soon there will be an AI exhult edition with tweened animations between the 1-2 keyframes they have.
the weird perspective gives me a headache. ultima 8s more modern isometric view is much better in this regard.
To me it looks a lot like Sega Genisis Dungeons and Dragons Warriors of the eternal light.
Same perspective yeah. Good game.
Shame what happened after this, though
Always saying how easy combat is... meanwhile you know about the hoe, all free hidden magical item stashes, and went through FOV first. FOV was an add-on expansion where the sword was meant as an ultimate reward for finishing the last quest. Using the blackrock sword is almost a cheat because it clearly breaks the game's combat challenge. Playing normally certain enemies do pose a threat.
Ulltima Underworld best 3d perspective RPG ever made.
It's the best RPG ever made cheeser. Way better than Baldurs gate or Morrowind.