Savage Empire: Closing Thoughts

It's taken me some time to figure out how to pull all my thoughts on Savage Empire in something resemebling a cohesive manner. Some of that probably has to do with the fact my playthrough of the game has been rather... extended, compared to the rest of the series I've played thus far. The game isn't quite as fresh in my head as others when compiling these closing thoughts, especially the early parts of the game. But I think more of it stems from the fact I have very mixed feelings about Savage Empire in general, which is making it a little difficult to figure out how to approach a final post on the topic.

Figuring out where the heck I was - one of my favorite parts of the game

Maybe the best place to start is to say that I did enjoy the game a lot - considerably more than I was expecting to going in. I mentioned in my opening post that "Lost World" type things generally aren't my cup of tea, but even in spite of my lukewarm feelings toward the genre as a whole, I had a wonderful time roaming the valley of Eodon. Especially when I wasn't entirely sure of where I was! The memory of exploring where the teleporters all took me and trying to match that to the features of the game map is still my starkest of Savage Empire, and I honestly don't think I'll be able to replicate that feeling in many other games. Sure, games still come with maps, but I feel like the game worlds they depict are, at least these days, too large to properly capture the level of detail that allows me to pinpoint exactly where I am on it. Savage Empire allowed me to figure out where I was on the map based on geographic features like a particular confluence of rivers or a series of cliffs - all of which were replicated on the map. There was something enriching to me about being able to have that experience with material that wasn't necessarily inside the game itself. I'm hoping I can find similar moments when it comes to Martian Dreams - I know the general layout of Britannia a bit too well to expect the same out of Ultima VII!

Design-wise, I think it's interesting to see how Savage Empire iterated on Ultima VI. As the first entry in the series to re-use the same engine as another, there's a lot to be said on how it took existing material and improved upon it. For example, I think moving the conversation text to where the "game" window is, rather than keeping it where the command input appeared, was a good call. There's no need to be staring at the game world during a conversation, and the larger window helped follow the lengthier conversations a bit better. It was nice to see how other things were improved upon as well - character portraits, for example. The background on each of them changed based on locale and time of day, and even in other circumstances (such as Tuomaxx throwing a skin over the Avatar's head). Talking with Jimmy outside at twilight showed him against a background of a starry sky, while conversing with him in a cave showed him in front of stone. It was a lovely touch that brought a lot of life to the world. So too was the fact each tribe felt distinct - the villages, the character design, every visual aspect of the tribes helped distinguish it from the other tribes in the valley, helping to nail down just how varied they were.

It was nice I could make and use these, but the process was complex.

There was also an increased degree of interactivity with the world itself, it felt like, although part of me feels like it was perhaps too much in some circumstances. While it was nice to see more uses for objects, more ways of combining them, and multiple means of obtaining certain items, I think it might have been a little more than was strictly necessary in some cases. The makeshift rifles and bombs swiftly come to mind - there were so many steps in the process, made a bit more complicated by the limited amount of inventory space available to me, that it felt more like busy work than anything else. I ended up never making a homemade rifle simply on account of that fact. While nice in theory, I think making more complicated interactions between objects didn't work very well in practice.

Then, too, is the fact that the re-use of the engine made some problems even more stark in comparison. Ultima VI let me scroll through inventories, effectively letting me have infinite inventory slots on each individual character, so long as they had the strength to carry it all. Not so in Savage Empire, and I was sorely missing it. Bags and containers because all more precious not just because it helped keep everything organized, but because they effectively expanded the number of items I could carry. This was more a mild nuisance than a serious problem, but it was all the more noticeable because it was clear the engine was capable of handling it in Ultima VI.

The bear. Always the bear.

One other thing stands out to me in terms of mechanics as well, and that's how the game handled character progression. I've seen a few comments elsewhere about how the game feels more like an adventure game with light RPG elements rather than a true RPG. I don't call this a "criticism" because it's not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, but for me personally, it did somewhat hamper my enjoyment of the game. Out of all the characters I took with me on my journey, only Jimmy felt like he ever really got better in terms of leveling and the lack. Most of the other characters were already as far advanced were likely to get over the course of the game without large amounts of dedicated grinding - the Avatar himself included. It never felt like this was a detriment to actually getting anywhere in the game itself, but I found myself missing that sense of my characters improving in their capabilities as the game went on. Even on those occasions when I did get to level up a character (and the rarer occasion when that character was someone other than Jimmy), it felt somewhat lackluster, on account of the fact I never picked anything to improve except strength. I was almost always in need of an increased carrying capacity, and the only way for me to cope with that was with more strength. It all felt rather one-dimensional to me - not that this is unusual territory for Ultima, really, intelligence was useless for practically everybody but the Avatar in Ultima VI for instance, and Ultima II's stat increases were entirely random. I think what stands out to me about Savage Empire in this respect, though, is that it was a choice that didn't really feel like one - sure I could improve dexterity or intelligence, but what point was there to either? (That's another thing,

too - I kept forgetting I even had the option of magic, on account of only one character having the capability, and it wasn't the Avatar.) Strength felt like the absolute right choice every time, and thus I didn't see the need to actually choose one of the three at all. And if I have no reason to choose any option except one, then why give me a choice at all?

In which Sahree sums up the plot.

Since it's my own particular point of interest, and at least part of the point of this blog in the first place, I can't get away from Savage Empire without discussing its story, and I have mixed feelings on that particular subject too. Structurally speaking, it's pretty much the same as the rest of the series up to this: there are a set number of tasks you need to accomplish before you're allowed to enter the endgame, and so long as you accomplish them all, how you go about it doesn't matter. Ultima IV doesn't care if you gather the stones of virtue before achieving Partial Avatarhood in Humility, for instance, so long as it's all done before you dive into the Abyss. Ultima V didn't care when you got the Shard of Falsehood or the Crown of Lord British first, so long as it all happened before you went into Dungeon Doom. Similarly, Savage Empire doesn't care if you help the Disquiqui before the Sakkhra, or the Nahuatla before the Pindiro, so long as you've united all the tribes. And on paper, it's an interesting plot - finding ways to convince each individual tribe to join an alliance, each in their own way, finding a means to meet each tribe on its own terms.

In practice, however... well, it falls into the same problem I have with Mass Effect 2. By making "getting X character to join your team" into not just a significant part of the game's story arc, but the bulk of it, it feels too much like reducing the characters to plot coupons, and that doesn't sit well with me in terms of video games. It's the sort of story I feel works better in a book or movie, and I still can't quite put my finger on why. In whatever medium, it does make the characters in question into a plot device, but somehow that feels more... reductive to me when it happens in a video game. Maybe that's because since I'm actively a part of the story of a video game, it makes me more aware of mechanics and function, and thus easier for my brain to perceive characters used in such a manner as a "mechanic" themselves. Or maybe that's because it feels more like the game is telling me how I'm supposed to think about these people rather than letting me come to my own conclusions, made all the more stark on account of the fact I have a more direct role in the story and the main character as a player of a video game. I don't know - I've mused on it a lot and I still don't have a concrete conclusion.

Even though this made some sense, it felt too easy.

I would have also liked to see a bit more interaction between the tribes. There are some very clear rivalries in the valley, but all the resolution between them happens off screen. It would have been nice, for instance, to see members of other tribes appearing in the villages as you united more of them. Some of the tribal quests felt a bit phoned in, too - one just joins right off, without having to even do anything! I understood the sentiment behind it, as far as the chieftain's motivations went, but even so, it would have felt a bit more fulfilling if she had instead required me to, say, convince half the tribes in the valley to join, just as evidence of my ability or commitment to doing so. Everybody else needed some proof that their needs would be seen to, as is understandable from a leader of a tribe. Why not her, then? I could have done with a little more backstory in a few more places, too. The pacing of a story as open as this is a hard thing to balance when you can't be sure what a player is going to go after when, but having done the Nahuatla quest last, where the bulk of the history of the Valley can be found, a lot of that information was something I would have liked to see hinted at a bit more directly. There were touches of this with the Sakkhra tribe, but practically zilch elsewhere, and I definitely felt its lack when I finally made my way into the underground city of the Kotl and learned just how much went into the background of Eodon and the Myrmidex. Of course, some of these complaints are probably the result of a game world that does feel like it truly breathes, and thus makes minor things like this stand out a little more in contrast - it wasn't a bad story by any means, and those parts of it I enjoyed made me all the more starved for those extra bits of polish.

It's good to see these lessons of virtue framed in a different context.

As far as how the game fits into the story of Ultima as a whole, that's another complicated question. I've heard it said that the game might have received better - indeed, might have been a better game, period - if it didn't try to tie itself to the Ultima series. I can understand the reasoning behind such a statement, and in truth I'm not entirely sure whether I even disagree with it. But I'd like to turn that idea the other way around - would Ultima's story have been better without Savage Empire? I'm inclined to say no. Thematically, this is a chance to see how the Avatar has learned the lessons of virtue Britannia, how he applies them outside the purview of the land that taught these lessons to him. It has the potential to touch upon the idea that the quest of the Avatar really is forever, and the lightly mentioned theme at the end of Ultima V that it's not just Britannia that has a need for an example of virtue. Does Savage Empire accomplish such a thing? I think the case can be made for it, when viewed from the right angle. There aren't really dilemmas of virtue in the same way the Age of Enlightment trilogy presented, but there are moments - the questions during character creation, how the Avatar deals with figures like Darden and Spector, how the player feels in the aftermath, even if there's no direct choice involved. It's not something addressed clearly in the game itself, but I said back during my playthrough of Ultima IV that that particular game is as much the player's story as the Avatar's. In that sense, this is their first chance in the series to explore the lessons of virtue in a context that doesn't necessarily care about those lessons one way or another - is it something that they've taken to heart so well that they hold to them even when they don't see a concrete need to? Maybe it's just me, but I think that, at least from the story of the player, it's an interesting direction to take, and I'm glad the series has something like Savage Empire to do that.

All in all, I think I've come out of this game with a newfound appreciation for it. It's still not going to rank up there with my favorites in the series, I'm not going to be as eager for a reply of it as I am the Age of Enlightenment games. But I think there's something quintessentially Ultima about it. One of the hallmarks of the series, in my mind, is its willingness to experiment, to try new things and go in different directions. It doesn't just take what worked and make more of it - it tries to iterate, find new things that work, ways to improve on what's already working. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, but it does, at the very least, end up interesting, and that's part of what's enjoyable about the series for me. And that's exactly what Savage Empire did - it took something that worked, it built on it, it went a different direction, and it tried new things. Some of it I enjoyed, some of it I didn't. And I'm expecting all of that will be improved and experimented on and taken in new directions come Martian Dreams. I have a feeling I'm going to end up seeing Savage Empire the same way I see Ultima II - a transitionary stage, between a spark that served as its source material and the eventual refinement of those ideas to a fine point. There's bound to be some awkward growing pains in the transition - Savage Empire certainly has them. But like Ultima II, despite its flaws, I have a great appreciation for its part in the development of the series as a whole, and an even greater one now that I've played it to completion. Whatever else, I think that's my biggest takeaway, and I'm all the more eager to see how Martian Dreams goes as a result.