Martin Dreams: One Small Step

Weren't you like level 7 in Savage Empire?

My adventure on Mars began the same way most of my travels through the Ultima series begin: wrapping my brain around the control scheme and figuring out what the heck I have to work with. That was a relatively simple affair as far as Martian Dreams was concerned. It didn't take very long at all to slip back into the groove of the Ultima VI engine (though it did take me a while to remember that it's B and not C that switches in and out of combat mode). There wasn't that much in my inventory to take stock of either, mainly clothing that was already equipped, a pocketwatch, and Nellie Bly's pistol. I also took a moment to take a peek at my little band's stats, and already found myself with one improvement over Savage Empire: Aric was my most highly experienced character, and even he had some room for growth. One of my complaints about Savage Empire was how little development it felt my characters were experiencing over the course of the game - here in Martian Dreams, there's lots of space for improvement. I'm still a little wary over carrying capacity and inventory concerns perhaps making the actual stat growth choices... less of one (does intelligence even have a use in this game, since there's no magic?) but that's a bridge I'll cross when I get to it. In any case, I suspect the possibility of more frequent levels, even if it just ends up being extra HP and a point of strength, will help alleviate the problems I had in the previous game of that nature.

Now that I had an idea of the characters I'd be bringing along with me on this excursion, it was time to... well, get an idea of the characters I'd be bringing along with me. (Ah, language. Gotta love the multiple ways certain turns of phrase can be interpreted.) I had a sense of what I might be able to expect from them gameplay-wise, so I next took a moment to get a sense of who they were. Spector assured me of his desire and ability to assist - and asserted it was his job to keep the Avatar out of trouble - before remarking once more upon the differences between what modern science said of Mars compared to their current experience of the Red Planet. Nellie Bly told me a little bit about herself, speaking of her experience as a journalist, her chosen pen name, and the notes she would take about the expedition. It seems she'll fulfill a similar role to Jimmy in Savage Empire, in effect functioning as a walking, talking quest log. This is something I do appreciate about the Worlds of Ultima games, in essence keeping track of at least the highlights of important plot points right there in game. Makes it easy for a quick reminder of what the player maybe should be doing right about now without drowning them in detail. I feel like with the sheer amount of content and sidequests and detail in modern games, it can be a bit difficult to parse a quest log for the immediately important bits, and the simple approach used here feels like a good way to go about it - keep track of the Big Relevant Plot Things, and leave whatever else the player chooses to pursue to their own recollections.

What's steampunk without Jules Verne?

I also took some time to talk with the rest of the crew, such as it was. Freud discusses his research into dreams and his theories on the construction of personality, and also expressed his interest in how everyone was going to react to the situation on Mars - such would prove valuable data for his research, he suspected. Dr. Blood talked about his research into oxygenated air and his concerns about the lower oxygen content in the atmosphere on Mars. It was Tesla who perhaps has the most helpful direction. He gave us the coordinates for the 1893 landing site and pointed us in the right direction. He also noted the door had apparently jammed closed, and that Garrett was the man to see about that. Garrett did indeed have a prybar on hand, though he suggested we go through the cargo hold to gear up before heading out. Both Tesla and Garrett also stressed the importance of having a sextant on hand in order to navigate the surface of the planet. Seeing the wisdom in this course of action, we moved on to raid the capsule's stores of supplies. Apart from a few things like dinnerware and reading material (I love the fact someone brought a copy of Journey to the Center of the Earth along), Aric and his team found plenty of useful things. Tools, weapons, warm clothing, a tent, lanterns and oil - we took them all. After arming Spector with a rifle and Nellie with a pistol, Aric took a saber and machete for himself, then prepared to take one small step for an Avatar and a giant leap for Victorian science--

--only to be stopped by Tesla and the copy protection question.

The structure of this entire opening put me very much in mind of Ultima VI, in a good way - an enclosed space to take stock of the situation, prepare for the trip ahead, and get a sense of what direction to head first. It's all even locked off the rest of the game world until you obtain a certain item within the designated area and pass the copy protection. The main difference is that the space capsule here is a lot smaller than Lord British's castle!

One other detail I enjoyed about this first little area: the crew will readily give their opinions on everyone else, and they're varied. For instance, Tesla is eager to speak with Freud about his dreams, interested in what the psychologist has to say, whereas Garrett is skeptical of Freud and things he asks too many questions. Characterization is as much defined by relationships as it is to an individual's character traits, so it's nice to see the "crew" of the expedition taking the time to say what they think about each other. Really helps get a sense of what sort of team this is.

Gotta include the drama shot!

Anyway, after another admonition from Blood to find some way to deal with the oxygen situation, we set forth to find the landing site from the mishap in 1893 that necessitated this whole rescue in the first place. It was a rather uneventful journey, being a fairly easy walk to the east. We only encountered a couple creepers along the way, which were swiftly dispatched without difficulty. Upon reaching the site, we met with one Lieutenant Dibbs, who had been working security for the capsule when it fired. He had been waiting for the rescue party, and had much to tell us of what had happened in the intervening time. It seemed that the previous group had been working on building a capsule to make the return trip, but needed to find more iron for the steel necessary to build it. They split into four groups, each seeming to take their own tack on the situation. Rasputin took a group to Argyre to research the Martian technology there, and they became secretive and reclusive. It was clear Dibbs did not trust them much. Lowell took a group north to Elysium, experimenting with the Dream Machine they found there. According to Dibbs, there were several around Mars, though only Elysium's seemed to work - and Lowell's group went mad as a result, now believing themselves Maritans. This led the group led by Jack Segal to become skeptical of those potentially "contaminated" by the machines. They remained at Olympus to work on the shuttle, and effectively closed themselves off from anyone who may have come into contact with the active Dream Machine. 

Dibbs suggested we visit the fourth group, the traders Buffalo Bill and Calamity Jane, at Arsia Mons for further equipment and supplies, including, he mentioned, a potential source of an oxygen-rich rock that they had discovered on the planet. This sounded like a capital idea, so after rummaging through the supplies left in the capsule (including a copy of Le Morte D'Arthur, as if I needed another reminder of where the series could have gone!) we headed east once more, heading for the coordinates Dibbs had given us. Once again it was a fairly uneventful trip, only stumbling across a small band of bushrats (what would the proper collective term be for plantimals?) that were quickly dealt with. We were, however, beginning to see traces of civilization - the remnants of a road that we were indeed following toward Arsia Mons, at least in part. Buffalo Bill and Calamity Jane were willing to trade a wide variety of things for oxium. Though we didn't have much on us at the moment (Dibbs only had a little), it was good to know if we were ever short on supplies or ammunition, they'd set us up for the right price. They also mentioned various varieties of berries they'd trade for, with mysterious effects. Calamity Jane would even give us oxium, for enough of the right kind of berry.

Dagnabit, do you have to rub it in my face like that?

Or would, at least, once her supply lines were back in order. It seemed her supplier, a man named Cooter McGee, had gone missing. Dibbs had mentioned this as well, it seemed he had fallen afoul of some raiders from Argyre. Yet another reason to be suspicious of the group that had holed up there. We promised we'd look into what happened to him, and at Jane's instruction, Bill gave us directions to Cooter's place and a stock of oxium to help us deal with the atmospheric conditions during the journey.

Rather, he did once I reloaded a save. I'd somehow managed to skirt past a pair of sextellegers just outside the outpost, and one had snuck through the open door and smacked Bill dead in one shot. Whoops! I made sure to get the drop on the sextellegers first the next time around, and for added safety I shut the door behind me once I was inside. C'mon Bill, you can't die yet, this is how universe-shattering paradoxes are made!

~~~

I called it a session there, as I'd spent a good deal of time in the game at this point. It may not reflect a whole lot of things actually happening, but I think this opening bit of Martian Dreams works really well, a nice and tight means of getting the player into the game. There's a good sense of what's happened in the game world and what I might be able to expect moving forward, several plot threads to follow up on - there are, after all, four groups from the previous expedition to chase after - and one prominent one that gives me a clear direction for at least my immediate steps. The game does a good job of streamlining the open world so it doesn't feel overwhelming in these initial stages, which I feel is necessary when you're still getting the hang of things. I feel like I have options, and even though it's clear to me where the game wants me to go, it manages to do so in a way where it feels like I, the player, am still the one calling the shots as to where to go and what to do next.

I do, however, find myself with a bit of trepidation over the oxium mechanics. On paper, I find the concept an interesting one. It's necessary to keep the party in tip-top fighting condition, but it also doubles as currency, which means as the game goes on and I accumulate a larger stash, I may have to make decisions about how much I can afford to use on buying supplies and how much I need to keep on hand. The fact my currency stash will dwindle as I travel as well means I can't just hoard and use it whenever. There's the possibility of needing to be a bit more judicious about when I take my shopping trips.

I'm sure this is just flavor and won't be of any importance.

In practice, though... I feel like this could be a tough thing to balance properly, economically. Considering a lack of oxium lowers my stats - and by proxy, carrying capacity, ouch! - it'll be important to keep it on hand, but since a lot of the weapons require ammunition, I'll constantly be in need of replenishing bullets, which means spending "money." I don't know how much oxium I'll be able to find (or berries to exchange for it in if I can't find enough), nor do I yet have a good sense of how quickly one goes through a stash of it in travels, and depending on both those factors, it could mean I'm constantly in want of more of it not just to buy things, but to maintain enough of a supply of it to make it to where I want to buy them. And that's assuming I don't care about keeping any on hand to keep my stats up. I suspect I'm just overthinking things and it'll turn out just fine, but I'm seeing some potential for the mechanic to end up a bit frustrating if it's not fine-tuned well. I suppose we'll see as the game goes on.

Finding out what happened to Cooter is my plan for the next session, maybe wandering over to Olympus once that's taken care of. An entire planet's worth of adventure awaits - time to get back to it!

Martian Dreams: Opening Thoughts

I think the best way to encapsulate my initial thoughts on Martian Dreams is via a remark from a conversation I had during the UDIC 25th Anniversary Bash. Unfortuantely I don't remember who said it, so I'm unable to attribute it properly, but it went something along the lines of "Just describing the premise of that game makes me happy."

That's a pretty fair assessment for me as well, all things considered.

Released in 1991, Martian Dreams was the third game to make use of the Ultima VI engine and the second entry in the Worlds of Ultima spin-off series. Or at least it ostensibly was, as the series itself had been renamed to the "Ultima Worlds of Adventure" series, putting the prestigious name of Ultima first. Not that it mattered all that much in the end, on account of the fact it was also the last entry in the series, much to my personal dismay. See, the planned third entry in the series was intended to take an Arthurian bent - how awesome would colliding Britannias have been? Iolo and Merlin swapping stories, Dupre and the Knights of the Round Table questing together, King Arthur and Lord British... so many great opportunities there. But alas, it never came to be.

Ahem, right. I was talking about Martian Dreams.

I like the fact the Avatar has a poster of Ultima VI on the wall.

Once again the game took the tack of throwing the Avatar into an adventure apart from Britannia, via the Orb of the Moons. While Savage Empire took him into a lost world, Martian Dreams sent him on a steampunk adventure on the Red Planet. Considering time travel is involved, it's a little difficult to properly decide where the story truly begins (or a least when), but perhaps the best way to approach it is the Avatar's own perspective - when Dr. Spector shows up on his doorstep one night, ostensibly at the Avatar's own bequest, the two are visited by a mysterious stranger with a package for them. This package contains a photograph of the two of them with several Victorian-era figures, a note signed by Nikola Tesla, and a book on time travel and the Orb of the Moons written by Dr. Spector himself - dated a century earlier. Following the instructions laid out in the book, the two venture to an abandoned laboratory in Colorado, use the Orb, and find themselves in the year 1895. They discover that two years prior, the astronomer Percival Lowell had developed a "space cannon" designed for a trip to Mars, unveiling the project at the Columbian Exposition of 1893. Unfortunately, the cannon discharged a day early - with several prominent figures of the era on board for a tour. And so the Avatar and Dr. Spector join Tesla's rescue mission, for whatever adventures might await them on the next planet over.

Much like Savage Empire, I don't have a lot of previous experience with Martian Dreams. This was largely in part due to the interface issues I had with Ultima VI, which I've previously stated that I had several problems adjusting to at first. However, the premise reminiscent of a Jules Verne novel (adaptations of which I read voraciously as a kid) intrigued me far more than Savage Empire's, and so I was a bit more willing to stick it out just to see what the game had to offer. I've never managed to get very far in the game, but I loved its aesthetic and the ideas behind it. It's one of those games that I quite readily praise even if I'm not entirely sure it's one that ends up clicking with me personally. Although considering how I've managed to get over my initial problems with the Ultima VI interface back during my playthrough of that game, I suspect I'm going to have a much better time of it this attempt around. I'm excited to experience the story firsthand in its entirety, because from what I've seen of it in Let's Plays, it's going to be an excellent adventure.

Well if we knew, we wouldn't have a game, now would we?

But of course I can't get started without delving into the game manuals - yes that has to be plural, as Martian Dreams came with two! The first is Dr. Spector's treatise on time travel and the Orb of the Moons referenced in the game's intro. It does indeed explain how the Orb of the Moons can be used for such a thing, and they are indeed followed properly in the intro. It also features a few descriptions of the various people in the ill-fated 1893 journey, along with those taking part in the 1895 rescue expedition. The second manual describes more of the planet itself, from its geographical features to the wildlife encountered there to what they have managed to figure out of the Martian civilization. It's clear that the team put a fair amount of research into the historical figures they chose to include, there's even a "Further Reading" section for more material on these people. That sort of thing is something I highly appreciate in games that reference historical peoples and places - part of what I love about the Civilization series is trawling through the in-game Civilopedia to learn more about the people and nations I'm playing as. Being able to latch on to some little-known facet of history and having resources at hand to investigate further, provided to me by the game itself - that's the sort of infectious passion for a particular topic that I love to see infused into any form of media.

The manuals also help set the proper tone for the game to follow here. There's no such thing as a perfect reflection of reality when it comes to fiction - what matters is either being able to sufficiently distract the audience from those discrepancies, or putting them in a state of mind where those discrepancies and inaccuracies simply don't matter to them. Martian Dreams is of the latter type, I think. It definitely plays fast and loose with the science involved (when it doesn't outright defy it!), but the lighthearted tone of the manuals and intro sequence help put the player in the right mindset, that this isn't going to be a story about hard science and survival on Mars, but a jovial adventure that happens to be set there. Spector himself even points out some of the strange and extraordinary discrepancies between the modern understanding of Mars and the game's presentation of it! By presenting them in an almost jaunty sort of manner, it helps set the player's expectations of what's to come and make those nonsensical moments easier to accept and meet the game on its own terms.

Origin did "create worlds," after all.

Even the detail work in the manual and opening sequence makes me grin. The illustrations that supplement the descriptions of Martian "plantimals" really help bring the idea of plant-based fauna to life, and the added detail that it's George Washington Carver who does the research into Martian society and its life cycle makes just drives it home all the more - of course he would, he's the botanist! All in all the manuals go a long way to getting the player in the right mood for the game to come, which is exactly what they should be doing. The fact the Origin FX sequence at the beginning uses an image of Mars made me smile, too.

Thus prepared, I popped into the game to create my character proper, chatting with Sigmund Freud in order to define the Avatar's presence on Mars. Even this is a nice touch - who else would be the one to determine how the Avatar would be fleshed out on this particular adventure? Freud began by asking whether the Avatar was closer to his mother or father - I didn't realize this was the 'art thou male or female' question of the game when I first gave Martian Dreams a whirl, which caught me off guard when I answered honestly and ended up female once I fired up the game proper. Freud then stated he did not think the Avatar belonged with them on the trip, and asked how that made him feel. From there came a few more questions: were the Avatar a child again, what would he do when his mother calls him away from playing with his friends? Should they send one out as a scout or stick together as a group when they land on Mars? Were he an animal, would he rather be a fish or a bird? Once again it was interesting to see the traditional "virtue test" framed in a completely different context, and as always, I answered based on the Avatar's previous experiences as best I could.

All that remains now is to dive into the game proper and get to exploring the Martian landscape. Tally ho!

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.

Savage Empire: The Bugs in the System

When last I left off, I'd just taken my first steps into the underground domain of the original inhabitants of Eodon Valley, the Kotl. And I'm beginning to sense something of a trend here. First it was Ambrosia in Ultima III, then retrieving the Codex from the Abyss in Ultima IV, which was followed by the Underworld of Ultima V, then the Gargoyle lands of Ultima VI, and now the Kotl city in Savage Empire. The Avatar seems to have a certain fondness for hurling himself headfirst to explore vast, dangerous underground territory in search of something necessary to save the world. At this rate, I wouldn't be surprised if there was another game down the line that ended up being entirely underground!

...oh right. Ahem. Moving right along!

Ever feel like you might be overlooking something important?

Having descended into the depths of the ancient city proper, my first order of business was to track down Katalkotl. Knowledge is power, after all, and Yunapotli had told me that Katalkotl knew many things about the city I was about to explore. I thought it best to see what I could learn from him before pushing too deep into the city. Consequently, when I came across the teleporters just inside the entrance, I skirted past them, unwilling to fling myself even further into the unknown without arming myself properly. There was a ghostly-looking something near the teleporters, but I figured it for a statue or a weird lantern or something. But I would definitely be coming back to that later.

In the meantime, though, I poked around what remained of the city nearby. And it wasn't long - barely a few steps past the teleporters! - before I was attacked by what residents were left, in the form of robotic dinosaurs. The fights I found myself having in the Kotl city were not particularly numerous, at least in most parts of the city, but the ones I did have were brutal. Spears and arrows and swords and a fire axe were more than able to take down the metallic creatures, but whenever any of them landed a blow, it hurt. So it was with caution that we made our way through the winding corridors of the city, trying to get a feel for its layout and what we might find in its depths.

We did find a good deal of use, too. A lot of bones and corpses, which was... eerie, to say the least, but so too did we find shields, weaponry, and canisters that we quickly gathered and distributed amongst the group, sure they would be of great aid when we finally took the fight to the Myrmidex. And considering the design and nature of the technology of what we were finding, I found myself having vague thoughts of Ultimas I and II, what with all the blasters and light swords and the like. That particular blend of only-vaguely-defined high-tech weaponry coupled with the fact that I was wandering about with a shaman who could bring about a fair few magical effects - it was very reminiscent of those early wanderings of mine, if only in spirit.

Clearly something unpleasant went down here...

It wasn't just items that caught our interest, however. The city itself was full of peculiar sights - a room where the ground was simply dirt rather than the tiled flooring we'd been walking over in the rest of the city, gratings that revealed lava flows beneath it. And that whatcha-ma-call-it back near the entrance of the city, come to think of it. Katalkotl was supposed to be near the entrance, and I'd explored a fair distance in by this point. I headed back the way I'd come to see if I'd missed anything, and lo and behold, there he was - the very thingamabobber I'd dismissed as decor earlier. D'oh!

Reflecting on my latest lesson in humility (it is one of the Virtues of the Avatar, after all, shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, unless it's Smith I suppose), we spent some time chatting with the last of the Kotl. Or, as he explained to us, the memory of him, for that was what he was. It was from this memory that we finally learned the history of the valley proper. The Kotl came from reptilian ancestors, and possessed a large black stone. Eventually their mystics learned how to draw power from the stone, and used it to build a thriving city and the advanced technology we were seeing the remnants of. They had also created the Myrmidex to act as servants for them, when they realized they could not power enough automatons to do what work they wanted them to do - this explained the dirt-filled room I'd come across before, it was likely the old "servant's quarters," so to speak. They had hoped that the industrious nature of the ants they were bred from would make them ideal for the task. Unfortunately for the Kotl, they also took on the warlike tendencies of the ants and rebelled, taking with them the black stone from which the city drew its power. So the Kotl went out to find new servants. These were the ancestors of the tribes that now dotted the Valley of Eodon - it seemed that they too had grown weary of their role as servants at some point, and headed to the surface.

And then the Myrmidex returned. The city fell, and the Kotl were no more, save in what little the Sakkhra remembered of them.

It was a tragic tale, to be sure, though perhaps a situation the Kotl had brought upon themselves. There was little time to reflect upon this, however, for Katalkotl informed us of something else: Spector was currently in the city! After obtaining directions to the generator room (though the Myrmidex still possessed the black stone that served as their power source, the generators could still function off its power even from a distance), we set off in search of the crazed academic, marveling at the giant crystals and taking a moment to mourn at the evident battle sites we passed along the way. I even caught sight of a wisp at one point.

That's a dead robo-dino, by the way, he's not just dreaming of electric meat.

Spector turned out to be holed up in the generator room itself, both himself and the generators protected by the same force field we'd witnessed about him earlier. It took a while to catch sight of him proper, considering that my sight was limited in the underground city and the narrow path over the lava to where he was standing was blocked by a robotic tyrannosaur that I'd just so happened to kill on that path. Once I'd managed to get a grasp on things, the mad doctor and I had ourselves a little chat. He theorized that the moonstones that had brought us all into the Valley in the first place were pieces of the black stone the Myrmidex now held, and that one of the side effects of drawing power from that stone were odd changes in the flow of time. We knew we had to throw a monkey wrench into his plans somehow, but what could we do when both he and the generators that would power his plot were protected by force fields?

Mess with the controls, of course! Those were still within reach, and we soon managed to shut down the power in the city. The glow faded from around Spector, and he found himself in his right mind once more. The automatons froze as they shut down (Yunapotli included, sadly), and the city went dark. There was no chance to reflect on what this meant for the legacy of the Kotl, however, as the shut-off instigated a collapse of the city, and we found ourselves fleeing for our lives as the ground shook (complete with shakes on-screen, a nice touch). We managed to escape just in the nick of time, and as we stopped to catch our collective breath, Spector told us what needed to be done to deal with the Myrmidex threat once and for all. He told us there were too many for a single band to deal with, but with the tribes of the valley united, they could be defeated. Their queen would need to be destroyed, lest she spawn another brood and trouble the Valley all over again. So too would the black stone need to be destroyed - Spector wondered whether it was what was keeping us trapped in the Valley, but regardless, he feared what the Myrmidex might do if they figured out how to tap its power the same way the Kotl had. It was what had driven him mad in the first place - what might it do to the Myrmidex? It was too dangerous to ignore.

But... don't I have an admirable face, too?

Our course clear, we made our way back to Tichticatl to ensure that Huitlipacti the Usurper was properly dealt with. We arrived to find Moctapotl restored to his rightful place as ruler of the Nahuatl, the people having killed Huitlipacti as soon as the glow that protected him had disappeared as a result of our actions in the ancient city. They readily agreed to a unification of the tribes, and were the final tribe in the Valley to do so. It was time to head to Drum Hill and summon them for the last stand against the Myrmidex. There we found a man named Tuomaxx, who made and played the drums there on Drum Hill. To summon all the tribes, he would need a large enough drum to be heard in all corners of the Valley. He would need a hide in order to craft such an instrument. So we headed back to the Kurak village to rest up for the battle ahead and picked one up while we were there, Intanya was more than willing to donate the one in his home for a good cause. Tuomaxx made short work of crafting the drum, and so were the tribes called together to bring the fight to the Myrmidex.

Together, the peoples of Eodon charged the Myrmidex caverns. While the tribes drew the attention of the bulk of the swarms, I readied my own little band of warriors for the coming fight. It fell it us to track down the queen herself, and we armed ourselves with every trick in the book we could think of. The technology we had found in the old city would surely be of great use to us. Aric the Avatar, Aiela, and Dokray were all armed with the black staves we had uncovered there - as well as Jimmy, as I felt he deserved one after how much he'd developed as a warrior in the Valley. They proved extremely effective weapons - they were crushing the Myrmidex at a single blow, and from a distance even! We made short work of the stragglers we came across, traversing the caverns with a mixture of View spells (courtesy of Triolo) and a device picked up from the Kotl city. She chattered and clacked and called for our destruction, we braced ourselves for a fight, and... well, she died just about as quickly as the rest of them, really. Kind of a bit of an anticlimax, but at least it was an easy problem to solve once we'd found her.

For once, the Avatar's actually present for the victory party!

The queen kept the corrupted stone in her own chamber, and after hitting it with everything we had, it shattered, its hold over the Valley broken. And not only had the Myrmidex been defeated, we had accomplished it by helping the tribes to overcome their squabbles with each other. The Valley was truly at peace once more - and so, as it always is for the Avatar once his task is accomplished, it was time to depart. Rafkin stayed behind for further research into the Valley and its peoples, while Fritz, Spector, and good ol' Jimmy joined in for the trip back home.

And boy oh boy, would Jimmy have a story to tell.

~~~

So ended my own adventures in the world of Eodon. And even as I played through this last session,
right up until the end of the game, I found myself smiling at all the detail work. During the conversation with Tuomaxx, for instance, he throws the hide over the Avatar's head in order to admire it - and the little window that normally shows the portrait of the character you're talking to goes black, since you presumably can't see anything with a hide over your head! The entire game is full of these little touches, and it adds so much to its charm.

But I hesitate to say too much on that particular topic, as I still have one more post to lay out my final thoughts on the game. Stay tuned!

Farewell to Eodon

Linguistic Asides: Reflections on the UDIC 25th Anniversary Bash

It's been a while since I last did anything over here - judging by the date of my last post, over a year at this point. I think it's high time that I did something about that. My last session of Savage Empire has already been played out, long enough ago that I'm glad I cut my teeth on games that expected me to take notes in order to get anything done in them. If it weren't for the notes I have from that session, I might be in a bit of a bind right now! I'm in the process of pulling together a post to wrap up the game proper, but in the meantime I thought maybe to help me get back into the groove, I'd do something else I've been meaning to do - scribble down some thoughts on something else Ultima-related that happened approximately a year ago.

That's right, the UDIC's 25th Anniversary Bash in Disneyland.

It's been on my mind a lot in recent days, in large part because I was actually in Disneyland again at the end of February, on vacation with my parents. I even made sure to bring along the anniversary T-shirt, and wore it on the anniversary of the first day of the bash. There's a lot of fun memories from that weekend, but I think the best place for me to start is before the bash itself.

See, I wasn't entirely sure I was even going to be able to go in the first place. Gallara had done a fantastic job of getting the word out well in advance of the event, and I was very much hoping to go. The thing was, I'd wasn't sure whether I'd be in a position to do so. It was... June or July or something along those lines when Gallara reached out to see if I would be willing to give a lesson in Gargish at the bash, and so I had to make a decision. I'd been unemployed for a long while and thus didn't have much in the way of savings, and I was working a temp job at the time without anything concrete lined up afterward - I had opportunities, but nothing solid yet. I sat down, worked out how much I had, how much I was still going to make over the course of my temp job, and calculated how the trip would cost me. When all was said and done, my budget was going to be tight, but even if I didn't make anything beyond when my temp job was up in August, I'd just barely be able to make it to February and still have enough to afford attending.

So I told Gallara that I'd be happy to give a lesson.

I did end up landing another job on a more permanent basis, which removed that particular worry, but even if I hadn't, I still would have been there. I was excited about the prospect of meeting other Dragons, and even moreso when I found out Lord British and other Origin folk were planning on being there as well. At the same time, part of me was a little nervous. And not just about the lesson - I wondered if I'd get along half as well with Dragonly folk offline as I did online. I simply didn't have the same experience as I knew a lot of Dragons did when it came to the UDIC itself. I knew a lot of folks had been part of the Dragon community considerably longer than I had. I'd known about the Dragons well before I ever joined, and by the time the Bash rolled around, I'd been one myself for a little over three years. I still considered myself a hatchling by Dragon standards. I didn't grow up with the series like many of the Dragons had. I've said before that I'm as old as Ultima V, and by the time I actually discovered the series and played one of the games, Ultima VIII had already been out for a few years. I didn't even have the tech background a lot of Dragons seemed to have. As excited as I was, I wondered if I wouldn't feel a bit like a fish out of water.

That notion was dispelled the moment I walked into the Fellowship Hall that first day.

I'm still not entirely sure what it was that did it. Maybe it was the big hug Gallara gave me when we finally got to see each other in person. Maybe it was seeing Blu3vib3, aka Angelic-Demonic (or was it Demonic-Angelic?) Dragon, all decked out in Serpent attire and realizing that whatever else we might have been, just about everyone there loved the Ultima games just as much as I did. Maybe it was how jovial and personable Richard Garriott, Lord British himself, was when I finally worked up the courage to say hi. Maybe it was finding out just how far some Dragons had come to attend, or reading through the event book, hitting home that yes, we Dragons really did come from all sorts of walks of life.

But whatever it was, I had a grand time - even despite the fact I was sick the whole time I was there and was popping coughdrops like they were going out of style. (If you were there and got sick afterward, I'm so sorry, it was probably my fault.) I got to meet Dragons I knew from online, but never yet met in person, Gallara and Sorceress and Goldenflame. I got to meet Dragons like Shadow of Light, who I knew by name and by their work (I have stark memories of tearing through Shadow of Light's Ultima-related writings when I was in college) but never had a chance to put face to name. I got to experience the reverse, too - I can't tell you how many times I had someone tell me "oh, so you're Linguistic Dragon!" and it still caught me by surprise every time. I got to sit back and indulge in one of my favorite pastimes - origami - with Doctor Cat. I was there when Dominus helped christen Lord British as Splut Dragon, I chatted with Dennis Loubet about the poster he designed for the event while he signed mine, I got to play a bit of Goldenflame's The Dark Unknown with him right there to chat about its development. My Gargish lesson was small but glorious, soon turning into a discussion on what Gargish oratory tradition might be like. I exchanged favorite (and frustrating!) moments while playing the games over lunch. I joked about how riding the California Screamin' roller coaster in the rain must certainly have earned me some valor points. There was laughter, there was joy, there was exuberance, and there was Ultima.

As much as those particular memories make me smile, though, I think what stood out to me the most wasn't what I made of the event, but what my parents did.

See, neither of my parents are Dragons, nor have they ever played an Ultima - they don't play video games much at all, except mobile versions of board or card games they're already familiar with and the occasional family Mario Kart session. When I told them I'd been asked to give a lesson in Gargish, they asked (once we'd taken a moment so I could explain what that was in the first place) if I'd mind if they came along so they could be there for it too. I was more than happy to have them along for the ride, though I wondered whether they'd feel out of place themselves, on account of they don't have the Ultima context the rest of us did.

In the weeks leading up to our departure, I gave them a bit of an introduction to the series proper. I sat down and ran through Ultima IV's opening (and the virtue quiz!) with them, playing a bit of the early game, explaining what was going on and what I was doing and the basic run-down of the story of some of the other entries in the series - I remember my mom's looks of consternation as she deliberated over a few of the virtue questions and which way she'd answer, she really liked that aspect of the game. By the time we arrived, they had at least a vague idea of what Ultima was all about and why I liked it so much, why I wanted to hang out with this wacky group of people who called themselves Dragons for a few days.

And the thing is, even though neither one of them knew and loved the games the same way I and my fellow Dragons did, at the end of the day, that didn't matter. I remember my dad chatting excitedly with Lord British about his time in space, my mom having a lively conversation with Auora about knitting, the two of them talking with Dennis Loubet and Gold Dragon over dinner as they were all sitting at the same table. They listened with rapt interest during the Origin developers' panel, and told me how impressed they were that they didn't hold themselves apart - they were friendly and personable and were right there enjoying everything with us. And when we left the Fellowship Hall that first day to head back to our hotel room, I remember my mom telling me, "I can see why you wanted to come. They're good people." Neither of them had the context or experience with the games the rest of us had, but they were still right there laughing and enjoying themselves. It's an event all three of us have good memories about. My dad still asks how Shroud of the Avatar's development is going, even though I doubt he'll ever play it himself, just because he was so interested in what Lord British had to say about it.

One of the things the three of us talked about on our way home was just how impressive it was that the UDIC had been around for a solid 25 years, even though there hadn't even been a game released in the series it was formed around since 1999. I'd long thought that myself, but being there with my parents, I think it clicked exactly why.

We may have come together over our mutual love of a video game series - but that isn't what defines the Dragons as a community. My parents are proof enough of that - they've never played an Ultima themselves, but it was pretty obvious to me that they felt welcomed and enjoyed themselves anyway. And that, I think, is what's ensured the Dragons have stuck around this long. Sometimes fan communities can be ostracizing in their love for what it is they're fans of - not so, with the Dragons. They may have needed me to explain some of the in-jokes, but for that weekend, my parents were just as much a part of the community as any Dragon was. And it drove home that while it's Ultima that brought us together in the first place, it's not the only thing that ties us together. Word nerd, knitter, ham radio operator - the three of us found ways to connect with Dragons over all those things while at the bash.

Whoever you are, you're welcome among the UDIC. I saw that clear as day while I was at the bash, and I remember feeling, when it was all over, that I was proud to be among their number.

Still am, really.

Let's not wait another 25 years to do it all again, okay?