Well, this first replay has been a long time coming – both in my life and since I announced it in early June.
Let me just say, that this game, at least to me, stands the test of time. It was every bit as fun as it was when I first played it obsessively in 1993. Keep in mind, I’m not reviewing the games here. I’m looking for game design nuggets from the past. Also, part of what took so long is that I played the game a pretty fair amount. So with that, let’s get started.
The game begins by you, as the Avatar, returning to Britannia after a very long hiatus. You arrive and encounter your old friend Iolo and are tasked with solving the murder of a gargoyle before you can escape the city walls. You could consider this a tutorial level, in a way, except there are no popups telling you what to do. There is no user interface, no help. You are expected to read the paper manual or figure it out. Essentially, you must talk to everyone in town to progress the story.
I hope you have that sweet cloth map handy.
Once you have all the information, you turn it in (so to speak) to the town’s leader. He then quizzes you on what you’ve found out. If you are missing information, the answer is not available in the dialog options so you can’t just guess your way out. Once that is out of the way, you have to answer some questions about the geography of Britannia. You literally have to lookup the latitude and longitude of various places on the cloth map that came with the game. For you whippersnappers out there, that was the DRM of the 1990′s. PC games had decoder rings, maps, manuals, etc. and you were expected to hang on to them and look up information to prove that you bought the game. This didn’t stop people from going to the library and using the photocopier which was way cheaper than buying the game, but it was time consuming. Anyway, once you answered everything correctly, they opened the gates and you could leave the tutorial…err, town. As soon as you leave, you encounter an alligator and are thrust into combat for the first time. Hopefully, you read the manual because, again, you are not told what to do to fight back. Also, it’s worth pointing out that combat comes several hours into the game. How many people would play a game now that didn’t have some form of combat in the first five minutes?
Look, Ma! No UI! Iolo looks pretty hungry though...
With that intro to the game in place, let’s go over some of the game design “features” that are not often found in modern games. Modern games often put a lot of UI on the screen to indicate to players the status of all kinds of things from health to your next objective. In addition, modern games tend to hand-hold players by popping up context sensitive tutorials to teach players how to effectively play the game. Since this post is getting longer and longer, let’s abbreviate things into a nice bullet list:
- No quest log/ todo list – You are expected to remember or write down what you are supposed to do.
- No arrows pointing you to where you are supposed to go next – You are expected to wander around or consult your cloth map.
- No indication of what magical items do. When you put on a magical piece of armor, you have to open your character sheet and notice what changed. Generally, they weigh less than their non-magical counterparts.
- Reagants for spells. You have to carry around tons of stuff to be able to cast spells. Some of it is very rare and hard to find so it makes casting some spells a serious risk-vs-reward situation.
- No indication of what reagants are used for the spells. I hope you kept your paper manual, because it’s your spellbook that tells what reagants you need.
- Where do you sell all this crap you steal? You don’t. There are only a few things you can sell – gold and gems mostly – and you have to do it at the shop for it (jeweler).
- Lack of UI makes the game immersion, but difficult at times. You don’t have a health bar or mana bar. You don’t know you are low on health until you die.
- No notification of where you are. In modern games like World of Warcraft, when you enter a town, it pops the name of the town on th screen for you.
- Food – You have to carry food and feed your party every day or they will eventually drop.
- A lot of puzzle solutions and helpful information is found in books scattered throughout the world in random buildings.
Giles, bring me my pipe and reading glasses!
Effectively, what Ultima 7 says to modern gamers is: “Stop being such a baby!” This is the core to what makes Ultima 7 different and worthy of being replayed for game design inspiration. All of those bullets point to the same critical feature: immersion. Ultima 7 immerses players like few games can. You get totally sucked into the game because there is no UI telling you information, you have to feed your party members, you have to pay attention to what people say and do. You can make bandages, you can make bread, you can steal, you can kill, you can cheat, you can do whatever you want. You have to allow yourself to be immersed into the world of Britannia and the role of Avatar or it just won’t work.
I hope you have Post-It notes or a notebook handy because he won't repeat this!
The game developers at Origin wanted to create a massive world with almost limitless exploration and potential. Ultima 7 definitely delivers. Many modern games could benefit from trying to allow players to slip, immersed, into their world rather than build complicated UI and tutorials that speak directly to the player rather than through the game to the player.
