Ultima 5: Warriors of Destiny - My Summer Vacation in Britannia
Kail:
Every night I wake up screaming. I'm not sure why, the memories always vanish when my eyes open, but I remember someone screaming at me to wake up. It wasn't until last night that I could remember any more: a high pitched screech.... and then a distant voice screaming "FUCKING BULLSHIT FULL ROOM SLEEP SPELLS". Now I know what haunts my nightmares. I think it's time to go back to Britannia.
For those who don't feel like reading page after page of my old stuff, here's a brief summary of the series so far:
The original Ultima was about an evil wizard named Mondain, who was unkillable due to his gem of immortality, ruling over a fantasy world called Sosaria. Being immortal, the only way to defeat him was to obtain a time machine and travel back through time to before the gem was completed and kill him then. This required me to do four things: first, to level up my stats and equipment so I could kill Mondain in the past. This mainly required me to journey around the world visiting landmarks and shops. The second task was to finish a series of quests for the various kings so that they would give me the four gems I needed to power the time machine. These quests were "go to a dungeon and kill a monster" type affairs. The third task was to buy a starship, fly to outer space, and shoot down a bunch of Mondain's alien allies, or something, until I attained the rank of Space Ace. You know, as one does in a fantasy RPG. I needed to be a Space Ace because princesses are easily impressed by titles, and I needed one to tell me where she hid her time machine. Which led to the fourth task, breaking a princess out of one of the kings prisons (it doesn't matter which one, every king has a dungeon with a princess in it, it comes with the crown I think) so she could tell me where she parked her time machine. Having done all that, I traveled back in time and killed Mondain, which messed up the timeline but people apparently remembered it anyways.
Ultima 2 was about Mondain's girlfriend / apprentice, Minax, who was super annoyed that I killed her beau before he got to the good part. The plot to this game is honestly a bit confusing to me because it looks like it takes place on Earth instead of Sosaria, and you travel to a bunch of different time periods through time gates, and I guess Minax is trying to start nuclear war and leave the earth a scorched wasteland, or something? It's all pretty vague, I don't know that they really had a plan at this point for a consistent series of games. Minax had hidden her fortress, Castle Shadowguard, back in pre-pre-historic times (an era called the "Time of Legends") and most of the game consists of finding magical widgets to bypass it's various flavors of bullshit. To level my attributes in this game, I had to travel to New San Antonio in the year 1999 and talk to some guy in the corner of the Hotel California and then just spontaneously hand him a hundred bucks, at which point he might randomly level up one of my attributes. That is the only way to improve your attributes, by the way. And it's not an isolated incident, the whole game is obscure crap like that. The two main items needed to defeat Minax are the quicksword (the only weapon that can harm her) and the magic ring (which will let you walk through the force fields blocking off the rooms of the castle). The quicksword is not, I don't think, mentioned by anyone ever in the entire history of the Earth, as far as I could tell, you just have to know what it does and that Sentri has it and where he is and that to get it you have to break in to his prison cell and shove 500g in to his hands so he'll give it to you. The ring is similar bullshit, in that nobody told me what to do or where to get it, I had to talk to Father Antos (who is, by the way, hiding on Planet X in the year 2112 meaning I needed to hijack a spaceship and know the coordinates to the hidden planet to find the guy) who gave me his blessing and told me to go pick it up... but didn't say from where. It turns out there's some random old man squatting under a tree somewhere who gave it to me... after I dropped nine hundred gold on him. And this isn't unusual, it's basically two examples of how the entire game goes. If you want to play it yourself, I recommend using a walkthrough. With that bullshit done, the actual fight with Minax was fairly straightforward (meaning, she teleported to the opposite side of the castle after every time I hit her so most of the fight was jogging back and forth between the two corners of the map, but other than that it was just "walk up and whack her") and the dark future Minax had in store for the Earth was averted. I think. I don't read the politics subfoum anymore, so I could be wrong.
Ultima 3 was more of a traditional fantasy game. This was the first one where I had an actual party of different characters, and the first one without all the space and time traveling. The plot was basically the same as the first two: Mondain and Minax had, at some point, had a kid or... some kind of offspring, named Exodus. I'm still not really sure what Exodus is, some kind of computer or demon or some mix of the two. Anyways, he's off on an island perpetrating vague evil just offscreen where you can't see it and we have to get over there and stop him. This game involved running around dungeons to get marks branded on my characters to bypass the various obstacles in Castle Exodus as well as the four magical cards that needed to be inserted in to the computer at the end in order to defeat it, obviously after grinding the titanic amount of gold I needed to raise stats and buy enough food to not instantly die of starvation. I didn't actually work out a way to make more money than my grocery bill was costing me until I started murdering innocent townspeople and stealing their stuff, so I'm not sure if I played "wrong" or what, but we did eventually defeat Exodus and save the world of Sosaria once more.
The response to that was apparently Ultima 4, a game in which the central theme was "Hey, wouldn't it be great if people DIDN'T kick down the door, steal all our stuff, murder the guards for XP, and declare themselves noble and brave heroes because they also at some point killed an evil wizard somewhere?" The player character in this game is brought to Britannia from Earth, through a magical portal called a Moon Gate, and just kind of... hangs out. There wasn't really an enemy in this game, no central threat to beat, instead the point was to become an "Avatar," someone who was less concerned with defeating evil through combat than with the eight virtues: Honesty, Compassion, Valor, Justice, Sacrifice, Honor, Spirituality and Humility. This process involved a quest for the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom, tucked away at the bottom of the Stygian Abyss. Each of the eight virtues had it's own town dedicated to it, and a shrine to meditate at, as well as being associated with a color, one of the eight character classes in the game, and it's own dungeon housing the stone associated with that virtue, all of which were required to enter the Abyss and claim the codex. After doing all that, I was sent back to Earth, having achieved Avatarhood.
Which brings us to the start of Ultima 5.
I have no idea really where the plot is going from here, and the manual is surprisingly vague on the matter. The lore book (actually just titled "The Book of Lore" in this game) doesn't say, it just gives basically the same description of Britannia that was in Ultima 4. So the world is consistent for this one, which is nice. The character is consistent, too, it looks like. The lore book suggests that the hero who killed Mondain and Minax and so on was different in every game (maybe explaining how elves and dwarves and fuzzies were removed as playable races), so apparently U4 is the first time the person who becomes "The Avatar" has been in Britannia, though it looks like U5 uses the same character since there's an option to import them in to the game here. That's pretty cool, I like when games do that. I can't think of a single time this feature has shown up that I haven't really liked it, but then I suppose even though everything is a sequel these days a lot of games can't really use it for some reason or other. Importing my character is fairly straightforward, though it changes my class from "mage" to "Avatar". Avatar isn't mentioned in the manual, though, so I have no idea what my strengths are. Maybe it's just the uber class, like Jedi or something, able to do everything. I'll be annoyed if they've gimped my magic abilities, at least. In fact, the manual is really vague about the classes in general. It mentions the ones from U4, like tinkers and paladins, but then seems to imply that there are only three REAL classes: mages, bards, and fighters. So I don't know what's going on with character design, since I apparently skipped most of it by importing. Not that I'm complaining, since now the grinding should be fairly minimal, my stats were maxed at the end of U4 and here they're still pretty beefy, unless I'm reading the screen wrong everything starts at 25/30.
But really, that's it. As I mentioned, the lore book says nothing about what's going on, what the peril facing the realm is or why I'm playing. It starts off with some backstory on the history of Britannia, which sounds new to me. Apparently, Earthlings that head to Britannia age at something like 1/10 speed, and in addition to myself, Lord British as well as several of the companions (Iolo and Dupre are named specifically) are all from Earth. There's some mention of geographic changes and the map looks slightly different (for example, there's a new lake by the Lost River, and the lake surrounding the Shrine of Sacrifice has apparently dried up) and the fact that the government has changed from a straight up monarchy to some kind of representative democracy where Lord British just has veto power (somewhat similar to the US Government if the president was appointed for life). Apparently, after U4, someone brought the Codex back out of the Abyss (not me, presumably, since I went straight back to Earth, and there's no word on the rest of my companions either) and then sealed up all the dungeons, so things should be nice and peaceful now. There's a bit about astronomy, which seems to indicate that the moon gates which facilitated travel through U4 might work differently now. The magic section also looks different, with spells now having verbal components as well as magical reagents. There's a page on music, which is weird since the game (at least, this version of it) has none. Just about the only thing that even hints that anything is troubling Britannia is one paragraph on the very last page which mentions offhandedly that Lord British has gone missing while exploring the underworld and martial law has been declared. I guess maybe we have to rescue him or something? I'm not an expert on Ultima, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't die here, since his canonical death is when Sir L33td3wd casts Fire Field on him in UO.
So, the game starts and I have no idea what is going on. The pre-game intro animation is vague as hell and has basically no text. It shows someone at home (me, presumably, though I apparently live in a stone dungeon) having a dream about the symbol of the codex, grabbing a shield and sword and heading to a moongate to travel back to Britannia. Once there, there's another person who I'm now guessing is maybe supposed to be Shamino, the Ranger from Ultima 4. Immediately after meeting him, however, three ghost looking guys appeared behind me. Shamino moves in between us, and they blast him with some kind of laser, knocking him on his ass, and then they leave. I carry Shamino's body to a shack with another person, who I think turns out to be Iolo. We put Shamino in the bed and I guess spend the rest of the night discussing what is going on. I wish there was text for this part because I'm kind of curious about what's going on myself, why I'm here or who those ghost guys are. They show up on the cover so I assume they're important. Three ghosts = the spirits of Mondain, Minax, and Exodus, maybe? Some evil counterparts of the three principles of virtue from U4? No idea.
Anyways, the game starts with me in the shack, in a party with Iolo and Shamino who is near death. Since they're in my party, I can't talk to them, so I don't know what is going on or where I am or anything.
cironian:
Weird. The version I played also had text based intro scenes in addition to the tile based animation thing:
You might want to watch https://youtu.be/dFSYykrtZY0?list=PLD7309B2DB6A8731C&t=344 because that intro tells you your overall quest.
Kail:
Yep, I'm an idiot. There's a "play intro" option on the title screen. I thought it just replayed the title intro, I guess I got it confused with earlier games in the series though because this time it actually gives the backstory, and with nice little graphics plates, too. So here's the actual story.
Long story short: apparently, after becoming the Avatar, the general populace decided it would be a great idea to bring the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom up from the Abyss so that everyone could read it. Unfortunately, because of the vast amounts of magic this required, pulling it up dragged a bunch of the planet with it, and created a huge volcano/mountain thing where the Abyss used to be. The earth that went in to making this mountain created a bunch of empty space underground which in turn generated the Underworld, a massive network of caves and tunnels which link all the dungeons of the world. I mean, sure it looks obvious in retrospect, but they claim they somehow didn't know that would be the most likely thing to happen. The dungeons had been previously sealed up to prevent monsters from coming out and wrecking things, but now with this new underground network there's all kinds of nasty stuff breeding down there so when a collapse created an opening to the Underworld in the Spiritwood, Lord British heads down there to see what's going on. Unfortunately, he's been gone a long time and his Grand Vizier, Lord Blackthorn (not the Blizzard one, unfortunately), has taken over and suddenly everything is coming up fascist. Blackthorn has outlawed all magic and, weirdly, has implemented the Virtues from Ultima 4 as actual laws. "Thou shalt not lie, or thou shalt lose thy tongue," "thou shalt humble thyself to thy superiors, or thou shalt suffer their wrath," that kind of thing. Back at the ending of Ultima 4 I was talking about how important it was that the game let you CHOOSE to be good, but it still let you be evil even though that was the "wrong" way to play. Well, this kind of thing right here... this is why that distinction is important.
My seven companions were not on Blackthorn's "good little boys and girls" list so they split up to presumably fight some kind of guerilla campaign against him. Shamino decided that the best course of action would be to summon me from Earth, so he casts a powerful summoning spell, bringing me to Britannia and giving me this weird amulet emblazoned with the symbol of the Codex (in addition to my gift shop Avatar ankh keychain). But, because Blackthorn has outlawed magic, the Shadowlords (the three ghost guys I mentioned, who are presumably his enforcers) show up and spear Shamino with an enchanted arrow right after I arrive. Fortunately, Iolo's hut is nearby, and after a rest, he's at least stable enough to move.
All right, first thing's first, checking around the shack thing, I don't see anything of value to steal. It is surrounded by dense woods, so there might be secrets out there, but I can't find anything. The graphics look a bit more varied this time, there's a bunch more visual fluff in the house, like tables and chairs and things. I'm still getting used to the UI, so doing stuff is still pretty awkward. It's mostly the same as the previous Ultima games so far, but the little changes are always the ones that throw me off.
Anyways, head to the south of the map and it takes me to the overworld, in what looks like a big wooded area. Not sure exactly where we are, my first guess is Yew since I remember that forest being big, but it could be any one of a half dozen different forests. Objective one is probably to head to Castle British and see if there's any leads about where to start looking.
Exploring a bit, it does look like we're in the Deep Forest, by Yew, and a short jog to Castle British. Not sure if the overworld is smaller in this one or if it just seems that way, but the trip is easier than I was expecting. Although we are jumped by an Orc. I guess sealing those dungeons didn't do much good, this looks just like the last time I was here. Well, Shamino is still near death, but Iolo and I aren't so out of shape that we can't take on one Orc. The fight itself is easy, though I am struggling a bit with the interface. Far as I can tell, you have to hit A to attack, then choose a target, then hit enter, for every attack, rather than just A + direction like it was in previous games. After dying, the Orc drops a treasure chest on the battle screen, which contains food, a weapon, and money as well. Seems awfully convenient, though each item needs to be picked up one at a time.
Anyways, first stop is the Castle of Lord British, to see what's up. Maybe have a chat with this Blackthorn guy and sort out our differences without having to collect nine enchanted armpit hairs first or whatever. Oh, who am I kidding. The gate guard won't talk to me, but Chuckles the Jester is capering around the front hall and welcomes me to the castle. He describes Lord British as "immortal, currently missing, presumed dead." Okay. There's a bunch of people here but I have no idea what to ask any of them. The Stable Girl, Chef, and Bard are all lounging around where Hawkwind the Seer used to be. Not knowing what to talk about, all I can gather is that British is gone and things are bad in some undefinable way. There are some stables on the ground floor, with a sign in them... written in Britannian Runes (or whatever they're called). Sigh, I'm going to have to dig up my old notes, aren't I. "Ye Kings Stable, Watch Thy Step". That took like five minutes to decipher that hot tip.
On the second floor, where the kitchen used to be, is what I think is the new throne room? There's a bunch of pillars, an empty chair, and a crystal ball that shows the map of the castle. The room is vacant, otherwise, though. And now, one of the annoying things pops up: the game has a day/night cycle, and when it's night, you can only see one tile around you in any direction. So I either move super awkwardly and can't see more than a foot in front of me, or I have to crash in someone strangers bed until morning. I suppose I may as well rest here for the night. It doesn't heal me, apparently you have to rest in the overworld to heal. Anyways, the second floor is pretty empty, and the next floor up is the roof. The lore book says that the castle has five floors, so I guess the other three (or two, if it counts the roof, which a guard yelled at me for trespassing on) are basements or are only accessible through locked doors. Anyways, it's back outside now, since I've combed the area and I can't find a healer, any shops, or any useful information. A huge contrast from U4, where it was the central fixture of the quest, with probably 75% of the stuff we had to do explained by British or Hawkwind.
The area around Castle Britain has not only the town of Britain, but also three little suburbs around the castle itself, according to the lore book they specialize in shipbuilding, livery, and farming. None of those seem useful to us, broke as we are, and I would rather tend to Shamino's crippling wounds before we get in to adventuring proper, so the town of Britain is going to be our next stop.
Lucas:
LOL, good luck; you're gonna need it :grin: :drill: (but seriously, glad you're taking a shot at this after the entertaining, previous chapter :D).
----------------
Regarding music, like I said in the other thread, the Ultima V soundtrack is quite good; in order to implement it on the PC version, first download Pix's Ultima Patcher (v1.61) from here:
http://www.pixsoriginadventures.co.uk/category/ultima-patcher/
(Saves will be unaffected; whole process should take you a minute, it's longer to write it down :P)
- unzip the archive wherever you wish ;
- run the UltimaPatcher.exe and, of course, select Ultima 5, then point to the main dir where the game is installed ;
- The only thing we're interested in is the first option (the music configuration): select install and then, when the old-fashioned DOS music settings menu appears, scroll down to the MPU401-General Midi (but I personally prefer "Adlib" or the "Sound Blaster and compatible" options), select it, then choose the "save & quit" option. Next time you run U5 you should hear the music ;
- If you decide you had enough of the music, beside an in-game toggle that may or may not be present (can't remember), you can disable it by following steps 1&2 as listed above, select again your preferred music device in the menu, then select option "1" (disable the midi music) and, next time you boot up the game, music should no longer play.
Kail:
Quote from: Lucas on June 06, 2017, 01:40:29 PM
Regarding music, like I said in the other thread, the Ultima V soundtrack is quite good; [snip...]
I'm kind of leaning towards not doing that... the later games, I assume, will have the sound, so any iconic themes will presumably show up later, and I'm kind of trying for a "warts and all" approach, more about seeing what the game was like than trying to have the most fun experience. I mean, not that this is 100% accurate in any case, but there's no doubt a lot of patches that would make the game "better" in some way but aren't what I would have played if I'd picked the game up off the shelf back in the day.
So, on to the town of Britain. Last time I was here, Britain was the city of Compassion, and here, Blackthorn's Law of Compassion is helpfully posted on the town gates: "Thou shalt help those in need, or thou shalt suffer the same need". See, this is the kind of thing that sounds good on paper but in practice runs in to problems. You're not being "compassionate" if someone's holding a gun to your head and forcing you to do it, you're acting out of your own self-interest.
There's a shop here called "Iolo's Bows," run by someone named Gwenneth. She doesn't seem to recognize Iolo, though, or maybe she does, I can't ask her since she's a shopkeep. There's a bard here called Grayson who claims to have been all over and seen a bunch of stuff, including some kind of stone giants called Guardians. I'm not entirely positive, but I think he implies that they're guarding the Shrine of the Codex. Do I want to go there? I've already seen it, haven't I? At the end of the last game? Apparently, you need to meditate at the shrines, and they will give you a quest, which you need to complete. Do that for all of them, and you can get in to the chamber. Not sure why we'd want to do that or if there's more to it than that, though. Knowing this series, it's probably not that straightforward.
Heading for the inn, I don't see anyone at the counter... There is a Wizard hanging out at the bar, named Annon, who says he's a member of the great council. Claims he divined the eight words of power, presumably part of the new spellcasting system. I need to figure that out when I have the money to blow on some components.
Well, after the conversation with the Wizard, there's someone behind the counter at the inn. Hmm, people mentioned NPC schedules in the Ultima 4 thread, maybe this is a consequence of that. Well, at least we can rest. The innkeeper asks if I want to drop off a party member, so maybe there are more companions out there than I can drag along at once.
After a rest, everyone's healed... but they're still really low on HP. Checking out their stats, it looks like I'm the only one who has retained their stats from U4. Shamino is level 2, and Iolo is level 3, with no stats over 22 and barely a quarter of my XP. So even fully healed, they aren't exactly the powerhouses they were.
Outside, the town looks smaller than it did in U4, and that's saying something. There's the inn, Gwynneth Iolos bows, and one building with nothing in it but two beds on the top floor (I assume the occupants are out or something, kids these days with their NPC schedules and their disco music and their hula hoops) and that's about it. Otherwise, there's an orchard being tended by a guy named Terrance, who notes that things are harder because of the Shadowlords, and says that his only hope is the Resistance. Aha, finally some useful info. He's terrified that I'm going to turn him in, apparently, but once I assure him I'm not, he tells me to ask the owner of the Arms of Justice. Presumably that's a weapon shop somewhere, I don't think that's in this village, so I'll have to search around. Yew is the city of Justice, maybe it's there.
What IS in this village that I haven't checked out yet is the tavern. Now that we've got some HP, it's time to get liquored up before we start hitting things with swords. The barmaid is named Tika, one of the rare references I actually get, and she sells some rations as well as some beer. The chef goes on about their specialty, the roast leg of mutton, which he learned of from Andre of West Britain, and after buying some he mentions that his serving boy, Eb, is an expert on glassware. Chatting with Eb, it looks like his friend Malik in Moonglow tried to make a glass sword. Hmm.
I do manage to follow someone named Gwenno in to the back room at Iolo's bows, at which point she will talk to us. Looks like Iolo (and presumably the other party members) are wanted persons. Gwenno mentions that they have wanted posters up everywhere of them. When I try to leave, she asks to come with us, so I ask her to tag along. She appears to be his wife or something.
So, what next. Hmm. I suppose I may as well check out the other three villages bordering Castle British, though now I'm basically completely broke (I spent all my cash on beer and food) so I'm unlikely to be able to buy the horses or boats or whatever that they're selling.
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