Ultima Ultima VII: The Black Gay

[F. J. Rothchild III]

Name jokes aside, I'm finally playing U7 in earnest (compared to past attempts, aborted by distraction or attention span), a game that came out less than a year after my birth. In my opinion, it holds up and then some. I love RPGs that reward exploration like Gothic and the interactivity and emergent gameplay joys of immersive sims, so, given how this game features so much of both, I pity anyone unable to look pass its graphics and minor annoyances and enjoy its majesty.

I realize, however, that among veteran Ultima fans (and despite U7's extreme age to me), there are likely those who view it as when the series sold out by embracing mouse-focused gameplay, perhaps a deviance from the Virtues-focus, or a more typical plot.

I plan to try the older Ultima games, as well (I already played a lot of Ultima Online growing up and I love the Ultima Underworlds) but I'm curious what the codex's thoughts are on U7: The Black Gate. I suppose let's include Serpent's Isle, as well.

 

[LarryTyphoid]

Ultima 7 is a great game that is far superior to Ultima 6. Ultima 6 was an awkward transition game that abandoned the dual-scale old-school approach of previous Ultima games in favor of a single-scale approach that, while novel for its time, necessitated the removal of many features and made navigating the world so trivial that the game gave you an item that allowed you to fast travel to every single significant location in the game, including the end-game underworld area, within the first 30 seconds of gameplay. Its immersive elements were not in-depth enough to make up for all of the gameplay depth from U5 that was lost.

Ultima 7 abandons even more simulation elements from earlier games like moon phases and wind direction, but makes up for it by having amazing single-scale exploration with one of the most detailed worlds ever seen in an RPG, even to this day. The story and writing is also, in my opinion, incredible, with every NPC having his or her own distinct identity and interesting dialogue, and the murder mystery setup gives U7's story an edge not matched by many of its contemporaries.

There are things I don't like about U7's story; for example, I would've had Lord British die in-between games, because his appearance in U7 makes him look like an impotent idiot with the way he doesn't ever help with the Avatar's investigation of the Fellowship. Also, the fact that the ruling sovereign of the world is a personal friend of the protagonist weakens the story setup of the Avatar having been missing for hundreds of years, with many Britannians believing he was merely a myth who never actually existed, which is a setup that I like a lot and is capitalized upon very well in other parts of the game. That being said, it's still a strong story and further cements the Avatar as my favorite protagonist in any RPG series.

 

[Grauken]

Ultima 6 was the last good Ultima game

 

[F. J. Rothchild III]

Ultima 6 was the last good Ultima game

Okay! (nice Pyro Jack avatar btw)
Can you elaborate a bit on why you think so?

Also...thanks, Larry, for the super in-depth response. Will respond to some of your points soon.

 

[Grauken]

Can you elaborate a bit on why you think so?

Ultima 7 had shit combat and a shit inventory
Ultima 8 was an isometric action adventure with a filler plot
Ultima 9 was terrible in almost every regard

 

[F. J. Rothchild III]

Can you elaborate a bit on why you think so?

Ultima 7 had shit combat and a shit inventory
Ultima 8 was an isometric action adventure with a filler plot
Ultima 9 was terrible in almost every regard

Absolutely fair. To me, however, bad combat can be a deal-breaker in some games, but not others. The rubric for this is pretty case by case and not in the least bit concrete, even to me.

For example, Planescape- Torment's combat is something I usually actively avoid, choosing any possible dialogue options that get me out of having to engage in it. In spite of this, I (and from what I've seen, the Codex's rankings here) consider it one of the best games of all time and an easy contender for best CRPG. A similar game, Icewind Dale, looks and plays the same, but trades incredible storytelling (Planescape's sctrength that allows me to overlook its lackluster combat) for a total combat focus. If that game, or even a game outside of the world of CRPGS (like character action games by Platinum Games, etc) had bad combat, I would dabsolutely write it off as a bad game as you do with Ultima VII. I've played about 40 hrs of The Black Gate so far, and while I do find the combat to be a big ball of nothing, I love the world, freedom, writing, humor, characters, interactive elements, sandbox-style experimentation, the magic, the quests, etc. These far outweigh the poor combat for me. So, I personally wouldn't say a game is bad simply because it doesn't have good combat, especially if there's so much more to and it has tons of other merits.That said, perhaps combat is one of the main reasons you play RPG's (as it is for many) and you find it can make or break a game. I totally get that. Different strokes.

As for the inventory, it's annoying sometimes, juggling every character's bags within bags etc. and the manual feeeding can be tedious and stop the flow of things, but I'm still cool with it so far. I haven't played Pagan, but I trust you on that because I've heard the same sentiment regarding it from most people. Ascension I played in middle school and, even then, before I developed "taste", I knew it was a clunker.

I've really enjoyed my time with U7 so far, though.

 

[Spectacle]

Ultima VII is the best Open World RPG ever made. I wish never 3D RPGs would try to imitate it.

 

[Infinitron]

Kind of weird for you to name the thread this way as a fan. You might be trying a bit too hard to fit in here.

Regarding Ultima 7, I think there are two main qualities that make it a good game, which are maybe not always the first thing some people mention about it:

1) It's one of the first RPGs, if not the first, with serious writing meant for adults (and a seriously large amount of it).
2) It has a kind of pleasantly breezy look and feel to it. This is due to a confluence of design choices - the top-down view, the user interface (or lack thereof), the color palette, the way characters move, even the music.

 

[LarryTyphoid]

Ultima 7 had shit combat and a shit inventory

Agreed on the inventory, but Ultima 6's combat is also terrible.

 

[Grauken]

Ultima 7 had shit combat and a shit inventory

Agreed on the inventory, but Ultima 6's combat is also terrible.

Compared to 7 the combat in 6 is excellent

 

[F. J. Rothchild III]

Kind of weird for you to name the thread this way as a fan. You might be trying a bit too hard to fit in here.

The joke is that it's a black gay guy ("a black gay"), not that the game is gay. I actually kind of take umbrage with the implication that not only dioes the Codex hold the copyright on dumb humor like that, but that I don't have my own sense of humor coming into the forum and am merely mimicking some "Codex-style" humor in order to be a try-hard and fit in. I put myself in your shoes for a moment to try and grasp why you'd say this, and I suppose I get it. You don't know me, so it may come off that way. However, I can assure you I'm only posting on THIS forum over others because, after lurking for many years, I know that my kind of humor won't be censored here like other "thought police"-patrolled spaces online. This site is either a bastion for RPG fans who enjoy speaking freely and inserting un-PC humor, etc. or it's a place where if you attempt to simply make a joke too early on in your membership on the site, you get called out for "trying too hard to fit in". It can't be both. Gatekeeping racial or gay jokes is such a bizarre concept to me, lol. I suppose I'll just refrain from any dumb humor until I've "earned the right".

 

[Infinitron]

I'm not gatekeeping you. I was concerned that you felt like you had to name the thread something like that. But if that's what you like then feel free.

 

[F. J. Rothchild III]

I'm not gatekeeping you. I was concerned that you felt like you had to name the thread something like that. But if that's what you like then feel free.

Okay. Still a bit fuzzy on how I was supposed to interpret that as concern, but we're on the same page now. Apologies for getting all "Well, I never!" about it. I just don't like my sense of humor that I use on every site, Discord, friendship I have to be thought of us anything but genuine. Water under the troll bridge.

Anyway, back to Ultima VII...

I found this part hilarious. Even more so when I spoke to the unicorn again AFTER getting a happy ending massage at The Baths in Buccaneer's Den. Truly the "volcel" hero of mythological creatures.

 

[Mortmal]

Ultima 7 holds a special place in my gaming experience as it played a pivotal role in my transition, a thing we like to speak a lot about in the codex, a transition from the Amiga to the PC... Back then, PCs were prohibitively expensive, and almost no one could afford to buy one. However, the allure of Ultima 7 was so strong that it motivated me to make the switch. "Origin we create worlds'" moto was certainly true.
While the combat in Ultima 7 is not turn-based and lack strategic depth, it's important to note that the preceding episodes of the series were not especially more tactical. The game offered its own unique style of real time gameplay that appealed to many players, even today.
Ultima 6 was also a fantastic game that I thoroughly enjoyed. However, when comparing it to contemporary games,solasta, BG3, it's clear that Ultima 6 can be considered relatively primitive. We are still speaking about those games created 30 years ago, that should tell something. Despite the technological limitations of the time, Ultima 7 managed to create a living and interactive world that was unmatched in its era. The game's atmosphere was incredibly immersive, and the mature storyline resonated with adult players, as noted by Infinitron, and yes you could play a gay black guy too.
Ultimately, Ultima 7 remains a timeless classic because of its groundbreaking features and the massive impact it had on players during its release.

 

[F. J. Rothchild III]

Ultima 7 holds a special place in my gaming experience as it played a pivotal role in my transition, a thing we like to speak a lot about in the codex, a transition from the Amiga to the PC... Back then, PCs were prohibitively expensive, and almost no one could afford to buy one. However, the allure of Ultima 7 was so strong that it motivated me to make the switch. "Origin we create worlds'" moto was certainly true.
While the combat in Ultima 7 is not turn-based and lack strategic depth, it's important to note that the preceding episodes of the series were not especially more tactical. The game offered its own unique style of real time gameplay that appealed to many players, even today.
Ultima 6 was also a fantastic game that I thoroughly enjoyed. However, when comparing it to contemporary games,solasta, BG3, it's clear that Ultima 6 can be considered relatively primitive. We are still speaking about those games created 30 years ago, that should tell something. Despite the technological limitations of the time, Ultima 7 managed to create a living and interactive world that was unmatched in its era. The game's atmosphere was incredibly immersive, and the mature storyline resonated with adult players, as noted by Infinitron, and yes you could play a gay black guy too.
Ultimately, Ultima 7 remains a timeless classic because of its groundbreaking features and the massive impact it had on players during its release.

Perfectly put. Thanks for sharing your first experience with it. I was too young to experience this hugely impressive and immersive game on release, but can imagine how exciting of a time that was for fans of computer role-playing.

I think your use of "timeless" is accurate here. A lot of people throw that word around when discussing games that are undeniably classics, but (whether it's due to younger generations being spoiled with graphics and hand-holding or whatever one wants to blame it on), are still simply not easy for many to get into years later. I like to think that if a piece of work was good at one time, then it's always good, but with games, in particular, there's far less romanticized mystique (for most people) in text-based adventures or Ultima 1-style games than, say, black and white film noir movies or the projected, flickering grand guignol of German Expressionist silent horror movies. Film grain and celluloid burn , etc. All of these date a movie as being old as the hills, but to many "cinephiles", they're a fascinating historical artifact and part of the experience. With games, the further we go back, we still have games that are beloved, but many that (even if it's just a case of younguns being impatient or hating arcaic games) are admittedly hard for many to get lost in like those who played them on release once did. This isn't the fault of these more primitive and hard-to-penetrate games, nor is it the fault of the person who gives them a real try but still can't get into them.

Ultima VII, though, is a game that one might assume would be incredibly hard to pick up and play today. It's not. I'm immersed in it currently and finding it to be a great experience. That's why I feel it is indeed timeless.

All that bullshit aside, though...what's this about being able to play a gay black guy? Did this game just go from 10/10 to 11/10?

 

[Mortmal]

All that bullshit aside, though...what's this about being able to play a gay black guy? Did this game just go from 10/10 to 11/10?

This was a little thing really , you had access later in the game to a brothel with playersexual npcs, first time i remember seeing that in rpgs tbh. So you could chose the male or female hooker , no matter the gender of your character.
In serpent isle some kind of event like that happened too with some wizard wife, was working with a female npc too.

 

[LarryTyphoid]

In serpent isle some kind of event like that happened too with some wizard wife, was working with a female npc too.

That one felt pretty forced for a female PC and was clearly intended for a male PC. The Avatar immediately after being caught in that chick's bedroom is arrested and put on trial by her husband, which is kind of jumping to conclusions for a female PC, but hey, Moonshade is a really debauched place so it's not too much of a stretch. But then during the trial, instead of completely denying the unbelievably scandalous charge being directed toward their cherished lady Avatar, Iolo and the others are just like "so what if she had sex with your wife, huh?!" I like to imagine the female Avatar at that point thinking something like, "woah, what the hell have you guys been thinking about me this whole time?"

The joke is that it's a black gay guy ("a black gay"), not that the game is gay. I actually kind of take umbrage with the implication that not only dioes the Codex hold the copyright on dumb humor like that, but that I don't have my own sense of humor coming into the forum and am merely mimicking some "Codex-style" humor in order to be a try-hard and fit in.

Stay on the Codex a little longer and you'll begin to understand how Infinitron was mistaken about your intentions; it's quite reasonable from his perspective. If you searched for the term "gay nigger" on our politics board then you'd probably receive thousands of results.

I like to think that if a piece of work was good at one time, then it's always good, but with games, in particular, there's far less romanticized mystique (for most people) in text-based adventures or Ultima 1-style games than, say, black and white film noir movies or the projected, flickering grand guignol of German Expressionist silent horror movies. Film grain and celluloid burn , etc. All of these date a movie as being old as the hills, but to many "cinephiles", they're a fascinating historical artifact and part of the experience. With games, the further we go back, we still have games that are beloved, but many that (even if it's just a case of younguns being impatient or hating arcaic games) are admittedly hard for many to get lost in like those who played them on release once did. This isn't the fault of these more primitive and hard-to-penetrate games, nor is it the fault of the person who gives them a real try but still can't get into them.

In my opinion, this is because games are a younger medium than films. For me, Ultima 4 was easy to get into when I knew it was a game that expected me to take my own notes. In fact, when you realize that many old games expected you to keep your own notes and draw your own maps, that entire generation of games completely opens up to the player. This is even true of early console games such as Metroid or Zelda on NES; growing up, I knew about these games from the internet with shows like the AVGN, but everyone I saw always talked about how cryptic they were, or how you had to look up a walkthrough, and I never even considered the possibility of beating these games on my own when I was a kid. When you deal with these games how they expected and encouraged the player to deal with them by reading the manual carefully and taking notes, they aren't hard to play at all; Ultima 4 can be beaten by anybody without a walkthrough, just by paying attention to the game. As there are always people who really care about movies that will watch films from the 1920s, I think there will always be people who really care about games that will play titles like Ultima or Wizardry due to their historical significance.

 

[F. J. Rothchild III]

My initial purpose with this thread was to get the Codex's opinion on Ultima VII. The reverse, however, became equally apparent when I found this in-game.

 

[Atrachasis]

Ultima 7 had shit combat and a shit inventory

Agreed on the inventory, but Ultima 6's combat is also terrible.

Would you care to elaborate? I have always felt that, compared to the steep decline that was to follow from VI to VII, combat in VI still retained most the qualities of V (not that combat was ever the selling point of the series...).

My initial purpose with this thread was to get the Codex's opinion on Ultima VII. The reverse, however, became equally apparent when I found this in-game.

If you linearly extrapolate the decline that the Codex has undergone in recent years back in time, it would seem only natural that back in 1992 it must have been so glorious a phenomenon as to merit a shrine in its honor.

 

[Falksi]

Recently played the SNES version. Probably one of the worst ports of all time, an utter abomination and desecration of the original.

 

[F. J. Rothchild III]

Recently played the SNES version. Probably one of the worst ports of all time, an utter abomination and desecration of the original.

I was curious about this. The only way I could possibly imagine an SNES port of Ultima VII even remotely working would be if the Mario Paint mouse was the sole, mandatory means of control.
I'm assuming you can't pick up items/interact with the environment or, if you can, it's the clunkiest thing ever. Graphically, I can definitely imagine the SNES pulling it off. However, I'm not sure if the sheer size of the world, etc. would be possible.
Do tell, though. I'm morbidly curious.

 

[Mortmal]

Recently played the SNES version. Probably one of the worst ports of all time, an utter abomination and desecration of the original.

Yes and i am still butthurt (30 years of being butthurt imagine that) there was no amiga 1200 or cdtv version of U7 instead.

 

[ShaggyMoose]

Ultima 7 is the peak of the Ultima series and a highlight of RPGs in general (but yeah, the combat sheesh).

 

[LarryTyphoid]

Would you care to elaborate? I have always felt that, compared to the steep decline that was to follow from VI to VII, combat in VI still retained most the qualities of V

U6's single-scale world, zoomed-in view, and top-down dungeons mean that U6 can't create interesting room encounters like U4 and U5. There are no real encounters on the overworld, because enemies just wander onto the screen (very rarely at that); the only significant enemies you ever face on the surface are the gargoyles at the shrines. You can get a Disable spell very early in the game which trivializes some of the only actually threatening enemies, like the winged gargoyles. The constrained view means that enemies constantly respawn when they go off-screen in dungeons, so there's no feeling of progress when you kill enemies in the dungeons. U6's economy is busted so it's trivially easy to get a practically unlimited amount of reagents to fuel instant kill spells.

I actually prefer U7's combat to U6's, because at least it's kinda fun to watch your party beat on enemies without much effort on your part. I think people remember it being worse than it is because they play with Exult, and Exult's combat is a lot worse than the original U7's in quite a few ways because Exult is still unfinished and not all of the quirks from U7 combat have been recreated.

 

[Falksi]

Recently played the SNES version. Probably one of the worst ports of all time, an utter abomination and desecration of the original.

I was curious about this. The only way I could possibly imagine an SNES port of Ultima VII even remotely working would be if the Mario Paint mouse was the sole, mandatory means of control.
I'm assuming you can't pick up items/interact with the environment or, if you can, it's the clunkiest thing ever. Graphically, I can definitely imagine the SNES pulling it off. However, I'm not sure if the sheer size of the world, etc. would be possible.
Do tell, though. I'm morbidly curious.

The interface and controls aren't the greatest, but they were bearable and weren't my biggest issue. Now, whilst the SNES version doesn't look completely awful, it does look far worse and more importantly it looks far less atmospheric than the PC version for sure. The atmosphere takes a further hit with the music too which again is way better on the PC version, not to mention that the PC version also obviously contains voice over work in certain areas, whereas the SNES version doesn't. These butchered aesthetical elements don't hurt the game too much, but they do serve as an indicator of how there was no way a game this big was ever gonna squeeze itself into a SNES cart.

Then we come to more significant gripes, these are where the port really starts to falls over. Firstly, the game world has been shrunk significantly and the journey is far more linear. There's less buildings, less NPCs, less dialogue...it really is a diet version of the PC game and thus just feels lame. Secondly, you can't customize your character, which needless to say waters the experience down even more. Thirdly, you can't recruit party members. All these negatives really hurt the experience, but my main gripe is just what they did to the actual story.

Holy hell Nintendo have destroyed the soul of this once excellent game with their desire to sanitize it for kids. Instead of investigating murders you are now investigating kidnappings, kidnappings in a world where blood, bodies and even any use of the word "kill" have been removed, and alongside them any darkness to the tone. Even with all the shoddy omissions mentioned earlier there could have been hope for the game had it retained it's emotional weight, but that's all flushed down the shitter too. So not only are the mechanical and gameplay aspects such as the world structure destroyed, but the actual tone and core of the story is too. Honestly, they fucked this port up SO much I'd sooner stick broken glass up my arse than play it again.

For me the SNES version of Ultima VII: The Black Gate is an utter abomination, and one of the worst mechanically-sound ports which exist in gaming. It loses size, character, depth, presentational quality, key game elements, emotional weight, and pretty much everything which made the original so good. It's a desecration of the highest order and not worth 1 second of your time. You have to be crazy to want to experience such a classic game in such a God-awful way. Fucking dire.