I first stumbled across Ultima VI: The False Prophet in the most British way possible – through a mate’s dodgy copy that his older brother had “borrowed” from someone at college. This was 1991, I was fourteen, and I’d just gotten my Amiga 500 the Christmas before. Dave’s brother scribbled some basic commands on the back of a fag packet – talk, look, get, move – and buggered off, leaving us two clueless teenagers staring at what would become one of the most important gaming experiences of our lives.
Christ, what a revelation that was. Seven hours we sat there, barely managing to figure out how to have a proper conversation with an NPC, let alone understand all the business about virtues and mantras. But something clicked immediately – this wasn’t like the other RPGs I’d played on my Spectrum or the arcade-style adventures that dominated the European gaming scene. This was Britannia, and it felt real in a way that’s still hard to explain properly.
Richard Garriott’s Ultima series represents something we’ve lost in modern gaming, though most people don’t realize it. All those mechanics we take for granted – moral choice systems, living worlds where NPCs have daily routines, dialogue trees that actually matter – they all started in Britannia. Yet mention Ultima to most gamers today and you get blank stares. Meanwhile, they’re playing Skyrim or Mass Effect, completely unaware they’re experiencing watered-down versions of ideas Garriott perfected decades ago.
What made Ultima different was Garriott’s approach to world-building. Most RPGs, then and now, treat their game worlds like elaborate movie sets. Towns exist to give you quests and sell you gear. NPCs stand around waiting for you to click on them. Everything revolves around the player. Britannia didn’t work that way. In Ultima VII – still the pinnacle of the series, fight me – blacksmiths actually worked their forges during business hours, then closed up shop to visit the tavern. Bakers mixed dough at dawn and had fresh bread by midday. Children played during the day and went home at dusk. The world existed whether you were paying attention or not.
I’ll never forget my first encounter with Ultima VII’s crafting system. Not because a quest told me to, but because I was curious, I gathered some wheat, ground it into flour, mixed it with water, and baked actual bread in an oven. Proper bread that I could eat or sell or give to beggars. This was 1992, and here was a game letting me engage with mundane activities that served no gameplay purpose except immersion. I could forge weapons, brew potions, move furniture around houses, play musical instruments. Most of it was completely pointless from a mechanical standpoint, but it made Britannia feel like a place I was living in rather than just visiting.
The virtue system from Ultima IV onwards was bloody revolutionary, though hardly anyone talks about it anymore. Instead of the usual “collect four crystals and defeat the dark lord” nonsense, Ultima IV tasked you with becoming the Avatar – a paragon of eight virtues including Honesty, Compassion, Valor, and the rest. The game actually tracked your behavior against these principles. Steal from shops and your Honesty dropped. Run from battles you could win and your Valor suffered. Give blood at healers and your Sacrifice increased.
This completely changed how I approached RPGs. Suddenly I wasn’t just optimizing stats or following obvious story paths – I was genuinely considering the ethical implications of my choices. When beggars asked for gold in Ultima IV, giving them money wasn’t about getting a reward later; it was a test of Compassion that the game acknowledged without fanfare. The brilliance was how it made moral choices meaningful without obvious meters or immediate consequences. The game trusted you to internalize these values rather than chase mechanical rewards.
My most vivid memory of this ethical framework comes from Ultima VII. I discovered I could nick bread from the baker’s shop in Trinsic if no one was watching. Mechanically, the game allowed this – no immediate consequences, no morality meter turning red. But after spending multiple games internalizing the Avatar’s virtues, I found myself genuinely uncomfortable with the theft. Not because I feared punishment, but because it felt wrong for the Avatar to behave that way. The series had created such an immersive role-playing experience that I was making choices based on my character’s ethics rather than game mechanics. How many modern RPGs with their elaborate morality systems can claim that achievement?
The conversation system was another stroke of genius that we’ve somehow moved backwards from. Instead of selecting dialogue options from menus – now standard in every bloody RPG – Ultima had you type keywords to NPCs. “Name,” “job,” and “bye” were the basics, but the system rewarded curiosity as you discovered new topics through conversation. Mention “Blackthorn” to a citizen in Ultima V and you might learn about the oppressive regent; they might then mention the “Resistance,” opening new conversational paths. This organic discovery felt like genuine investigation in ways that menu-based dialogue, for all its convenience, rarely matches.
I spent hours in Ultima VI just talking to everyone, scribbling keywords in a notebook that’s probably still buried somewhere in my parents’ loft. The conversation system encouraged actual role-playing rather than just selecting the “best” response. When NPCs mentioned locations or people I hadn’t heard of, it created genuine discovery as I built my mental map of Britannia’s interconnected world. NPCs felt like sources of knowledge and perspective rather than quest dispensers with exclamation marks floating over their heads.
Ultima VII: The Black Gate remains one of the greatest RPGs ever made, full stop. Its technical achievements were staggering for 1992 – a fully interactive world where virtually everything could be picked up, moved, used, or combined. The plot, involving a seemingly benevolent religious organization called the Fellowship that masks sinister manipulation, offered narrative sophistication that put most contemporary fantasy stories to shame. No generic dark lord here – just a complex examination of how good intentions can be corrupted.
What struck me most about Ultima VII was how distinct each location felt. Britain, the bustling capital with its political intrigue; Minoc, the mountainous mining town with its working-class concerns; Jhelom, the martial island community obsessed with honor and combat. These weren’t just aesthetic variations – each place had genuine culture and history that existed independently of your presence. When a murder kicks off the game in Britain, it feels like a real disruption to a living community rather than a convenient plot device.
The level of simulation detail bordered on obsessive. NPCs remembered your conversations and reacted to your reputation. Weather changed realistically, affecting visibility. Food spoiled if left too long. Individual candles could be lit or extinguished, actually changing room lighting. Musical instruments played different notes based on which keys you pressed. None of this was necessary for an RPG, but together these details created immersion that modern games with hundred-million-pound budgets still can’t match.
My most memorable Ultima VII moment came from my own curiosity biting me in the arse. In the town of Paws, I found a locked chest in someone’s home. Being a seasoned RPG player, I naturally picked the lock and helped myself to the gold inside. Hours later, in a completely different town, I encountered the chest’s owner, who immediately recognized me as the thief and called for guards. This wasn’t a scripted event – just the game’s systems working logically together. I reloaded a save to preserve my Avatar’s reputation, but the lesson stuck: in Britannia, the world remembered your actions.
The Avatar’s journey across multiple games created unprecedented continuity in gaming. While most RPG series featured new protagonists each time, Ultima told the continuing story of one hero’s evolving relationship with Britannia. From straightforward heroism in the early games to moral awakening in Ultima IV, resistance against tyranny in Ultima V, cultural conflict in Ultima VI, and religious manipulation in Ultima VII, the Avatar tackled increasingly complex themes. By the time Ultima IX limped to its disappointing conclusion, players had spent nearly two decades embodying this character.
You can see Ultima’s influence throughout modern gaming, though rarely with proper credit. The Elder Scrolls lifted many sandbox elements and NPC scheduling systems directly from Garriott’s playbook. BioWare’s moral choice mechanics in Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect owe clear debts to the virtue system. Even survival crafting games echo Ultima VII’s item manipulation. Yet many players enjoying these modern experiences have never heard of Britannia or understood where these ideas originated.
The freedom offered by Ultima’s design was remarkable for its time. While main quests provided structure, the games encouraged exploration without constantly dragging you back to the critical path. In Ultima VII, I spent dozens of hours just living in the world – working at the sawmill in Minoc to earn honest gold, investigating local problems unrelated to the main threat, collecting books to build a library. This was sandbox gameplay before the term existed, offering genuine agency without modern open-world games’ tendency to stuff maps full of repetitive fetch quests.
My relationship with the Ultima series has that bittersweet quality you get from experiencing something extraordinary that can never quite be replicated. The later games suffered from rushed development and publisher interference. Electronic Arts’ acquisition of Origin gradually shifted priorities away from the deep simulation aspects that made the series special. The MMO Ultima Online captured some of the simulation depth but necessarily compromised the personal role-playing focus that made the Avatar’s journey so compelling.
I’ve returned to Ultima VII repeatedly over the years, most recently through the Exult engine that makes it playable on modern systems. Each playthrough reveals new details I’d missed – testament to the game’s incredible depth. During my last run in 2021, I discovered an optional subplot involving a painter in Britain that I’d somehow never encountered despite dozens of previous playthroughs. A game from 1992 can still surprise me after thirty years. That’s proper design, that is.
The Ultima series proves that technological advancement doesn’t equal better immersion. Modern RPGs with photorealistic graphics and full voice acting often feel more limited than Britannia did with its sprites and text conversations. What made Ultima special wasn’t cutting-edge technology but fundamental design philosophy prioritizing coherent world-building, meaningful player agency, and systems that simulated life rather than just combat mechanics.
The games remain playable today through various means, though with inevitable friction from their age. But even if modern players never experience Britannia firsthand, Garriott’s vision lives on through its influence on virtually every open-world RPG that followed. The Avatar’s journey may have concluded, but the legacy of those immersive worlds continues shaping how we think about virtual spaces and our place within them. Modern game designers would do well to study what Garriott achieved with a fraction of today’s resources and budgets.
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