“And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became myth. Myth became legend.”
-The Fellowship of the Ring
Before there was The Elder Scrolls, before there was Final Fantasy, before Fallout and Baldur’s Gate and Mass Effect and Dragon Quest… there was Ultima.
The history of RPGs in video games reaches much further than most realize, stretching as far back as at least 1975, when the likes of Moria and Orthanc were put together – nor are these even necessarily the earliest examples. Almost as long as video games have been a thing, there have been those trying to figure out how to adapt the rulesets of tabletop RPGs to the medium. Ultima was hardly the first of those attempts, but its impact and influence on the genre’s history cannot be denied. Just to cite a few examples: Larian Studios have frequently pointed to Ultima VII as an influence on their own design principles. Ian Frazier, before he became the lead designer of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning and Mass Effect: Andromeda, cut his teeth on a fan project based on Ultima V. Deus Ex’s Warren Spector got his start in games working on Ultimas – he’s even in a couple of them as an NPC! It’s even arguable any game with a morality system has its origin point in Ultima IV. It’s not just here in the West, either: Ultima’s influence can be felt in the JRPG tradition as well, with even some of its earliest examples, such as the original Dragon Quest, able to cite the series among its inspirations.
I find it something of a shame, then, that the series seems largely forgotten these days, relegated to the retro corners of gaming spaces, and even then, often to specific pockets of them. I can’t really be surprised by that, either: the series existed long before “standard conventions” were even a thing, and it can take work and effort to really get into and understand the series on its own terms.
Yet I think there’s still worth in exploring these influential old titles, and that’s exactly what I intend to do with a series of these reviews. I make no secret of my love of the Ultima series – heck, it’s why I go by “Linguistic Dragon” – but I also readily recognize the difficulties they can present for a modern audience as well. Hopefully, with these reviews, I can give an overview not just of the series itself, but of threads that still tie them to the RPGs of today, and perhaps offer a little insight on the history of the genre in the process.
In order to properly tell the story of the series, though, we need to go back even further. After all, some stories have a prologue, a smaller piece that, while perhaps not immediately relevant, sets the tone for everything that is to follow. The tale of Ultima is one such story, and its prologue comes in the form of Akalabeth: World of Doom.
Welcome, Foolish Mortal
Akalabeth was initially created for the Apple II in 1979 by Richard Garriott, aka “Lord British,” and takes its name from the chapter concerning Númenor’s fall in The Silmarillion. Tolkien wasn’t Garriott’s only source of inspiration, however, as the game is the culmination of his teenage self’s attempts to translate Dungeons & Dragons to the computer screen – twenty-eight attempts, as it happens, as it was his pragmatically-named D&D28 that would eventually turn into Akalabeth. To give a sense of just how different the gaming scene was back then, the game’s “initial release” consisted of about a dozen copies on floppy disk – the actually-floppy kind of floppy disk, not the smaller, sturdier sorts we kids of the 90s are likely more familiar with – each sealed in a plastic sandwich bag with a reference card, and sold at Garriott’s local computer store. This would eventually lead to a proper commercial release in 1980, by some accounts and/or definitions making it the second commercially-available RPG ever, behind the previous year’s Temple of Apshai.
Akalabeth largely consists of what we’d refer to nowadays as a dungeon-crawler, as many RPGs of the time were. Upon opening, the player is asked to choose a “lucky number,” which determines the random seed that generates both the layout of the game world and the set of stats offered during character creation. Should the player be unsatisfied with said stats, they can reroll, until obtaining a set of strength, dexterity, stamina, wisdom, and starting HP and gold that suits their liking.
Character creation beyond this is fairly basic. The only thing a player can directly choose is whether their character is a fighter or a mage – fighters can use all weapons available in the game but have no control over the amulet used as the game’s source of magic, while mages are limited in weapon use but have greater control when using the amulet. Upon making this decision, players can use their starting gold to purchase equipment and – crucially – food.
From there it’s out into the game world proper. The overworld is presented as a simple grid, a 3×3 portion of which is visible to the player at any time, which is riddled with mountains, towns, dungeons, and one castle – well, this is what the manual tells you it’s riddled with, as the symbols used for them are rather abstract and don’t necessarily register easily at a first glance. Wandering the landscape consumes food, and should the player run out, their character immediately drops dead of starvation, so it’s critical to maintain a healthy stock.
Gold can be earned by dipping into a dungeon and beating up monsters. These portions switch to a first-person view in a grid-based, wireframe-style dungeon, the likes of which a dungeon-crawler connoisseur is likely familiar with. Dungeons largely function exactly how you’d expect – enemies wander the corridors, you can attack and defeat them with the weapons you’ve purchased, and the deeper down you go the harder the enemies get. Traps may send you down a level sooner than you expected, thieves may steal weapons right out of your hands, and gremlins may raid your food supply, but dungeon-delving is the only way to replenish not just your gold coffers, but your health as well. There’s no health potions, no inns to rest at, no cure spells, not even a maximum on your health bar – instead, HP is treated more like a resource, and upon exiting a dungeon you’re awarded a portion based on the monsters you killed on that particular trek. This, then, establishes the basic gameplay loop: enter dungeon, beat up monsters, exit dungeon to replenish health (hopefully more than you lost!), visit towns as needed to stock up on weapons and food, repeat.
The formula can be shaken up a little by use of the magic amulet, which provides access to a handful of spells. Within a dungeon, using the amulet can send you up a level, down a level, cast an attack spell, or, via an effect the game calls “BAD??”, change your stats – either lower them by turning you into a toad, or increase them (and your gold and food!!) by turning you into a lizard man. As this is one of only two ways to increase character stats – and by far the most effective – this is often a risk worth taking. Mages have an easier time of this, as they can choose which spell effect to cast from the amulet (fighters must rely on the luck of the draw), but as the game’s random number generation system is fairly primitive, it can easily be gamed with a little trial and error. Indeed, surviving Akalabeth long enough to reach its “endgame” is best approached by learning the layout and patterns of a specific seed, often through several restarts – the game itself has no way to save, after all.
Exactly how to reach this endgame, and indeed the narrative of the game as a whole, is relegated to its short manual, as was typical for the era. It’s a pretty basic one, though at least a little different than the standard “kill the bad guy” – in Akalabeth, said bad guy is already dead. Mondain, the second son of a king, turns to evil and gathers hordes of monsters to wreak havoc on the land. Mondain himself has already been struck down, but the hordes remain, so it’s up to the player to do their part in clearing them out and achieve knighthood in the process. This is accomplished by seeking out Lord British in his castle (yes, this is Garriott’s self-insert), receiving a quest to defeat a specific monster, heading to a dungeon to do so, then reporting back. Each successful quest results in a very minor stat boost, and upon completing the last one (killing a balrog!), the player is informed they’ve completed the game’s main objective, though they are free to keep playing, and given a number to call, to – as the Ultima crowd has taken to calling it – “report thy feat!” And though this number is understandably now defunct, it’s worth noting Garriott still often responds to those who do so via the modern equivalent, namely, tagging him on social media with a screenshot.
“Ultima 0” and The Seeds of a Series
Though it has no direct connection to anything in the Ultima series proper, the ties between them are enough that the fanbase (myself included) will often affectionately refer to the game as Ultima 0 – later versions released to PC in the late 90s would also use this name. Mondain and Lord British are recurring figures throughout the series, for one thing, and Ultima I would largely follow the same mechanics as Akalabeth, especially in terms of its dungeons. Simple as it is, the fabric of Ultima is still woven throughout, evident to any familiar with the series.
Still, more than four decades down the line, it’s hard to recommend Akalabeth as anything but a historical curiosity. For most audiences, patience or interest (or both!) will likely wear out in short order – it’s clunky, tedious without exploits, trivial with exploits, and is rather bare-bones compared to what we think of as a video game today. But even so, it’s worth keeping alive for that sake alone, if only as a reminder of where it all began. What it would lead to, what it would become, with time and experience and refinement and innovation over the following two decades, would leave echoes resounding throughout the world of gaming. If this era of gaming is of particular interest, it’s worth giving a look as a pivotal example of the time, but otherwise, it’s perfectly fine to uphold and admire that history from afar – so long as it remains history, rather than pass into the realm of myth and legend.
BROKEN PIXEL
Not Recommended
Linguistic Dragon works in translation by day and nerds out about language, video games, and storytelling by night… and nearly all other hours, really. You can find him on Twitter as @DragonKetea.
