The Savage Empire: Neither Savage nor an Empire

Love or hate the game, this is a pretty awesome scene.

I've often remarked that while Origin was competent at "creating worlds"--better, indeed, than any other developer of the 1980s--they generally fell short of greatness. Their world-building often falls apart under scrutiny. The gargoyles, presented as misunderstood victims, are actually pretty vile when you think about it, and their virtue system makes no sense. The explanations for the extinction-level physical changes to Britannia's landscape are just absurd, and don't even get me started on Ultima II and its planets. When the world-building doesn't fall apart under scrutiny, it's just a little too tidy. Britannia's eight major cities, each based on a virtue, with docile NPCs spouting platitudes like "STRIVE FOR HUMILITY!," seem more like one big cult than a viable socio-political system.

Given its history, I've been alert for The Savage Empire being a little too cute. For instance, the three "totems" needed to cast spells are Heluzz, spirit of knowledge and vision; Aphazz, spirit of emotion and strength; and Molazz, spirit of battle--which of course correspond with the three principles of truth, love, and courage. For a while, I thought the various tribes were somehow going to be organized around the eight virtues, and that may in fact be the case. (There are actually nine tribes, but the Urali are supposed to be weird outliers who no one knows where they came from.) For instance, the "Disquiqui" are said to be "happy, musical, and rather notoriously amorous," which somewhat fits with the bards of Britain in the main series. The Pindiro have a "one with the land" thing going on that may associate them with the rangers and the virtue of spirituality. But on the whole, if this is what the developers intended, it's very subtle.

The manual's depiction of some of the tribes.

       
More specifically cloying for this game is the way that each tribe represents some aspect of "primitive" Earth cultures. The character portraits and NPC dialogue hint at this, but the game book makes it explicit. The Yolaru are Africans,  the Nahuatla are Aztecs, the Barrab are Asians, the Disquiqui are Polynesians, the Kurak are South American Indians, the Haakur are Neanderthals, and the Pindiro are North American Indians. Eodon is about the size of EPCOT, and yet these tribes have managed to maintain distinct cultural identities over what must have been thousands of years.

Whether by ignorance or design, Origin does a good job treading the "cultural sensitivity" line sometimes, as we discussed in association with Tangled Tales and Ultima VI's "Miss Mandy." They're never actually what I would call "offensive," and yet they sometimes elicit a groan, as when the Barrab are described as having yellow skin, or in Professor Rafkin's note about the Polynesian Disquiqui: "I always recall how and where Captain Cook died, and keep my wits about me when dealing with the Disquiqui." For the record, Captain Cook died while trying to kidnap the King of Hawaii to hold him for ransom.

I don't want to give the impression that I really care about this stuff, because I don't. I don't really think that anyone at Origin hated Mapuches, or that the game somehow hampered Caucasian-Polynesian relations. If I was an ethnic Zulu, I wouldn't feel offended. It just suggests a certain failure of imagination. Like a million things they did, Origin started with the germ of a good idea but failed to take it beyond the usual tropes.

'Cause nothing says "Native American" like feathered headdresses

      
As gameplay goes, it's been tolerable so far. Not Ultima VI quality, but a decent quasi-expansion. It follows the typical Ultima dynamic of offering a large game world which you navigate by a non-linear approach, taking notes as you talk to NPCs and find clues, juggling multiple quests at a time.

I decided to explore the north part of the map first and see if I could find Topuru, the exiled ex-shaman of the Urali, who supposedly knows where the Urali live (no one else does). The first camp I ran into belonged to the Pindari. From them, I learned that Topuru lives on an island west of the Barako camp, and that I'd need a raft to get over to him. A raft, meanwhile, requires four people to paddle in unison; the Pindari get their paddles from the Disquiqui far to the south.

Fortunately, I found my fourth party member in short order. Shamuru--Shamino's doppleganger from the introduction--was waiting on the road between the Pindari and Barako villages. Like Triolo, he said he had been found by the tribe after wandering out of the jungle with no memory, so it's possible that he actually is Shamino. His fellow Barako villagers revere him as a "great hunter." Talking about things like Lord British elicits a faraway look. Another clue was that Shamuru was wearing leather armor, which wouldn't otherwise seem to exist in Eodon. I gave the armor to the Avatar, the only character who fights with a melee weapon. Everyone else has a bow.

Another clue: Shamuru is white.

The Pindari had told me about a stranger living in a cave north of the village, and I found him after some exploration. He turned out to be Fritz, a colleague of Professor Spector; as per the backstory, both had disappeared while studying the rogue moonstone, which they recovered from a dig in Guatemala.

And the German scientist manages to insult about a dozen cultures in the space of two sentences.

Fritz related that after they were in Eodon, Spector found a crystal skull in an underground city to the southwest. He referred to the crystal skull as a "brain" and said that he (Spector) could use its energies to conquer the Earth. (One wonders if the crystal skull drove Spector insane, or whether Origin thinks that a German's default use for any artifact is to try to conquer the world.) Fritz ended up stealing the "brain" from Spector and fleeing to the cavern. He gave me the skull and 60 rounds of ammunition but declined to join me for fear that he'd run into Spector again.

The Barako village was astir because a great ape had recently kidnapped the village chieftain's daughter, Malisa. The villagers say that they can see the ape on the top of a cliff, but they can't get to him. I, too, found him lurking at the top of a cliff, but I couldn't find any way up to the plateau. There were a couple areas where it looked like I should be able to perhaps attach a rope to a tree, but maybe I need to find or fashion some kind of hook first. Nothing I tried worked. Mild hints welcome here.

I suspected I'd have to travel all the way down to the Disquiqui village to get paddles for the raft, so I was surprised when I found a bunch piled next to it. I nearly didn't see them--the color contrasts in this game are the worst I've ever experienced. As usual, I suspect it's my colorblindness, but those of you without that problem can tell me your opinion. I suppose it makes sense, given that we're in a jungle, that everything seems sort-of camouflaged.

Can you see the four paddles just south of my lead character?

Using the paddles (one in each character's inventory), I made it over to Topuru's island. Topuru is the insane, exiled shaman of the Urali tribe, banished by his own apprentice, Wamap. He promised to tell me where the Urali "hide" if I would bring him his "mind," which he claims he lost in a magic battle to Balakai, shaman of the Barrab tribe, far to the southwest.

Topuru makes a reasonably funny joke about Aiela's abductor.

In the meantime, Professor Rafkin had given me a list of some items necessary to build rifles and grenades. For instance, a grenade requires a strip of cloth soaked in tar, gunpowder (charcoal, potassium nitrate, and sulphur ground in a mortar), and a hard clay pot. I started looking for these items in the wilderness and in the villager's huts. Eventually, I assembled the rifle items, but Rafkin insists he needs to be in his lab to make one. His lab is supposedly southwest of the Kurak (starting) village, but I haven't been able to find it yet. I'm going to search a little while longer and then continue with the main quest if I can't find it.

Soon, I'll be able to defeat the Gorn.

Given the name of the game, I was expecting a lot more combat, particularly with hostile tribals. Maybe that comes later, but so far the only enemies have been random dinosaurs. Since they are, you know, dinosaurs, I feel rather bad about killing them, and I would have expected my party members to offer more incredulous exclamations. There have been a few attacks by big apes, too. So far, I don't think any of my party members have increased in levels. I don't know if there's something I have to do to get that to happen, or if I just haven't earned enough experience yet.

Fighting a pteranodon while walking across a rope bridge feels very cinematic.

Miscellaneous notes:

• Night comes very fast. I'm constantly having to rest for the night to make it go away. Bumbling around a village and finding all the NPCs to talk with can easily burn a day or two.

Fighting at night. The game won't let you rest until you've cleared the area of monsters.

• While I love the engine's ability to designate an active character, I sometimes forget to turn "party mode" back on until my main character has wandered miles away. It's annoying to have to get everyone back in the same area again.

• NPC dialogue is my favorite part of Ultima games, and this off-shoot didn't adapt it very well. Each village has maybe three important NPCs and 6-8 generic NPCs. None of them, even the important ones, have very many things to say. I had hoped that through dialogue, we'd learn more about the game world and its relationship to Earth or Britannia, but nothing that I cue them with enlists anything more than a few stock lines or issues of purely local concern. Again, maybe that comes later.

I feel like maybe I should have been able to get further with him.

• I found a potentially game-breaking bug while talking with Fritz. When he first gave me the crystal skull, my lead character was already at the maximum of his encumbrance, so the item simply didn't show up in his inventory. I suspect this is going to be a necessary item later. Fortunately, I noticed what happened when it happened and reloaded.

• When I enter combat, it's a complete crapshoot whether any of my party members fire their bows, even though I've set all their actions to "ranged." I may have to just take manual control of everyone.

• The game has poison swamp patches just like Ultima VI. So far, I haven't found any mechanism for healing poison, so I've been avoiding them like the plague they are.

• Using a knife on a slain foe results in meat and sometimes hides.

Dian Fossey had better not be around here.

• The consensus from the last post is that there's no penalty for taking whatever you want to take from the villages. I've been trying not to go overboard with this, and only take what I absolutely need.

Such as arrows.

• In the middle of the jungle, I found something that looks like a portal. Rather than investigate it and screw up my adventuring path, I marked it for later investigation.

You just know that this is going to be important.

   

• I don't know what was happening with graphics outside the RPG genre, but I think this waterfall represents the most advanced water effects we've seen in RPGs so far. This reminds me: a few weeks ago, Irene and I were playing Dragon Age: Inquisition on one of the seaside maps, and we were remarking how awesome the water effects were. I couldn't remember any previous RPG that actually had waves. Anyway, I said to her, "No matter how good we think these graphics look, I guarantee you that there are people online complaining about how much they suck." The Internet did not disappoint.

Sorry it's been a week since my last post. Irene and I have had to move out of our house and put all of our stuff in storage while the interior is completely gutted and replaced. (The house suffered horrible water damage this winter.) Eventually, this might result in more time for RPG playing, but alas not just yet.

Time so far: 5 hours
Reload count: 1

*****

Let's talk about Angband. I'm not sure I shouldn't regard it as a 1993 game instead of a 1990 game. My general tendency has been to play roguelikes in the year that they had their first general release, not in the year that they were first a gleam in someone's eye. Hence, I played Moria in 1983, not 1981, and I'll be playing Hack in 1984, when it first appeared on Usenet, not 1982, when some students at a Massachusetts high school were able to mess with it.

From what I understand, Angband first appeared on some Warwick University computers in 1990, but that was just a variant of Umoria. The first version that seems to have achieved general release under the name Angband--and the earliest version currently accessible--is from December 1993. (The official Angband site actually says it "eventually became Angband some twenty years ago in 1994.")

Hence, unless someone comes up with a compelling counter-argument, I'm going to bump it to 1993 and get one step closer to getting out of 1990.