Martian Dreams: Won!

Screw everyone else in my party, I guess.

    

The refilled canal systems allowed for easy but slow transportation around the planet. There were a number of barges, previously resting on the bottoms of the dry canals, that now floated freely. Commandeering them was just a matter of boarding and pushing a lever in the desired direction of travel. I then had to hold down the SPACE key to get turns to pass as my party floated gently down the stream.
  

This is going to get old fast.

   

I boarded my first barge near Olympus and decided to float it all the way around to Hellas, where I had remembered seeing a cannon. I figured if I could then float from Hellas all the way around to Argyre, I could use the cannon to blast open the front doors and stop Rasputin's plans. This turned out to be the right idea, but I was missing a few steps.

As you float along the canals, you get attacked by large canal worms (one wonders what they were doing while the canals were dry) and whatever beasts might want to swarm your barge from the shores. Nothing that was a huge threat.

You can't sleep on the barge, so when night falls, you have to exit onto land. I learned the hard way that you want to adjust the barge's direction to ram into the land during these times; otherwise, it continues floating down the canal while you sleep.
     

Sure. Putting on mascara and rouge for a movie is exactly like creating artificial skin for a robot.

    

During the long trip, I spoke to Chsheket and asked about her new body. She replied that it would work better if she had some artificial skin. Nellie Bly suggested I talk to Sarah Bernhardt, the actress, since she would know about makeup. I suspected that artificial skin involved a bit more than a little powder and rouge, but I made a note to swing back through Olympus at some point.

When I got to Hellas, I was disappointed to find that the cannon I remembered wouldn't budge. This disappointment only lasted a few seconds, however, as I soon found a barge that had cannons on every side. Taking it, I continued my clockwise route around the system, intending to stop in Olympus before heading on to Argyre.
    

This is more like it.

     

Between Hellas and Elysium, I noticed that a branch of the canal went off to Syrtis Major, where I hadn't explored since I met up with Shamino, Iolo, and Dupre. I recalled that Dale Carnegie had been looking for iron ore for the new space cannon, and I guessed I'd be sent back to the mine eventually to retrieve it. I figured I might as well pick it up now. The barge, incidentally, had a set of mining tracks on it, so that was another clue.

I parked the barge, entered the mine, and figured out the puzzle after some trial and error. It involved using the drill that I'd previously repaired to mine the iron ore, then using a shovel to load up the mining cart.

When I was done, I pushed the mining cart out of the mines, down the tracks, and...
    

Whoops.

    

In my next attempt--using one of the other carts--I remembered to park the barge at the end of the tracks first, allowing the cart to slide right on.
     

      

Since the Olympus Mines, where Carnegie was building the new space cannon, were on the way to Argyre, I stopped there first. He gratefully accepted the ore and said he'd send some workers to mine more. All we needed to go home, he said, were the phlogistonite canisters stored on the capsule from the first expedition.
    

The new cannon, under construction.

    

Before heading there, I stopped in Olympus and asked Sarah Bernhardt about the cosmetic issue. During the conversation, Dr. Spector said that we were trying to make the mechanical Martians "look human," which is the first I'd heard of that. It also became clear that we were going to have to mix the cosmetics with a "water-repellent substance that looks as it if has the consistency of flesh," already used on the mechanical men "at the cisterns." I remembered seeing some contraption at the pumping station, but I didn't kow what it was for. Bernhardt said that the "rouge berries" I'd need for the project were in Argyre.
    

Why do we want to do that again? Usually bad things happen when you disguise robots to look human.

   

The phlogistonite canisters were missing, of course, with only their metal straps left behind. A sub-quest involved taking the metal to Teddy Roosevelt and asking him to analyze them for fingerprints; fortunately, I'd been walking around with a microscope for most of the game. (In real life, a microscope would be too magnified to examine fingerprints, but whatever.) Roosevelt identified them as Rasputin's. Now I had three reasons to bash down Argyre's door.
    

I should have taken them earlier.

     

Toward the end of our conversation, Roosevelt said, "I notice that you have partially solved the problem of finding bodies for the Martians. But, really, I don't think that the average resident of Earth will be able to accept them in that state." Huh? Why would they be going with us to Earth? I missed a plot element somewhere.
     

I'm not sure why Americans of the 19th century would object to gleaming metal robots.

    

Meanwhile, Admiral Peary piped up that the cannonballs in the Martian cannons wouldn't be enough to breach the gates of Argyre. He suggested we head back to--you guessed it--Dale Carnegie and get some steel cannonballs. I had already resigned myself to constant backtracking so I barely noticed.

With the steel cannonballs in hand, I continued my trek to Argyre. When I arrived, it became clear that my multi-cannon barge was too large to fit down the narrower canal towards the city's gates. I abandoned it, sighed, and girded myself for a long trek around the canal system until I found a smaller one. Fortunately, there was one just a few minutes north of my position.
    

Can't we just trim a bit off the side?

    

Returning, I sailed down the canal, loaded the steel cannonballs into the cannon, and blasted open Argyre's front door.
    

    

Inside, I had a brief conversation with Emma Goldman, who might or might not have been possessed by an insane Martian. With her, it's tough to tell. She admitted to destroying the reflectors that Lowell's party had been using to communicate with Tesla before our voyage.
 

Let me know how that works out for you.

  

Rasputin clearly had been taken over by the tyrant Raxachk. He related that he'd found a way to bring objects into the dream world, and he had done so with the phlogistonite. He said that if I tried to bring them back into the real world, I'd set off a "cataclysm of epic proportions," including "a chain of earthquakes and storms" of such strength that "Mars would be swept clean." He threatened to do that very thing if I didn't leave him alone.

So the dialogue at this point started to assume that we'd be taking the Martians back to Earth with us after perfecting their metal bodies. I feel like the plot really jumped the rails at this point. There was no discussion of alternatives, such as just immediately killing Rasputin and letting the Martians stay on their own planet, and building a new set of reflectors to communicate with Earth to "send phlogistonite." I actually wish I'd tried shooting Rasputin to see what happened.
    

Whoa, whoa. How did we get here?

    

Instead, we solved the "Martian body" problem by wandering around Argyre picking up rouge berries, taking them back to Bernhardt, having them made into makeup, taking the makeup to the pumping station, mixing it with the coating formula, and having Chsheket stand in a "transformation chamber" to get sprayed. When it was done, she looked like a human woman. No word on how she got eyes and hair. There was some awkward dialogue with Spector about her nudity, as if the machine had for some reason created breasts, nipples, and other parts as well.
    

It's amazing what a little foundation can do.

     

The game made a point of noting that the human-looking Chsheket was the woman who first approached Dr. Spector and I about going back in time in the first place. As if we couldn't have predicted that.
    

She "smiles"? Did the transformation chamber create facial muscles?

    

The dialogue now directed me back to Jack Segal. He promised to whip up some bodies for the other Martians while I took care of recovering the phlogistonite. I was skeptical of his ability to create dozens of complex robots in a few hours with a 19th-century education, not to mention finding all that Azurite, but I didn't question it.
    

What do you mean, "my instructions"? I don't know how to make a Martian robot. I found one.

    

Back to Argyre. When I arrived, Raxachk had fled Rasputin's body back into the dream world. I hooked myself up to the machine and chased him there.
    

    

The next part was kind of dumb. I had to go through three tests "administered" by the three shadowlords from Ultima V. Of course, they were only my mental recreations of the shadowlords, and not the actual shadowlords. Interestingly, Astaroth and Faulinei refer to Nosfentor as their "sister" in the dream. I didn't really think of the shadowlords as having gender, but if I had, I would have assumed they were all male. Then again, I thought Iolo was a woman through my entire youth.
    

The shadowlord of lies nearly had me for a minute.

    

The first test offered me two versions of Dr. Spector and made me choose which was real. I guess I was supposed to do it by shoving a mirror in front of each of them and noting whether the reflection was human or Martian. I just guessed and got it right.

The second test was about overcoming hatred. I ran into a wounded Martian spouting racist comments about humans and plotting his vengeance. I healed him anyway and he reformed his viewpoint.
     

If only it were this easy.

     

The third test was about cowardice versus courage. I was told my friends were in trouble at the end of a long path, and I kept taking unavoidable damage as I walked it. Ignoring some escape routes, I pressed forward and reached them with only a couple of hit points to spare. I think I had to fight a combat at that point. I forgot to screenshot it.

At last, I confronted Raxachk, who was in a closed-off building surrounded by the barrels of phlogistonite. He offered to surrender if I could win a series of combats. I had to grab a bunch of dream "stuff" and use it to create the weapons I needed to defeat the enemies. Anyway, when I was done, he still refused to surrender. He taunted me saying that I couldn't possibly imagine a weapon strong enough to pierce his sanctum, not "for a hundred years or more." He didn't realize that the Avatar isn't from 1895.
    

I feel like someone from just about any era could imagine something powerful enough to destroy a wall.

     

Defeating him wasn't hard. I used some berries, created from various wads of dreamstuff, to see inside the outer room of his sanctum. There was a switch there. I pulled the switch with telekinesis and the door opened. On the other side was a huge sparkling wad that Raxachk called his "dreamstuff hoard." I pulled some wads from it, used them, and found myself in possession of an M60 machine gun.
   

I can buy that the Avatar has heard of an M-60, but unless he's had a particular background, he's unlikely to have seen one.

Despite the fact that the dreamstuff hadn't given me any ammunition, I was able to use the weapon to shoot Raxachk right through his compound wall. He died instantly.

I agree that there's a certain amount of epicness to this moment. Dude taunts me that I can't think of a weapon powerful enough to kill him, and I come up with an M60. A LAW rocket or some C4 might have worked, too. I mean, I had a couple of Martian ray guns earlier, but I guess they're not as powerful as a slug-thrower. Oh, and I guess in the game's canon, a cannon firing steel cannonballs is somehow less powerful than an M-60. But whatever.

My problem is that the game had just put me through a series of tests that called back to Ultima V; tests in which the shadows of the shadowlords reminded me what it means to be the Avatar. Remember that these are games in which there are no "big bads" and "final battles"; games in which you're encouraged to allow fleeing enemies to escape the field; games in which you only kill someone who is actively trying to kill you; games in which even a daemon can be redeemed. Then, having planted those memories in your mind, the solution to the problem is to assassinate the guy through a wall.
   

Way to rationalize it, Avatar.

    

Aside from that, it feels like some other object could have appeared that would have been more in line with the Ultima series. Maybe one of those barrels of powder from Ultima VI. Or Mondain's skull. Or the "Armageddon" spell. But whatever works, I guess. Oh, by the way--how did I get into the room after killing him? Did I keep firing the M60 until I shredded one of the walls? Good thing I missed all those phlogistonite barrels that everyone says are volatile.
          
A cut scene showed the Avatar contemplating Raxachk's corpse before grabbing the three barrels and somehow returning from the dream world with them. On the other side, one of the barrels is hidden by the dream machine's head, so you had to be paying attention to remember that there are three. I wasn't, and had to trek all the way back to Argyre after bringing only two barrels back to Carnegie.

     

Do you see a third canister in this shot?

    

At this point, earthquakes started shaking the planet as I walked. The epilogue involves walking back to the Olympus mines, where all the NPCs in the game were lined up along the corridors, like the final scene of Scrubs. Everyone had a comment or two.
  

 

  

I presented the barrels to Carnegie, which triggered the ending cut scene. The capsule blasts off from Mars via the space cannon in Olympus. Behind them, earthquakes and tornadoes scour the planet and presumably turn it into the barren, lifeless orb that scientists know today.
    

      

The capsule splashes down in the Atlantic and is recovered by a ship. Dr. Spector and the Avatar are hailed as heroes and get parades and stuff. They pause for a group photo before stepping back through the moongate to their own time. The final screen sets up Ultima VII or maybe Ultima Underworld.
  

The moongate will just wait, apparently.

Way to give your game a shelf life, Origin.

    

I'll have some more thoughts on the plot and its place in Ultima canon for the summary and rating. For now, let's all contemplate that the Avatar canonically comes from an alternate Earth in which the most significant scientific, artistic, cultural, and political figures alive at the end of the 19th century went to Mars in a capsule shot from a cannon, and everyone knows it. The moon landings of 1969, if they happened at all, must have seemed boring in comparison.

    
Time so far: 34 hours
Reload count: 5