Ultima VI: Final Rating

Given what we find out about the gargoyles, this is a somewhat cruel cover image.

Ultima VI: The False Prophet

United States

Origin Systems (developer and publisher)

Released 1990 DOS; 1991 for Commodore 64, FM Towns, PC-98; 1992 for Amiga, Atari ST, Sharp X68000; 1993 for Super NES

Date Started: 8 February 2014
Date Ended: 7 March 2014

Total Hours: 30

Difficulty: Easy (2/5)
Final Rating: 68
Ranking at Time of Posting: 141/142 (99%)

Ultima VI is one of the best games I've played since starting this blog, and I fully expect it to finish, quantitatively, among the top three. Whether it technically beats Ultima V or even Pool of Radiance isn't a particularly important concern--at this level, small differences in the final rating are somewhat meaningless. In broad strokes, in terms of just exploring and messing around, I had more authentic fun with Ultima VI than any other game I can remember, but it leaves me unimpressed in certain RPG categories, predominantly combat.

This is one of the first true "sandbox" RPGs that we've seen: a game where you can explore a large world at will, hit most plot points in almost any order, and have a lot of fun with the possibilities inherent in the engine. Because I liked the engine and gameplay experience so much, it left me wanting a little more than it provided. The developers at Origin have never quite understood the concept of "side quests" even when creating a game engine that seems custom-made for them. There wasn't any reason that the mayors of the various cities couldn't have offered some optional dungeon-crawling quests to retrieve objects or deal with a threat; I wouldn't have even minded the Akalabeth-style "go into the dungeon SHAME and kill a(n) REAPER" quests--anything to get more out of the world and gameplay. In the end, we got a few optional areas and a couple of lame side-quests like retrieving The Wizard of Oz for Lord British.

Pretty much all the game's side quests involved taking books from the library and never returning them.

The story similarly offers a paradox. On the one hand, it seems full of nonsensical elements and careless retcons. On the other, it's only that it provides so much detail that we can poke at its inconsistencies. Most game worlds of the era weren't anywhere near this developed. Thus, we have to simultaneously praise the series for its excellent attention to history, description, and lore, and criticize it for, much of the time, not making any sense.

I know many fans would like to forgive and dismiss the retcons and plot holes in light of Ultima's stark originality in having a story at all--in light of it developing what is probably the richest game world that we saw in the era. I'd like to join these fans, but I can't, for two reasons. First, my blog has never been primarily about praising games for how good they were at the time. My blog is about recognizing that games, no matter how old, can still be a lot of fun in 2014. This conversely means also recognizing that what was good then is bad from a 2014 point of view. Second, as I pointed out in my first post on Ultima VI, most of the retcons and plot holes are entirely unnecessary. It's not like there was some vital plot element that required the gargoyles to live on the other side of a flat world, rather than just within the underworld, or that required the Avatar to be the hero of the first three games. No huge change of dialogue would have been necessary for everyone to say, "Yeah, we realize that it wasn't you who raised the Codex from the Abyss, but since you're the one who set everything in motion, we're blaming you anyway."

A bit of the game manual, which makes the Avatar the hero of the first two games and changes the action of the second game to Sosaria. There was no reason for either change.

Thus, we end up with a bunch of plot revisions that are simply thoughtless, a geography that doesn't even try to make sense, and an overall feeling not that the developers didn't know how to resolve the inconsistencies but rather that they just didn't care. I wasn't at Origin in 1990, so I can't say for sure what happened, but I honestly suspect that someone raised these concerns and the project leaders said something like, "It's just a silly little fantasy world. Let's focus on the game engine. Who really cares if everything in the story fits together perfectly?" Well, I do--at least for the first GIMLET category.

In a recent comment, Corey Cole references the "Uncanny Valley" phenomenon. Technically, the term comes from robotics and computer animation, and it refers to a abrupt negative drop--a valley--in human responses to things that look almost-but-not-quite human. They might think that a robot like the one in Lost in Space is cute and funny and a robot as advanced as the ones in AI: Artificial Intelligence are cool, but somewhere in between--say, the Johnny Cab driver from the original Total Recall--is an aesthetic that repels us.

An image from Masahiro Mori's article on the phenomenon.

As a metaphor, the term works for a lot of situations in which the lower extreme is okay, the upper extreme is great, but the point in the middle sucks. It notably applies to graphics and sound in CRPGs. I didn't mind Wizardry's wireframe dungeons, and I love the vistas of Skyrim, but in between there's a large era of CGA and EGA graphics that are "good for the time" but pretty awful today. Applied to story, I don't hate games with the barest sketch of a story (e.g., most RPGs from the 1980s), and I love games with extremely detailed stories, full of history and lore (e.g., Morrowind, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic), but I have a disdain for games that tell stupid stories, or treat them carelessly (e.g., Dungeon Master: Chaos Strikes Back, Ultima II), and that is, at least in part, what we have here.

Still, all of this discussion is only to suggest that Ultima VI under-performs its two predecessors, and perhaps some of the best examples of other game worlds during the time (e.g., Starflight, the Gold Box games, The Magic Candle), not that it's an entirely "bad" story and setting. It'll still rate reasonably high in that category. It's just that, for me, its gameplay elements far outperform its plot.

Before I get to the rating: A few posts ago, we talked about the pirate treasure quest and how it was ultimately unnecessary to the game. I didn't fully realize the implications of this until I watched a speed-run of the game that took only slightly more than 30 minutes (and that's with the opening and end-game screens). If you already know everything--including the mantras and the positions for the Orb--all you have to do is:

• Start the game, talk to Lord British about how the Orb works
• Grab some quick cash to fund your endeavors, buy the necessary spells
• Collect the runes, free the shrines (getting to them by the Orb), get the moonstones
• Warp down to the gargoyle world, visit John, learn Gargish, enlist Beh-Lem, put on the Amulet
• Put together the pieces of the balloon
• Find the Vortex cube at Stonegate
• Head to the Altar of Singularity and then the endgame

You can cut out all combats except the first one in Lord British's throne room and all dungeons except the last room of Hythloth where John is. Of the steps above, the balloon part takes the longest, which is funny given that you only need it for about three seconds of gameplay.

Let's see where it stands in a GIMLET.

1. Game World. I covered my thoughts on this above, so I won't repeat them here. It's not a bad plot, and I like that it continues the tradition of the rest of the "Age of Virtue" trilogy by not having the main quest focus on a "big bad" that you need to kill. There certainly is plenty of lore about the history of the land, pirates, the gargoyles, the gargoyle virtues, and such. I just wish there weren't so many inconsistencies and absurdities.

I like game worlds that react to your presence and respond to your actions. Ultima VI does that with items, but not with NPCs. With only a few exceptions, NPC dialogue remains fixed regardless of where you are in the plot progression, and no one acknowledges anything that you do, from liberating the shrines to discovering the true nature of the gargoyles. Score: 7.

Lord British fails to note the slain body of Chuckles in front of him.

2. Character Creation and Development. None of the Ultima games have been particularly strong in this category. I love the virtue-based character creation process except that it no longer has any bearing on what kind of character you play. You have some good options for sex and character portrait, but we're deep into an era of complex attributes and skills, and we don't see any of that in this series. You get a maximum of eight levels, and leveling up increases your hit points and attributes (the latter depending on a shrine). I didn't like that magic was essentially useless for most of the other party members.

But aside from the logistics of the character sheet, the game continues to excel in role-playing opportunities. It's the third game in the series to feature a "karma" meter (did any other games of the era?). It offers real temptations to steal, burgle, and cheat, and there are more opportunities to do these things than in the previous titles. Score: 6.

My final Avatar had max everything.

3. NPC Interaction. About as strong as it was in IV and V. I still love the keyword-based dialogue approach, expanded here to allow the use of actual sentences and including some subtle help. I love that so many disparate NPCs can join the party, and that you can't get very far in the game without teasing out key elements of lore from a variety of townsfolk with unique personalities. I love the surprise of encountering an NPC in a remote part of the game map and wondering what he'll have to say. I liked the occasional comments from members of my party and I wish the game had done a lot more with that. I still don't like that there are no true dialogue options--that there's no way to role-play a character in NPC interactions the same way there is in world interactions. Score: 8.

4. Encounters and Foes. A step back from V, I thought. The menagerie of creatures is still very well-described in the game manual, and they still have their strengths and weaknesses that require you to adjust combat tactics, but not to the degree that we saw in V. The "room" encounters are gone, and not replaced with very much in the way of puzzles. Most encounters have only one solution and require very little in the way of creativity or thought. Finally, I thought the respawn rate of enemies was balanced fairly well. Score: 6.

5. Combat and Magic. I thought the series hit its height in V in terms of difficulty, tactics, and terrain. While I normally appreciate a game that integrates combat into the main adventuring screen (I discussed this last year in relation to Chaos Strikes Back) and allows for some computer control of characters, I think the previous method--a separate combat screen--worked better for Ultima. The NPC AI for combat here is poor, but manually controlling each character is a little too frustrating. There are still lots of tactics having to do with spells, use of items, and use of terrain, but the overall reduced difficulty of combat makes them less meaningful.

The game also took a step back in spells. I appreciate that there are so many "utility" spells and that the nature of the game mechanics allows so many interesting things to happen with them. But it annoys me that only the Avatar can be a powerful spellcaster (the others, if they can cast spells at all, are crippled by low spell points) and that so many of the spells are useless. The transition to a "spellbook" method of casting means that you no longer have fun game mechanics like intuiting the right syllables or the right combination of reagents. There are spells of enormous power in this game and virtually no reason to cast them, especially since the game's toughest enemies (daemons) are magic-resistant. Score: 5.

Gideon prepares to resurrect a cat the party accidentally killed when they blew open a door with a powder keg.

(As an aside: it occurs to me at this late juncture that it would have been a lot more fun to save the shrine-freeing quests for later in the game, when I had more spells and was able to use them effectively against the small armies of gargoyle occupiers. Of course, this is a bad option for plot and role-playing reasons.)

6. Equipment. One of the game's best categories. I love the process of slowly filling in a paper doll interface with new and upgraded equipment, and VI delivers on this in spades. Not only that, it makes it easy just to (L)ook at a weapon or piece of armor and determine its relative protective value. The weight and encumbrance system adds to the logistics but never seems too restrictive. I love all of the "utility" items, like shovels, pick-axes, and powder-kegs, that you can employ both in ways that the creators intended and did not. There's even one bit of item-crafting involved in creating a magic shield.

On the negative side, the game dumbed-down its approach to food (you don't really need it) just as food got interesting. There are no item restrictions, which might have led to more interesting NPC choices. And all of the acquisition of weapons, armor, and magic items would have been more meaningful with harder combat. Still, a great part of the game. Score: 7.

7. Economy. In retrospect, it's a lot better than I covered in the brief section of my posting a few days ago. Even if you do the wisp trick, it's hard to get through the game with a complete spellbook--and this is especially true if you give a second character a spellbook--so the economy at least remains relevant through most of the game. There are also some big-ticket equipment items (like magic armor) that you'll never give to every character unless you buy it. (Although, again, the relative ease of combat makes this somewhat unnecessary) Gold drops are not quite as plentiful on slain enemies, making it all the more exciting when you find gold nuggets strewn about Shame or when you can sell an extra magic bow for a few hundred gold pieces. Late in the game, I even found myself scrambling a bit: I'd spent so much on spells and reagents that I didn't have enough to pay some key NPCs to help make my balloon.

The economy would have been slightly better with more magic weapons to buy (and, in turn, harder enemies), but for the most part it was better than I let on during my postings. It's tough to design an economic system tight enough that the player has a true incentive to steal, and the creators did that here. Score: 8.

8. Quests. It's a good main quest, with a fun plot twist in the middle of it, but why-oh-why can't the Ultima series get on board with side quests? You've got a big world and a great game engine--give us more to do with it!

That said, the stages of the main quest were interesting and involved a lot of sub-quests, if not side quests. And the game isn't totally bereft of side-quests; it's just that the ones it offers are somewhat lame, like retrieving a book for Lord British (and, apparently Dr. Cat, though I missed that one) and a dragon egg for a cook who rewards you only with a smile. There are at least two plot elements that seem like side quests but are, maddeningly, unsolvable: the murder of Quenton in Skara Brae, and the healing of Matt's muteness in Britain. Although there are optional roads on the main quest, there are no alternate endings.

Ultimately, I feel that the game was about as good in this category as Ultima V, but it surprised me when I looked at my rating for Ultima V, and I saw that I gave it a 7 despite having no side quests, no alternate outcomes, and very few ways to role-play the main quest. I think I rated it too high, and I'm going to have to rate VI more consistent to how I've rated other recent games. Just having a main quest is only one of my four criteria, and it only gets you so far, no matter how good it is. Score: 5.

9. Graphics, Sound, and Interface. Both the main game and cut-scene graphics are pretty good, certainly nothing to complain about. I didn't mind the game music, but there was no way to turn it off independently of sound, and naturally no way (in this era) of setting the music volume differently than the sound volume. This meant that I had to turn the music off at the setup screen. The sound effects are tolerable but certainly not yet "good." It has some background effects like ticking clocks and cackling fireplaces that are at least okay. I like how cyclopes thud and shake the screen nearby, but many of the monsters are curiously mute. Spell and combat sound effects are, again, tolerable.

I seem to differ with a lot of Internet commenters on the interface. Yes, too little fits into the main game window, but beyond that, I thought it was great. I thought the inventory was easy to use, and I really liked that the keyboard and mouse were redundant, so you could use one or the other or, as I did, both in tandem for their strengths. The ability to set an active character is also a strength of the game, though rendered a little annoying when you can't re-activate "party" mode from more than a couple of squares away. While the AI in combat may be bad, the AI for characters following the Avatar is good: they avoid poison, lava, and other hazards (unless the Avatar walks through them), and they always catch up. I think it's one of the best game engines we've seen so far, and I'm glad it shows up again in the two Worlds of Ultima games, even if I'm not excited about them for plot reasons. Score: 7.

10. Gameplay. My only complaint here is on the difficulty. The game is way too easy, with the Orb of Moons making it too easy to travel and Lord British's auto-resurrection, plus the "Help" spell, making it likely that you'll never need to reload except for plot-related reasons. With no particularly tough combats, there isn't much incentive to build up your inventory, master all the spells, or grind your characters to the highest level. Hythloth should have been crawling with nasty creatures. The Altar of Singularity should have told me, "Yes, you need to visit the three shrines, but since the gargoyle world started to collapse, literally everything bad has gone to live in those caves." Instead, we got the occasional dragon or demon that could be defeated with a couple of spells and a lot of melee work.

But everything else in this category is good. The game is almost completely non-linear, and this non-linearity makes it very replayable despite not having alternate directions in the plot. I played in a relatively "standard" way, but during a replay, you could have some fun saving the shrine-liberations for last, when you can maximize your spell power, or explore the dungeons at the same time you hit their associated cities, or warp immediately to the gargoyle world and keep Beh-Lem with you as a best friend for the entirety of the Britannia part of the game. The pacing is also excellent--it's the rare game that left me wanting more (but only a little) when it was concluded.

Finally, it's one of the few games of any era in which you can have a lot of fun just screwing around--in which you can make little vignettes and scenarios for your characters that don't depend on the regular plot. Free every prisoner in Yew! Avenge Quenton's death! Read every book in the library! Fill the throne room with so many chests that no one can walk anywhere! Pile bodies in the dungeon and burn them! Make your main weapons gunpowder and cannons! Develop Sherry into an indestructible Mouse of Vengeance! Play a jazz riff on your panpipes! And above all, don't worry too much if the game doesn't really acknowledge these flights of fancy.

The engine is just brilliant in these possibilities, and perhaps most notably, it features some mechanics that we no longer see. As much as I love the last three Elder Scrolls games, do you know what I can't do in any of them? Destroy a chair. Play an instrument. Batter down a door. Throw a wine bottle across the room and have it shatter on the floor. Row a boat. Start or douse a fire. Lock a door. Oh, Ultima VI has plenty of limitations itself, of course, and I don't want to suggest that it's "more advanced" than modern games, but the sheer number of possibilities that it offers puts the gameplay experience at the top of the list, with everything else it does well making up for the relative ease. Score: 9.

Add 'em all up and we get a final score of 68--still one point lower than Ultima V! But owing to small variances in scores that I can never make fully consistent, I think we can consider them tied. V is a "tighter" game, with better combat and difficulty, and just as good in most other categories. VI offers better game mechanics that create that "sandbox" feeling.

What I love about this ad is that in the first game image, they replaced the pole-dancing centaur with a generic image of a woman, clearly not drawn by the same artist. You can just hear the ad department saying, "You know, why don't we just let them wait until after they've bought the game to deal with that centaur thing."

My positive opinions are in no way controversial; there's probably more written on Ultima VI than any other game of 1990 (or any previous year, for that matter), and almost all of it is positive. The sheer number of fan remakes and ports, some continuing today, attest to how fondly everyone remembers it. It ranks in the 91st percentile on MobyGames's rankings, and the words "best" and "awesome" appear repeatedly in the user reviews.

Scorpia's review in the June 1990 Computer Gaming World (it starts on Page 11) is an interesting read. It's easy to forget that many of the elements in Ultima VI--combat on the main screen, all party members visible at all times, party members with minds of their own, towns and cities integrated with the rest of the game world, unique portraits for every NPC--were brand new at the time, and it took a period of adjustment before players used to IV and V could learn to appreciate this new style. You can feel some of that angst in the review, in which Scorpia says she has "some very profound, mixed feelings." (Scorpia was never one to embody humility, but I think she means "profoundly-mixed feelings.") Despite that statement, her review is almost entirely positive, and the things she flagged as negative--the triviality of the map quest, poor AI in combat, and inconsistencies in plot--are the same things I've remarked on. Ultimately, she called it a "very good game," praising the NPC conversations, the interface, the plot, and all of the little touches that make it feel like a living world.

Incidentally, CGW nominated Ultima VI for "RPG of the Year" for 1990 but gave the award to Starflight II, which was a 1989 game, but whatever. (The other nominees were Dragon Wars, Keys of Maramon, and Chamber of the Sci-Mutant Priestess.) I don't agree with the decision, but it's at least sensible--not baffling in the way that it was when they gave the award to Elvira (a 1990 game) in 1991.

Since I won, I've had some fun reading other modern players' takes on the game. Ophidian Dragon had a fun series of posts in 2007 in his "Blogging Ultima" project, but the ones I enjoyed most were Nakar's epic series of 22 posts on the game in November 2007. Nakar hit upon so many of the same plot holes and jokes as I did that you'd be forgiven for thinking we're the same person. But he's much funnier. I woke up Irene in the middle of the night because I was laughing so hard. He starts off playing straight but completely goes off the rails (hilariously) by the end.

I remember Ultima VII as having many of VI's strengths, especially when it comes to the sandbox-like game engine, although with even worse combat. I also don't like that the dialogue switches to clickable keywords, but this might be balanced with more dialogue options (I don't remember). I think perhaps there are better side-quests, too. Whatever the case, I look forward to checking it out in 1992. But well before then, we'll have the two Worlds of Ultima games and probably Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss.

Moving on, we unintentionally encounter two games with the word "Tunnels" in their titles: 1982's Tunnels of Doom and 1990's Tunnels & Trolls: Crusaders of Khazan. If you're wondering what happened to some other games, I rejected Lords of Doom as an RPG and moved Silmar to where it belongs in 1991.

Ultima VI: Playing in the Sandbox

Lord British really does spend an hour in his study each evening, reading a book to Sherry the mouse.

As we've seen, Ultima VI is one of the first "sandbox" games in which you can do all kinds of things that have no bearing on the main plot. Before we wrap up, I thought we might take a look at a few more of them, as well as some other fun quirks to the game.

Crime Wave

In an earlier post, I remarked that the band of "evil" gypsies seemed to be selling themselves but the game didn't actually offer an option to buy their wares. Apparently concerned that I'd be deprived the experience otherwise, a reader took the time to e-mail me and explain that you have to explicitly ask them for SEX.

An Avatar of either sex can solicit a gypsy of either sex, although they'll make a remark that same-sex intimacy isn't really their normal thing, but they'll do it for the money.

I love it that he's cheaper than his sister.

Apparently, some players like to take things further by having Sherry the mouse lead the party during the exchange--something that's only possible if the Avatar is asleep or paralyzed. Anyway, if you go forward with the solicitation (with anyone as the "john"), Dupre gets all moralistic all of a sudden, but you can ignore him.

So much for vice. Vandalism is also a possibility. Most objects in the game--doors, chairs, plants--are destructible. Those that won't collapse from a sword are susceptible to powder kegs.

Gideon expresses his frustration at sharing the same name with Skara Brae's innkeeper.

Theft and burglary are available, and there's a real incentive to commit both, since spells are so expensive and certain magic items are rare. You can find all kinds of gold, magic armor, wands, rings, and other valuables on the persons and in the houses of NPCs. This arguably strengthens the virtue system. It was easy to be virtuous in Ultima IV when you knew that it was necessary to win the game. It's a little harder when you know you won't be punished much either way, and there's a magic suit of armor right there.

In other postings, we've seen the "Pickpocket" spell in action as a legitimate plot device, but of course you can use it to steal valuables off of anyone in the game. Lord British, for instance, has this cool glowing serpent amulet. I don't know what it does, but it's mine now.

Ever pickpocket the heart from a Forsworn Briarheart in Skyrim? Does that sound pretty disgusting? Well, how about pickpocketing meat from animals? How sick is that?

Unlike the Briarhearts, the sheep somehow survives without its mutton.

Let's move on to the more serious crimes. You can, of course, murder any NPC in the game. At least one of them--Finn--is so annoying that you practically have to. (He stops you with his inane dialogue every time you come out of the castle otherwise.) It's also a player of rare willpower who can make it through the game without offing Chuckles.

Guess he wasn't Lord British after all.

Regicide is possible, but a little more difficult. Supposedly, you can kill Lord British by piling enough powder kegs around him, but if this wasn't enough to kill him, I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

At least Chuckles is in range.

The easier way to kill him is to strike him with a glass sword while he's sleeping.

When he dies, he doesn't leave a normal body--just his usual icon, but mute and inert. You can't pick him up, but you can shove his body in a chest and carry it around. I brought him to the gargoyle king to see if he'd reward me, but he didn't seem to care.

If you do anything short of killing Lord British, he'll one-hit kill you (only to immediately resurrect you--nice guy). But he has to reach you first. Like all characters in the game, he has trouble navigating around obstacles, so you can box him into his throne and shoot him with arrows or spells to your heart's content.

It's notable that exactly nobody comes when Lord British yells for help.

I thought he was a bit lonely on the other side of those boxes, so I cast "Clone" on him and then cast "Charm" on the clone. The two Lord Britishes went at each other but apparently weren't capable of really damaging each other. Incidentally, you don't want to let the clone out of his cage. Lord British (and his clone) is capable of moving at like triple-speed, and unlike the original, the clone doesn't become peaceful after he kills you and you get resurrected. Turn him hostile and you might end up in an endless cycle where you can't leave the throne room--or, if you do manage to escape via the Orb, you can never visit again.

If you want to torture him a bit, you can replace one of the chests with a cannon. No matter how many times you pound him with it, he won't die. It must actually kind of suck for him. I want to know what's really happening here. Is he like Wolverine, with his flesh regenerating quickly between attacks? Or is he like Superman, with the cannonballs bouncing off his body and careening around the room?

Since the gargoyles are already pretty de-populated, you could just go and genocide the entire race by killing them all. It's not very hard. But you don't get any dialogue options to tell Lord British, "Yep, I went to the gargoyle world and killed everyone. They won't be bothering you again." It's really too bad that the game didn't offer this "evil" ending.

The ultimate crime is casting the "Armageddon" spell, casually given to anyone who talks to the wisps. It destroys all life on both sides of the planet. It doesn't even leave any bodies behind, just all the equipment that everyone was carrying. This goes for your own party members, too.

Let's see if that got rid of the gargoyles, guys! . . . Guys?

Lord British is the only exception. He doesn't die. But you can't talk to him: he just sits there on his throne, apparently mute with horror. If you attack him, he's happy to kill you, though.

Technically, your majesty, I did deal with the gargoyle threat.

Incidentally, if you kill Lord British, he still shows up at the end of the game. So does Draxinusom if you kill him. However, if you cast the "Armageddon" spell, nothing happens when you try to use the vortex cube in front of the Codex. You're stuck in Britannia, alone, forever. Lord British won't even let you die: he still resurrects you in front of his throne if you kill yourself. He just won't talk to you.

Karma Chameleon

For most of the game, I thought that karma had no effects, but aside from my raid on the Royal Mint, I didn't do anything "bad," so I didn't notice. It turns out there are a few subtle effects to low karma:

• Healers won't offer to heal you for free. If you have good karma but no gold, healers say something like, "I recognize your cause is just" and heal you anyway. With low karma, it's pay up or get out.

• Sylvia Moorehead, one of the NPCs who tells you where to get a piece of the map, won't talk to you the first time.

• Naxatilor, the gargoyle scholar, has different dialogue options. If you first greet him with high karma, he says, "To observe by your aura that you are truly a being of honor. To be surprised, then, that you are fated to destroy a world." If you greet him with low karma, he say the opposite. A few of his other options also change.

What do you mean by "blackness?" Huh?

• Mondain, Minax, and Exodus all have different farewells. If high, they say, "I admire thy deeds and thy [whatever their deal is]." If low, it's "Thy deeds show a lack of [the virtue]."

• Altars give you different messages when you meditate at them.

Hey, you don't know that! It's a generic karma meter! Maybe my problem is with "humility!"

• Most important, with low karma the Altar of Singularity won't give you the quest to go to the Codex. That's a dealbreaker.

I don't have a strong sense of how to regain karma in Ultima VI. I know that you get some the first time you meditate at a shrine, but it doesn't seem to work after the first time. I purposefully got mine low and nothing I did--meditating, giving money to beggars--would pump it up again.

I would say the deeds I did to get this message put me in particular need of enlightenment.

Persistent NPCs

This section doesn't quite go with the theme, but towards the end of the game, I had some fun comparing the NPCs I'd found in Ultima VI to my notes for the earlier games. This is the list of recurring NPCs I came up with, with some information supplemented from other sources:

• Lord British: Duh.
• Dupre: A companion since Ultima IV, first appeared in Ultima II on Jupiter, asking the player if he wanted to buy a duck. When I recalled this, I asked Dupre about DUCK in Ultima VI and he said, "Please, let's not talk about ducks . . ." His character is supposed to be from Earth, but this is never really explored. Based on Richard Garriott's friend Greg Dykes.

Note that Dupre doesn't have any problem when he's the one getting some lovin'. (This is in response to my asking him about DAMSELS.) Maybe he just has a problem with me paying for it.

• Iolo: Around since Ultima, where he was a jester in some of the towns. I think he appears in all of the games. I killed him in Ultima II. Also supposed to be from Earth, though again this is never elaborated on. Based on Richard Garriott's friend, David R. Watson.
• Gwenno: The only other character around since the first Ultima, where she was the jester that you kill for her key. We don't find out that she's Iolo's wife until V, but the couple appears together in II and III, so you could infer. Based on David Watson's wife, Kathleen Jones.
• Shamino: Appears in Ultima as the king of one of the castles on the Lands of Danger and Despair. His character really makes no sense. In Ultima V, we learn that it was Shamino, a woodsman, who first encountered Lord British when the king stumbled into Sosaria via moongate as a child. How he rose from woodcutter to king and then fell to the position of a ranger in Skara Brae by Ultima IV, ought to be an interesting story, but we never hear it, nor any explanation as to why he's still alive in VII given that he's a native Britannian. Named after Richard Garriott's Society for Creative Anachronisms name.
• Katrina: First met in Ultima IV as a humble shepherd and the only human survivor on Magincia. I was kind of sad when I met her in Ultima V and she said, "I yearn for battle!" But she seems to have returned to her more humble, peaceful personality in VI (though she'll still join the party). Apparently based on a friend of Richard Garriott named Trina.
• Jaana and Julia: Also joinable since Ultima IV, also both based on Garriott's friends of those names.
• Mondain, Minax, and Exodus, if only in spirit form.
• Mariah: The mage from Moonglow who would join the party in IV and V, now a scholar at the Lycaeum. One of two original IV NPCs who won't join the party in this game. The other is Geoffrey. Apparently based on Richard Garriott's secretary, Michelle Caddel.
• Geoffrey: The fighter NPC from IV. Since I played that game as a fighter, I never got him in my party, for which I'm glad, because he turns out to be a bit of a tight-ass. Based on Origin employee Jeff Hillhouse.
• Chuckles: Around since II. Insufferable little bastard in every game in which he appears. I've never really understood what his motivations are. There's also some weird stuff going on with him in V: he's got a body hidden behind his fireplace, and a guy named Drudgeworth in the castle dungeons claims that it's Chuckles's fault that he's locked up and he never killed "her." Based on Origin co-founder Chuck Bueche, who must be a pretty easy-going guy if this is how he allows himself to be portrayed.
• Sutek: What happened to this guy? He was a scholar in V who was invaluable to understanding the Shadowlords; but by this game, he's gone insane and is massacring people and conducting unholy experiments on animals. (Which makes me realize: why did I just leave him alive?)
• Sin'Vraal: A daemon in V who was supposedly "reformed" by Lord British, he's retconned as a gargoyle here, though one wonders how, in that case, he first encountered Lord British.
• Simon and Tessa: These two get around, and they're always found together. They were in Paws in IV (where they gave info about the mystics), Bordermarch in V (where they gave info about the crown jewels), and  Serpent's Hold in VI (where they give info about nothing).
• Sentri: This one was a bit of a revelation. I thought he first appeared in V, where he was (like in VI) a joinable companion. It turns out he goes all the way back to II, where he's the guy who sells you the sword Enilno. He's also in III in a bar in Montor West, and in IV, he's the ruler of Serpent's Hold.
• John/Johne: Maybe, assuming these are supposed to be the same people. He accidentally created the Shadowlords in V but redeemed himself by joining the party. In VI, he's probably the most important NPC in the game.
• Gorn: A prisoner in Blackthorn's palace in V and found in its dungeons in VI, making you wonder if, canonically, he ever left. He originally appeared in two other Origin games, The Quest and Ring Quest.
• Kenneth: A musician. In V, he was located in a lighthouse and taught the Avatar how to play "Stones," which was a rather important clue. In this game, he's teaching at the conservatory in Britain, along with his wife, Nan. Based on Origin employee (and composer) Kenneth W. Arnold.
• Gwenneth: Iolo's apprentice in V, now running his old shop in VI. Apparently, I could have bought something called a "triple crossbow" from her, but I never got around to it. It's nice that Gwenno is cool with Iolo mentoring an attractive young female who has pretty much the same name as his wife.
• Dr. Cat: The tavernkeeper in Paws. Based, of course, on head writer David Shapiro, who was using "Dr. Cat" as a moniker as far back as 1982, when he made Caverns of Freitag. He's not my favorite NPC in the game, but I'm glad that Shapiro didn't do any self-gratifying nonsense with him.
• Nomaan: The idiot who lost the Rune of Valor in Jhelom appeared as a blacksmith in V. He sells weapons and armor in both games.

Anyone I missed?

The Shrine Hears What It Wants to Hear

In response to Rotgrub's speculation the other day:

Shut Up! Bloody Vikings. 
 
The game's cheat menu--apparently left in the production program by mistake--is called up by talking to Iolo and saying SPAM three times in a row, followed by HUMBUG.

"Secret" until the Internet came along, that is.

The menu lets you do anything: edit your character levels and attributes, add gold, and create items. Couple this with another cheat that lets you teleport anywhere in the game world, and you could win the game in five minutes. Have Iolo spam the two lenses, the vortex cube, and all the moonstones, then ALT-2-1-4 to the Codex (or set your quest flag to 1 and use the Orb to get to the Codex).

Speaking of the Codex, it's one of the objects that can be created through Iolo's cheat menu, which makes no sense given that you can't pick it up in-game. If you read it, oddly, it says "The perpetual motion machine." Since the Codex supposedly has the answer to every question you're currently asking, what does it suppose I'm asking? "Which of the exhibits in the Royal Museum is the stupidest?"

"Hey, Draxinusom! Here's your Codex!"

"Now watch it BURN!"

The items you can get this way even include creatures. All the various options let you set up whatever little scenes you want.

Behold my daemon army, come to depose you!

Hit the road, British! It's my castle, now!

The Geography Gets Weirder

Let's review the facts. Britannia is flat and square. The gargoyle world is presented as the other side of Britannia. The underworld was the hollow space in between. The idea, I guess, is that when the Avatar visits the Codex in Ultima IV, he's actually tunneling down into the gargoyles' Shrine of Singularity.

The original situation.

Something about the events of Ultima V caused the underworld to start to collapse. On the Britannian side, we only lost Bordermarch. On the gargoyle side, most of their land collapsed into the void, leaving only one small island and city.

The situation everyone blames me for, even though I did nothing wrong.

The problem with this is threefold:

1. The sun and moons appear in the same position at the same time whether you're on the Britannian side or the gargoyle side. You'd think day in Britannia would be night in gargoyle land, but that isn't the case.

2. When you sail to the edge of the remaining gargoyle island and look down, you ought to be able to see the underside of Britannia. But instead, you just see void.

I ought to be seeing a world of inverse contours through that hole.

 
3. If you hop in your balloon and drift over the void, guess what happens? After a dozen squares of void, you wrap around to the other side of Britannia again! The world isn't flat after all! It's just surrounded by a really weird moat.

In short, the creators really need to get their story straight. I'm sure all these problems will be fixed in time for Ultima VII.

All right, I guess it's time to close out this game. Let's move on to the GIMLET.

Ultima VI: Won!

Ultima VI ended up consisting of three major "acts":

1. Visiting each town, getting the runes, and liberating the shrines

2. Collecting the pieces of the treasure map to find the silver tablet and translate the Book of Prophecies

3. Going to the gargoyle world, learning about them, and finding a way to "sacrifice" the Codex back to the void

The game, however, is far from linear. You could do the pieces of #1 at any point, and as we've seen, #2 is almost entirely optional.

You do have to hit the gargoyle world in the right order, though. If you just blunder into it (such as with the Orb of Moons), you just get into fights where you end up killing important NPCs. You have to learn Gargish, have a garogyle in your party, and agree to wear the Amulet of Submission (in that order) to survive.

I'm afraid this is going to be a bit long.

Stranger in a Strange Land

The gargoyle world is accessed through the dungeon Hythloth on the Isle of the Avatar. Like most other dungeons, it's four levels, reasonably hard, with a dragon or two before the exit. There were also several areas where the entire party was forced to walk across lava.

I never said it would be easy, men.

At the bottom level, I ran into Captain John, who the gypsies had told me about. He's been living there for a while, studying the gargoyles and befriending a young gargoyle named Beh Lem. He was distressed that the silver tablet had reached Mariah via a round-about route, but he was happy that I had come. He related that the gargoyle world has been slowly disintegrating and only one city (conveniently containing all of the shrines) remains.

It would be nice if people would stop blaming me for everything.

John gave me a scroll that "contains a basic vocabulary of the Gargoyle language." All I had to do was (U)se it, and suddenly I was fluent in Gargish.

I wish Italian was this easy.

Hythloth exited near John's house, and right outside, I encountered his friend Beh Lem, a winged gargoyle who hadn't developed his wings yet. Without him in my party, the gargoyles in the city would turn hostile and attack, so using my new Gargish vocabulary, I added him to the group. Oddly, when I returned to Britannia, no one--not even Lord British--cared to comment on my new party member.

I hope Captain America never finds this place.

There are about a dozen gargoyles to talk with in the city, and only a couple of them are key. Early on, Beh Lem's father, Valkadesh, suggested that I visit the gargoyle king, Draxinusom, to surrender myself.

Draxinusom made me wear an Amulet of Submission to prove I was willing to sacrifice myself to save the gargoyles. He assured me he wouldn't call me back for the sacrificial ritual for several months. I wonder if anything happens if you "wait out" this time period. It's quite difficult to make time pass in this game, so I declined to try.

With the Amulet on, all the gargoyles became particularly friendly, flattered that I'd give up my life to save them. But the gargoyle scholar, Naxatilor, didn't seem to think that was necessary. He indicated that "sacrifice" isn't exactly clear in Gargish, and it could easily mean that I needed to sacrifice something of value or sacrifice another person. He wasn't happy when I explored that second option.

How many times do I have to say it? It wasn't my "misdeed."

What we settled on was that I would have to sacrifice the Codex back to the void (the gargoyles had originally taken it from the void before the Great Council took it from the gargoyles). Naxitilor had this plan by which with a couple of specially-crafted lenses, creatures on both sides of the world would be able to see the Codex in the void. He had me take a broken one in the gargoyle Hall of Knowledge for repair and then get a Britannian glassmaker to craft a concave one. I knew from my notes that Ephemerides, north of Moonglow, was the man to ask.

He required a glass sword. Fortunately, I had several.

The "repair the broken lens" quest seems so unnecessary that you wonder why the creators had the lens broken in the first place. Later, I realized that if the lens had been intact, the Avatar wouldn't need to speak to any gargoyle to win the game. Making him take the lens to the lensmaker requires him to first learn Gargish, get Beh Lem in the party, submit to the Amulet, and so forth.

Speaking of sacrifice: you know that slab where they tried to plunge a dagger in my heart at the beginning of the game? Well, it's in a pretty prominent place, surrounded by a circle of stones. It looks like a permanent fixture. It makes you wonder what they're using it for when they're not trying to avert prophecies by sacrificing Avatars. This suggests a dark side to gargoyle society, which we need to explore a little further.

The Peculiar Institution

Gargoyle society is odd. On one hand, it seems socialistic, with its lack of money and shops. Craftsmen make goods, weapons, and armor, and then just leave them in their businesses for anyone to come and take as they need them. Only a few gargoyles--even winged ones--get actual names; the rest are just named after their professions, like "farmer" or "lensmaker." On the other hand, their version of the virtues is extremely goal-driven and individualistic, as if the model had been created by Tony Robbins.

"Control, Passion, Diligence: Towards a New Singularity in Personal Achievement"--on sale at booksellers everywhere.

This particular virtue set isn't very well thought-out (how is "singularity" a virtue? And why does "order" exist outside of the three principles?) but it doesn't need to be, as it doesn't have much impact on gameplay. It would have been fun if the Avatar had been forced to live for a while in the gargoyle world, performing acts and deeds that exemplified their virtues, becoming their Avatar of Virtue, before proceeding. As we'll see, the game doesn't ignore the virtues, but it doesn't do anything quite that clever, either.

There is a weird vibe going on in the gargoyle world when it comes to wingless gargoyles. Sin'Vraal had already told me that only the winged ones are intelligent, can cast spells, can speak, and are fit for leadership. John confirmed this, but read his specific words:

At first, it seemed as if the wingless ones were slaves. But now I know that the wingless ones are beloved and valued family members. They must be told what to do, because they are not truly intelligent.

Already, that ought to be ringing some alarm bells. Later, we encounter a friendly gargoyle farmer named Nash, who says that he is "far kinder to the wingless ones than most of my kind" and indicates that he feels that "the wingless ones should not be enslaved simply because they lack our intelligence." Wait a second--I thought they weren't slaves? But it gets even better when he talks about his neighbor, Farmer Krill: "To be ashamed that Farmer Krill treats his workers so harshly. To be appalled by his lack of concern for their thoughts and feelings."

Krill, meanwhile, justifies his treatment of his "workers": "To be forced by necessity to give the wingless ones no room for choice or freedom. To acknowledge that it may seem harsh, but to assure you that there is no other way to treat the wingless ones. To receive good harvests only through firm control and clear direction."

Thus, we have a society of happy little plantation gargoyles, "beloved" by their masters, who nonetheless insist on "firm control and clear direction" because the wingless ones are too dumb to make decisions on their own.

What really puts the nail in the coffin is that we encounter plenty of wingless gargoyles in Ultima VII who are fully capable of speech and even spellcasting ability. Maybe the intervening 200 years saw a lot of miscegenation.

Downloading the Proper Codex

The exact nature of the Codex has always been a bit of a mystery, and it changes from game to game. Obviously, finding my way to it was my main quest in Ultima IV, and in Ultima V, I had to visit it frequently to read about the virtues. But suddenly in Ultima VI, you're unable to pass through its guardians unless you're on a "sacred quest." You'd think this would severely limit its utility to the Britannians--particularly since, according to this game, the only way to get a "sacred quest" is to visit the Temple of Singularity on the gargoyle side of the world. This is another area where the developers really didn't think things through.

Trying to save the world isn't enough?

In the gargoyle Hall of Knowledge, we learn that the Codex originally floated in the void, but Lord Draxinusom got the lensmaker to create a "vortex lens" by which he could see the tome. He then created the "vortex cube, to focus the power of the moonstones and draw the [Codex] down to the world." The gargoyles enshrined the Codex in the Temple of Singularity and began a "great time of prosperity." It's left a mystery where the Codex came from in the first place, and how it came to be floating in space.

Part of Draxinusom's account.

The Codex's abilities are not insignificant. When you open it, it will automatically take you to a page that has the answer to whatever question is on your mind at the time, which sounds awesome in 1990, but today can be accomplished with a combination of eHow and Wikipedia. It amuses me to think that the Codex is basically an iPad with the Safari homepage set to Google.

To make all of this fit with Ultima IV, you have to assume that the Stygian Abyss somehow connected to the gargoyle's Temple of Singularity. When my Avatar reached the bottom and found the Codex chamber, he didn't realize he was in a temple on the other side of the world. Maybe he didn't see the doors. Similarly, in "raising" the Codex, the Great Council somehow overlooked all the gargoyles, or perhaps thought they were daemons and just slaughtered them. Either way, it wasn't me.

It. Wasn't. Me.

The goal now was to "sacrifice" the Codex back to the void and let both races benefit from its knowledge, although I'm not entirely sure why we couldn't have just built a chamber halfway through Hythloth instead. Or just kept it on the Britannian side of the world, since all the gargoyles would be moving there soon anyway.

No one knew exactly how to send the Codex back whence it came, but as Naxatilor pointed out, the Codex itself would know. I just needed to get a "sacred quest" and ask it. This required visiting the Temple of Singularity, which was just over the mountains from the gargoyle city--not a problem for any of them, because they can all fly. Or, at least, the Special Ones can.

Up, Up, and Away

The quest to make the balloon was long and not very interesting. The hardest part was getting the plans for the balloon, which you ultimately have to (U)se to craft it. I asked the NPCs at Minoc about it, and Selganor told me that the balloon's inventor had flown it to Sutek's castle.

Sutek had appeared in Ultima V as a "young, solemn mage" who imparted the key information about where the Shadowlords' shards had come from and how to destroy them. Sometime between that game and this one, he re-located to Blackthorn's former fortress (couldn't Lord British think of anything useful to do with that?), went mad, and started creating abominations like hostile rabbits and two-headed cows. The guy keeps a meat cleaver in a magically-locked chest next to his bed.

Getting into Sutek's fortress involved blowing up the main door, then using "Telekinesis" on the winch to lower the drawbridge. Note the two-headed cow off to the side.

I had to solve some lever puzzles, find some secret doors, dispel some fields, and whatnot before descending into the catacombs. An NPC named Gorn had been a prisoner in Blackthorn's dungeon in Ultima V, and I guess he didn't go far after that game, because he was still milling about the catacombs. Like Seggallion, Gorn had accidentally been transplanted to Britannia when he stumbled through a moongate on his home world of Balema. (Both the character and the land appear in The Quest and Ring Quest, adventure games from Origin.) He offered to join my party, but I was already full.

The plans were on the poor balloonist's body, near a dead-end in the dungeon.

The plans required me to get a huge wicker basket, a cauldron, a silk bag, and an anchor. Actually, I think the anchor was optional, since the thing never used it. Obtaining these things mostly just meant showing the plans to the right craftsmen. There was an annoying part where I had to go to Paws to get the silk thread, then to New Magincia to have Charlotte make the cloth, then back to Paws to have the cloth made into a bag, but for the most part, obtaining the items was easy. Once I had the plans, I used them, and the various parts automatically assembled into a balloon.

The rest of the enterprise was pretty pathetic. The balloon is needed to cross exactly three squares of mountain, so all you have to do is cast "Wind Change" to get the wind coming from the south, or use the magic fan, or just wait for it to blow from the south--and in a few moments, you're across.

I was looking forward to drifting all over Britannia with it, but it turns out it won't go over buildings or the tops of high mountains, so that's pretty useless. I did use it for one other fun thing that I'll talk about next time.

Axis of Evil

The Temple of Singularity featured an intelligent altar that asked me for whom I sought the Codex. After trying LORD BRITISH, DRAXINUSOM, OBAMA, and YOUR MOM and getting nowhere, I thought to say "EVERYONE," which the altar liked.

"Thy twenty-fifth answer is wise."

But it went on to suggest that I needed to really understand the gargoyles if I was going to condescend to help them, and it told me to visit the shrines of Control, Passion, and Diligence on the island. "In each," it said, "wilt thou find the final resting place of the being who most exemplifies that principle."

Now, at this point, the altar is just looking for the mantra of Singularity, which is composed of the mantras of Control, Passion, and Diligence: UNORUS. A player with this knowledge could avoid the shrine quests. But they're really the last challenges in the game, so it makes sense to get through them.

The Shrine of Control was a brief dungeon with no combats and an uncomplicated lever puzzle. Different levers in the opening room controlled different gates along the way, and I had to keep switching between my Avatar and another character to pull the levers and view the results. It wasn't very hard. Within a few minutes, the Avatar was standing in front of the shrine and the being that "most exemplifies" Control, and of course it was . . . Mondain!

Ultima VI was the first game to retcon Ultimas I-III so that the Avatar was the hero of those games. It's stupid for a lot of reasons (you could be of non-human races in those games, you had four heroes in the third game, etc.) and I've always preferred to ignore it or treat it as manual errata, but I had forgotten that when you encounter Mondain in the shrine, the game makes it clear that you remember defeating him.

It wasn't "Britannia!"

The game also makes it clear that it's really Mondain's spirit in the statue, and not just something that's supposed to represent him. One wonders how the gargoyles managed to capture it, or why they don't really know what "humans" are when they have statues of them embodying their most sacred virtues, or how old their virtue system really is. Anyway, Mondain relates that he's harmless, and his time in the statue has caused him to re-think his life a bit. He muses that "desire for  more control overcame me" and "I forsook my self-control in  my hunger for conquest." He realizes now that "the strong must lead--but to be strong one must control oneself first." He admires the gargoyle view: "their society is based on the strong guiding the weak." Yet another red flag, in my opinion.

Mondain had me recite the mantra of Control with him (UN) and sent me off, saying that "I admire thy deeds and thy control."

The Shrine of Passion was very easy except that I had to walk through fire and lava at a number of places. I just left my party behind and had Gideon do it. The shrine was occupied by the spirit of Minax--probably the most poorly-defined character in the original trilogy--and she also had come to an epiphany about how unrestrained passion had been bad for her.

Here we have to note that the gargoyle principles of virtue are a little bit different than the Britannian ones. Theirs seem to suggest that Control, Passion, and Diligence work to check and balance each other; that too much of one is a bad thing. You don't find the same philosophy in Britannia. Sure, if you balance Love and Courage, you get Sacrifice, but no one argues that you have to do this. There are professions and individuals that exist entirely (and happily) within a single principle of virtue.

The Shrine of Diligence was the toughest. First, I had to navigate a maze of rooms to find a barely-visible secret door in one of the many walls. Diligence, indeed.

It's just to my south.

The shrine itself was in a room full of daemons, making it one of the most difficult combat areas of the game. Since there's very little afterwards (unless you deliberately go looking for it), this serves as the "final battle" of the game.

My Avatar nearly exhausted himself casting "Reveal," "Dispel Magic," and "Great Heal" to deal with their invisibility, charms, and powerful attacks, respectively. Ultimately, I either killed them or caused them to flee, and I was able to approach the shrine. Hard as it was, it wasn't anything that I particularly needed to grind for. An Avatar in solo mode could probably have slipped by them with a Ring of Invisibility or otherwise just run up to the shrine, gotten the mantra, and gated out.

Diligence was, of course, exemplified by Exodus, presented as a sort-of demonic figure, although the game does call him an "accursed machine." Like the others, he provides the mantra and sends you on your way with good wishes.

Is the game honestly suggesting that Exodus's original goals were benevolent?

Endgame

With the three-part mantra, the Shrine of Singularity was happy to give me the "holy quest" to seek out the Codex:

The Codex's instructions required the two lenses, the vortex cube, and all of the moonstones I'd collected from freeing the shrines--better not plant any of them in the ground! I had the lenses already. Of the vortex cube, the caretaker of the Hall of Knowledge said: "To regret that that item is lost, stolen by human thieves years ago. To have heard the humans mention the name Stonegate as they fled. To have heard them say they would sail through Lost Hope Bay."

The creators aren't even trying at this point. Stonegate was the Shadowlords' fortress in Britannia, but why would "human thieves" steal the cube and bring it there? While "fleeing," why would they offer detailed instructions about where they were going and how to get there? For that matter, gargoyles don't speak English or know that humans are called "humans."

I remembered where Stonegate was, and I found it occupied by two friendly cyclopes and their adopted human child.

The male cyclops was happy to give me the key to the dungeon beneath the fortress in exchange for a fish, which I caught quickly using his convenient fishing rod. I'm sure I could have also pickpocketed or killed him for the key, or for that matter just blown up the door in the basement.

But I did it the Avatar Way.

The cube was surrounded by force fields, and I had to dispel one to get to it. Otherwise, not a very difficult quest.

I made one last visit to Lord British before visiting the Codex, to see if he cared at all about DRAXINUSOM, VORTEX, CODEX, CUBE, BEH LEM, or any of the other things that had transpired lately, but he didn't have any dialogue about them, so I headed for the Isle of the Avatar and proceeded to the Codex.

Following the instructions, I put one lens on one side, one on the other, moved all of the moonstones into the vortex cube, put the cube on the ground in front of the codex, and (U)sed it. The Codex promptly vanished.

This cued the endgame text, which read as follows:

A glowing portal springs from the floor!

From its crimson depths, Lord British emerges, trailed by the mage Nystul. Anguish and disbelief prevail on the royal seer's face, but Lord British directs his stony gaze at you and speaks as if to a wayward child.

"Thou didst have just cause to burgle our Codex, I trust," His Majesty says. "But for Virtue's sake . . . WHAT HAST THOU DONE WITH IT?"

Perhaps Lord British's least regal moment in the entire series.

You pick up the concave lens and pass it to the King. "Was the book ever truly ours, Your Majesty? Was it written for Britannia alone? Thou dost no longer hold the Codex, but is its wisdom indeed lost? Look into the Vortex, and let the Codex answer for itself!"

As Lord British holds the glass before the wall, the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom wavers into view against a myriad of swimming stars!

Yet the book remains closed.

And waves of heat shimmer in the air, heralding the birth of another red gate!

King Draxinusom of the Gargoyles strides forward, flanked by a small army of wingless attendants. Like Lord British, he seems to suppress his rage only through a heroic effort of will. His scaly hand grasps your shoulder, and your Amulet of Submission grows very warm.

"Thy time hath come, Thief," he says.

Quickly, you reach down to seize the convex lens and you press it into the hand of the towering Gargoyle king, meeting his sunken eyes. "Join my Lord in his search for peace. I beg thee."

At your urging, King Draxinusom reluctantly raises his lens to catch the light. As Lord British holds up his own lens, every eye in the room, human and Gargoyle alike, fixes upon the image of the Codex which shines upon the wall.

The ancient book opens. Both kings gaze upon its pages in spellbound silence, as the eloquence of Ultimate Wisdom is revealed in the tongues of each lord's domain. You, too, can read the answers the Codex gives. And when wisdom is gleaned, when Lord British and King Draxinusom turn to each other as friends, hating no longer, fearing no more, you know that your mission in Brtannia has ended at last.

Boom. End of game. No word about me returning to Earth or any celebrations or whatnot. Based on his past behavior, I'm sure Lord British turned around, hucked his Orb of Moons on the ground, pointed to the gate, and said, "See you next time." But it's rather nice to assume he didn't.

A couple of notes on the endgame:

1. It's kind of silly that you can't warn Lord British what you're about to do before you go do it.

2. Lord British's orb can take him directly to this room? Do you know how much time he could have saved me?

3. Lord British again shows that he's not exactly King Solomon. If I were Richard Garriott, I'd like that line about as much as I'd like "But I was going into Tosche Station to pick up some power converters!" if I were Mark Hamill. The difference being Mark Hamill wasn't the director of the film.

4. I believe this is the first time in the series that the game puts specific words in the Avatar's mouth

5. All of the "thous" and "thees" just sound moronic. We're both from Earth, Lord British. Drop the act.

6. Similarly, I'm not crazy about calling him "My Lord." Note, too, the capital "L" when I'm referring to him in generic terms to the gargoyle king. God complex much?

7. Speaking of gods, we had a brief discussion about the Ultima series' treatment (or non-treatment) of them in some recent comments. Note that even at the height of emotion, Lord British says, "For Virtue's sake" (with a capital "V," no less). I think that demonstrates what side of "theism" his "a" is on.

8. I do like the final message here, though: that wisdom and truth can instantly change one's thinking to the extent that mortal enemies become friends. If I wasn't an atheist, this is what I'd like to think the afterlife is like: two people who hate each other meeting and saying, "Oh! That's why you felt the way you did and acted as you did!" and the other saying, "And that's why you felt the way you did!" and everyone just, at last, understanding. Wisdom conquers all. That kind of thing.

Finally, it's worth noting that while sending the Codex to the void may have satisfied another definition of "sacrifice," I didn't exactly avert the prophecy. The gargoyle world finishes collapsing, and the remnants of the dying civilization have to move to Britannia for Ultima VII. Maybe they really did need to sacrifice me on the slab.

I don't know. I'm not quite ready for the end just yet. Are you? Let's have one more post of messing around a bit before the final rating. What do you do just to have fun in Ultima VI that I haven't already covered?