Ultima IV, Part 2: What Happend in Between

I sometimes don't like parodies, but this one wasn't half bad.

Reader Eugene Hung told me recently about Ultima IV, Part II: Dude, Where's My Avatar? and I admit to approaching it with some trepidation. Let it not be said that the CRPG Addict doesn't have a sense of humor, but I sometimes don't like parodies. I have never been much of a Monty Python fan, for instance, and I loathe The Holy Grail. Parodies only work for me when the creator clearly knows and loves the original.

I downloaded it and played it without really reading much about it first. It was made with a designing tool called the Adventure Creation Kit, which I originally took to be an early or mid-1990s tool, much like the Adventure Construction Set that I blogged about last year. In fact, to be honest, I originally thought that UIVPII was created with the Adventure Construction Set, and I was prepared to praise it's original and detailed use--I couldn't even get Bourbon Street finished.

But it turns out, I now see, that developer Chris Hopkins only released the latest version of the Adventure Creation Kit in 2008, and Ultima IV, Part II--its only full game so far--came out in 2009. He purposely designed the Kit to mimic the look of two-dimensional, old-school, tile-based games. In the case of this game, it copies Ultima V textures and icons to tell a story that happens between Ultima IV and Ultima V.

My reaction to the story itself, and its humor, is pretty positive--there is no question that Mr. Hopkins knows the Ultima series inside and out--but my reaction to the Adventure Creation Kit is even better. I'd like to see many, many more games using this construction set. It makes attractive maps, supports excellent dialogue and inventory systems, and is very intuitive. Aside from the joke parts of the game, I had a lot of fun exploring the dungeons, fighting monsters, and collecting loot and treasure. Mr. Hopkins really has something here.

Note: Since this is a fairly new game, I should note that major spoilers follow!

I won the game, and spent enough time doing so for three postings, but I don't want to take that much time for a diversion, so I'll try to describe it all here. My Avatar begins sitting around his house, contemplating Britannia while staring at an odd poster of a pole-dancing centaur.


Turning on the television, I find my answer: Mondain, Minax, and Exodus are all on Jerry Springer, complaining about their family problems. The show descends into a brawl, and the three of them end up escaping back to Britannia.

You might not see it, but Minax is "played" by Tammy Faye Bakker.

Shortly after, I get a phone call from the old gypsy, who walks me through the Ultima IV questions--or, at least, a variant thereof (one of the responses is "whatever lets me use a sword")--before shipping me to Britannia.

Exactly!

I find Lord British hiding within his throne room, having blocked the entrance with a chair. He explains that Mondain, Minax, and Exodus have taken over the Lycaeum, Empath Abbey, and Serpent's Hold, and they have corrupted the virtues. He also seems to share some of my disbelief at Ultima II.


After getting him to return me to Level 8--which he never does in any other game--and give me his "Orb of Cheating," which despite its name isn't so much different from the Orb of Moons you get in Ultima VI, I head out to solve the quest.


From visiting the towns, it soon transpires that the evil trio have replaced the principles of truth, love, and courage with sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. The "virtues" are now derivatives of these principles: intoxication, promiscuity, rhythm, virility, dancing, heavy metal, and partying. "Rehab" replaces humility as standing outside the virtues.

Mariah is now running a pizza parlor.

Here, it's easier to see on a chart:


To combat the problem and win the game, I had to:

• Gather the eight "sigils" of each new virtue and deliver them to Hawkwind at Lord British's castle.
• Learn the mantras of each virtue (promiscuity is HO, partying is WOO, and rehab is, of course, NO) and mediate on them at the shrines, getting from them the location to which to send the...Dukes of Hazzard...look, you had to be there.
• Raise the Codex from the Abyss and learn how to defeat Mondain, Minax, and Exodus.
• Do a few errands for people who had the items I needed
• Travel to each of the keeps and defeat the triumvirate.

Of course, there was plenty of humor along the way. And loads and loads of 1980s pop culture references. I'm sure I missed a lot, but I caught references to Impossible Mission, Knight Rider, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, King's Quest, Magnum P.I., Night Court, People's Court, E.T., Tunnels of Doom, Deliverance, the Beastie Boys, The Bard's Tale, Pac-Man, the Artist Formerly and Apparently Again Known as Prince, The Dukes of Hazzard, Adventure (the old Atari game), Akalabeth, Rogue, Questron, Wheel of Fortune, Father Knows Best, whatever game sparked the "all your base are belong to us" meme, Pirates!, and Army of Darkness.

Some of them were simply ingenious. When I visited Buccaneer's Den to buy some maps from the bartender, instead of taking me into a typical Ultima V town, the game brought up the town screen from Pirates!

I still didn't get anywhere with the governor's daughter.

I also got a flashback to a game that I hadn't thought about in years: The Impossible Mission. I had it for my C64 and never won it--I couldn't figure out how to put the maps together. Anyway, a character who looked like the PC icon in IM gave me a quest to get a computer code (it turned out to be "123456") from Professor Atombender, who had set up shop in the Dungeon Destard. As soon as I walked into the room with his robots, I was hit with the familiar recording from the beginning of that game: "Ah! Another visitor! Stay a while. Stay FOREVER!"


Here's a whole mess of other references that had me laughing and show the creator's encyclopedic knowledge of the era:







The quests to get the sigils were generally creative and funny. Perhaps the most memorable was the Toga of Partying. Shamino was wearing it (all of my Ultima IV companions had been thoroughly corrupted) and refused to take it off until I gave him several bottles of ale, at which point he doffed it and went streaking.

Yes, that is Shamino's penis. I am no longer sorry about what happened to him in Ultima V.

The longest quest to solve was Julia's. She had become a pole dancer in Minoc to pay her way through college. I had to drum up 1,500 gold pieces to pay her tuition so she could give me the pole--the Sigil of Dancing--which required a lot of dungeon-delving. The dungeons were mostly non-parodies and actually very interesting to explore, with lots of pressure plates, triggers, and secret doors. I got a real thrill when I solved a series of them and found a magic axe.

A dungeon room at least as interesting as anything in Ultima V.

The Sigil of Virility turned out to be a bottle of Viagra, which Jaana immediately wanted me to put to use. Fortunately, Katrina showed up at her window and...blocked me. In fact, she did that twice.

"Justice is truth, tempered by love! I'm sorry, I couldn't keep a straight face. Honestly, hast thou ever sat in a courtroom and thought, 'yes, this is the worldly manifestation of truth and love'? Neither have I." - Jaana

New Magincia--which still had some skeletons hanging around from Ultima IV--had been turned into a giant rehab clinic, and to get the Sigil of Rehab, I had to help Katrina (looking like an old woman--I had always pictured her young and virile) figure out which patient was ready to be released.

As I said, the Kit itself makes a pretty good game. Yes, it only supports a single character, but the interface is very intuitive. It has an easy but satisfying leveling and attribute system. It allows a wide variety of weapons and armor, including swamp boots--which protect you from poison just as in Ultima VI--and the inventory screen very clearly shows which is better. On the inventory, incidentally, the game had me bring a shotgun from home. I didn't realize it had a limited number of rounds, and I wasted them on low-level monsters. I really could have used it at the end.

Note the Army of Darkness reference. Later, the game has me telling Lord British to send me home, "like in the deal."

Dialogue is both presented with Ultima IV/V keywords (as you've seen in other shots) and one-liners from minor characters, as in Ultima II/III.

The college in Moonglow, under the influence of Intoxication, became a party school.

There were a lot of monsters in the game, some using Ultima V icons, some with original ones. Almost all of them had original names. Among the more memorable were demented crows, voyeurs (gazers), evil butterflies, capybaras, evil supermodels and meth addicts (both using the skeleton icon), cheese golems and Dorito golems, forum trolls, and flushed goldfish. Their names were silly, but combat against them was legitimately difficult, especially at the end in Exodus's castle. The combat system is less advanced than Ultima V, but it supports targeting with both ranged and missile weapons, and the magic system--while not using all the reagents (you bought them all pureed together in a blender), supports a lot of different spells. I didn't get to cast them all.

The game had fun explaining why certain things happened between Ultima IV and Ultima V. Namely:

• Vesper is gone because I helped Sin'Vraal destroy the lake, leaving the town to dry up with only Sin'Vraal's house remaining.
• I raised the Codex myself--using a magic fishing pole that Julia made. "Deep below," the game notes, "You hear screaming, yelling, and the flapping of wings. You're sure it's nothing to worry about, though."
• The Shadowlords invade Britannia because they make use of a bong I dropped into a whirlpool, get the munchies, and chase a rumor that Britannia has a White Castle.

• Magic reagents cause blindness, which is why all the herb sellers are blind.
• Blackthorn became reagent because when Lord British asked who would rule while he was off exploring, I said it didn't matter and pointed to some random guy in the corner.
• I sealed the dungeons myself, on a quest for the Great Council, whose member summed up the attitude of most Britannians perfectly:

• The Guardian, a friendly bloke, was created by Hawkwind to guard the eight corrupted Sigils in some alternate dimension. Hawkwind assured me that nothing could go wrong.

If you die in the game, as I did twice, you find yourself on a tropic island with a beautiful woman--just before Lord British resurrects you and yanks you back into the real world again. Shades of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season 6!

It would have been funnier if he'd made it Sarah Michelle Gellar.

The final quests to destroy the triumvirate were fun, especially Minax's. She had taken over Empath Abbey, and upon entry I was thrust back into a world of graphics and textures from Ultima II.


I had to take the old rocket to Planet X to get Father Antos to annul her marriage, and the game had me encounter Richard Garriott--who has, of course, famously traveled into space himself.


Now, I did win the game, but somehow after I won, the game (or some other corruption) ended up clearing my DOSBox capture folder and the saved games, so I don't have any ending screen shots. The ending was rather amusing, in which I take Lord British to task for not doing anything himself, and he vows to solve the next problem on his own. I leave Britannia saying to myself that the old coot will likely get himself into trouble and I'll have to rescue him again.

The Orb of Cheating made the game go pretty quickly.

All in all, it was a satisfying and amusing day's diversion. It probably would have taken longer without the Orb of Cheating, but there's only a limited amount of time I want to spend on a parody. I recommend that you play it yourself, and keep me appraised if you see any new games being released with the Adventure Creation Kit. It's Addict-Approved™!

The Codex of Ultimate Wisdom, according to this game.