Game 483: Ultima VII: Part Two - Serpent Isle (1993)

 

The main title screen . . .

     

Ultima VII: Part Two - Serpent Isle

United States

ORIGIN Systems, Inc. (developer and publisher)

Released 1993 for DOS

Date Started: 29 January 2023

      

Over the course of almost a dozen previous games, Origin has demonstrated a certain lack of forward-thinking when it comes to the lore of Ultima. They're only ever interested in the current title. They rarely plant seeds for future games. Expansion of the game world is always through retcon--often a needless one that creates conflict in the series' history and geography. For a more thorough analysis of what I'm talking about, see my first entry on Ultima VI: The False Prophet, but we've discussed plenty of other examples in relation to Ultima VII: The Black Gate and the two Ultima Underworld titles.

     

. . . and the subtitle screen. "The Silver Seed" is an expansion that I'll talk about later.

      

Nonetheless, I can almost believe that elements of Serpent Isle were plotted all the way back to Exodus: Ultima III (1983). I know they weren't, but this is how to do a retcon well. Find obscure references that you made in previous titles and bring them to the forefront, even if that's not what you originally intended. Star Wars has done this well in places (and, of course, not so well in others). Think of how an obscure reference to "The Clone Wars" in A New Hope spawned the entire prequel trilogy and television series, or how Yoda's "No, there is another" paved the way for the revelation of Leia as Luke's sister. Writing good serial fiction is a process of either a) scripting everything from the beginning, or b) planting a lot of seeds and deciding later which ones you're going to harvest, and how you're going to use them.

   

I thus have to give credit to the many Ultima authors for planting such seeds in the form of snake or serpent symbolism throughout the previous games. I went back through my notes and entries and what I could find online, and I made a list of all the times that we've seen snakes or serpents as something other than foes to be killed. Let me know if you think I missed any:

    

• Ultima (1981) has the City of the Snake in the Land of the Feudal Lords.

• Starting in Exodus: Ultima III (1983), the game manual has an illustration on the cover that shows an ornamental disc with a serpent in the middle.  I suspect Richard Garriott was influenced by depictions of "world serpents" in various mythologies, including Norse (Jórmangandr) and Hindu (Shesha).

      

     

• In Ultima III, the ocean entrance to Exodus's castle is blocked by a giant silver snake. The party has to find the Mark of the Snake in the Dungeon of the Snake to pass it. The Ultima IV manual explicitly names this snake as the Great Earth Serpent.

• Both the game maps for Ultima III and Ultima IV (1985) have serpents in the oceans in the margins.

• Ultima IV's spellbook has the same serpent on the cover but without the disk around it. Ultima V's (1988) has a smaller version underneath an image of a scepter and crown.

• Ultima IV's reconfigured Britannia has the Serpent's Spine (mountains north of Castle Britannia) and Serpent Castle (later Serpent's Hold), headquarters of the Order of the Silver Serpent.

• The illustration of the druid in the Ultima IV manual shows her carrying a serpentine staff. But more importantly, the illustration of Lord British sitting in his throne shows serpents on the upper corners of his chair back and more on the tapestry behind him.

    

And on his crown, too! Jesus, man, we get it.

    

• An illustration in the Ultima V manual depicts Lord British meeting with his councilors at a table with a huge tapestry of a serpent (the same from the Ultima III cover) behind them. 

    

    

• In, Ultima VI (1990), we're told that the official currency of Britannia has Lord British's face on the front and a serpent on the back. The game also gives the knights of the Order of the Silver Serpent a special serpent shield.

• In Ultima VII: The Black Gate (1992), Gwenno has left a note for Iolo that she's gone to find Serpent Isle. When you defeat Batlin, he says: "Return to your precious Earth and rest. Sleep, that [the Guardian] may visit your dreams with countless visions of death in the belly of the Great Sea Serpent."

• In Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds (1993), several characters invoke "the Serpent" in oaths. Dupre says: "By the Serpent, Avatar!" Julia says: "Thank the Serpent thou didst find the ice caves." Patterson also says "thank the Serpent" at one point, and a guard shouts "by the Serpent!" in response to Patterson's death.

• Also in Labyrinth of Worlds, goblins have arrived in the Britannian sewers through the portal gem from an unknown place. They give the Avatar a blackrock serpent statue (although I never got this in my game).

       

The last four references on this list are to Ultima VII and Ultima Underworld II, and by the time those games were released, the plot of Serpent Isle must have been known. The references are quite deliberate. But what to make of the earlier ones? You don't put serpents on your throne, banners, clothes, and currency unless you're making a clear reference to something. There is, in short, some serious serpent worship going on in Britannia. And yet the developers, not exactly known for their subtlety, somehow managed to keep it low-key across multiple games.

      

I'd love to know what the Avatar has been doing during this time.

     

Serpent Isle takes all of these clues and weaves a plot out of them. The introductory cinematic has the game taking place 18 months after the end of The Black Gate and the "dismantling of The Fellowship" that had been led by the oily Batlin. On a dark and stormy night, one of Lord British's guards (perhaps Geoffrey himself) approaches him in the halls of Castle Britannia.

   

"My liege," he says, taking a knee, "all we found among Batlin's belongings was this enchanted scroll--and a map showing the way to a place called the Serpent Isle."

      

This seems like a lot of sorcery to convey a simple message.

    

"Indeed," Lord British responds. "Put it on the table." The guard does so, and the scroll immediately bursts into flame, prompting British to cry, "Stand back!"

   

The flames swirl into the air and resolve into the face of the Guardian, who says: "Batlin! In the unlikely event the Avatar stops me from coming through the Black Gate, I command you follow the unwitting female human Gwenno to the Serpent Isle. There, I shall outline my plan to destroy Britannia."

   

"'Tis my worst fear," Lord British says. "I must send the Avatar through the pillars to the Serpent Isle." The cinematic shows a boat, presumably the Avatar's, sailing along a narrow rivulet cut into pack ice. The ship approaches two enormous pillars with sculpted snakes coiled around them. As it reaches the point between the pillars, it disappears in a flash.

          

How did the passage get cut in the ice in the first place, one wonders.

       

It's a decent setup for the game, but as usual, Origin manages to be ham-handed with it. Some thoughts:

   

• It has nothing to do with the story, but I'll mention here that Origin didn't change the awful "Lord British presents" giraffe-print pre-title screen that we discussed in this entry. Literally every stylistic choice on this screen is horrible. 

      

"This Ringling Brothers production of . . . "

      

• Why did Lord British have this enormous room constructed to contain a single table? 

• Why did it take Lord British's men 18 months to search Batlin's place?

• "Female human"? Did the Guardian get his skin color by swallowing too many pills?

• Why create a scroll that produces a visual message? Why not, you know, just write the message on the scroll? Or why couldn't the Guardian just tell Batlin directly, as he's clearly done in the past? (Likely counter: the message is clearly a trap. "Outline my plan to destroy Britannia" is a little too on-the-nose.)

• This is the first mention, I think, of having to sail through "pillars" to reach the Serpent Isle. Why is this necessary? Where were these pillars before, and why couldn't I find them in The Black Gate? Why not just make Serpent Isle accessible through a moongate like everything else in this universe?

• Of course, I'm hardly the first person to point out that the most notable part of the cinematic is the voice acting. Richard Garriott himself (creator of Ultima and president of ORIGIN, for new readers) voices Lord British. It is a strong contender for the worst voice acting in the history of video games. (See if you agree.) I can only imagine that Garriott must have been a terrifying boss and no one had the nerve to tell him that they needed another take.

       

Perhaps the most significant issue that I have with the game is the title. This is not Part Two of anything. The Black Gate was a complete game in itself, and Serpent Isle is even longer. (That's based partly on recollection, but HowLongToBeat puts Gate at 37.5 hours and Isle at 52.5.) I know ORIGIN's policy, or perhaps Garriott's, was to only give new numbers to games that had new engines, but this is a little extreme. They made updates and improvements to the Black Gate engine and created an entirely new world with new NPCs, items, and quests. There was no reason not to call it Ultima VIII. 

     

I don't really have any screenshots to go with this section, so here's the party arriving.

     

I could see using Part Two for a game set again in Britannia, with the same landscape as The Black Gate, in which the Avatar goes around undoing the damage done by the Fellowship. (And perhaps the events of Ultima Underworld II besides; we never did find out whether the invasion of Britannia outside the blackrock dome was a lie or not.) I would have actually liked to see such a game. ORIGIN spent four games in a row on the same continent, and the one time I think it would have been most thematically justified to keep the same geography, they go and pull the player into a different universe.

   

These are relatively minor quibbles, though. Let's turn to the manual to get back on a positive track. The world-building, as usual, is fantastic. For the second time in a row, Origin manages to tell the player how to play the game in the context of a deliciously subversive manual that builds the lore of the setting by showing rather than telling. The manual is called Beyond the Serpent Pillars, ostensibly written by a mage named Erstam.

   

Erstam's history reaches back to the First Age of Darkness in Ultima, when "eight great kingdoms coexisted, often uneasily." He's referring to the continents of the first game, although there were only four of them: The Lands of Danger and Despair ("Shamino's kingdom," Erstam mentions), The Lands of the Dark Unknown, The Lands of the Feudal Lords, and The Lands of Lord British. When Mondain was destroyed by The Stranger, the resulting unleashing of dangerous magic destroyed all but The Lands of Lord British, which became known as Sosaria after the collective name for the previous world.

     

More dialogue from the arrival.

        

We've heard this story before, but like Batlin in The Black Gate's manual, Erstam has a Perspective. We've already learned that he fled Sosaria because he considered Lord British's rule "tyrannical." He criticizes British for being "unable to marshal his own forces" to deal with Mondain, instead inviting "an outsider" to handle things. He continues in this vein, decrying British's impotence in dealing with both Minax and Exodus.

   

But his worst criticism comes from the period between Ultima III and Ultima IV, when Lord British "forced" the world to unite under his rule--a rule that soon turned theocratic. "In the name of these virtues, Lord British turned ethics into law--his ethics and his law." A large collection of separatists, representing the populations of Fawn, East and West Montor, and Moon, decided to leave. Erstam had discovered that some of the pre-cataclysm lands had survived beyond the Serpent Pillars, and he led an exodus from Britannia to this world, leaving the "Beast British" behind. Erstam not only explains why those cities are found in III but not IV, but he also anticipates my objection to the pillars: "Stories mentioned that the pillars would rise only when both moons were above the horizon; some said the sun itself must be visible. Yet other tales suggested that the pillars would only appear in the depths of winter."

    

Unlike the history of Britannia presented by Batlin in The Black Gate, Erstam's is entirely reasonable. In fact, I find his interpretation of past events more trustworthy than what we get in the manuals for every Ultima up through VI. I've levied many of the same criticisms myself:  Lord British is an autocrat; Lord British is impotent; the people of Britannia ought to be able to do more for themselves; the way the people of Ultima IV treat the eight virtues (especially the organization of the cities around them) is a little cultish.

      

Did Exodus's kidnapping of the Great Earth Serpent cause the Ophidian War? How did Exodus even accomplish this?

        

Erstam and his fellow emigres left Britannia after the events of Exodus, so he doesn't provide a summary of the other Ultima titles. Instead, he gives a background of Serpent Isle, the continent his expedition found beyond the pillars. The continent was abandoned, but it held the remains of a past civilization called the Ophidians. A scroll told the fate of the people who lived there. Their society was structured around principles of balance, symbolized by the Great Earth Serpent. They believed that the three forces of chaos--Tolerance, Enthusiasm, and Emotion--could be reconciled with the three forces of order--Ethicality, Discipline, and Logic--to form Harmony, Dedication, and Rationality. Something happened to upset this balance, however, and the Ophidians were destroyed in the resulting war.

   

Erstam's party, meanwhile, quarreled among themselves and split off to found cities named after the ones they'd left on Sosaria: Fawn, Monitor, and Moonshade. Each has its own society, culture, and currency. I'll reference the manual more as we encounter various people and places in-game.

   

Character creation is as simple as in The Black Gate. You specify a name. Instead of a sex, you choose from among six portraits, three male and three female. The male ones are all awful. The canonical long-blond haired guy looks even dumber than usual, but it's better than the greasy-haired drug-user or the guy in his 50s clearly modeled after Paul Winfield. The women look much better, although the middle one looks a bit sinister. 

      

Three badass women and the younger brothers living in their basements.

      

The game begins with the Avatar's ship literally crash-landing on a foreign coast, the teleporter between the pillars having apparently propelled it through the air. The party, consisting of Iolo, Dupre, and Shamino, starts commenting on the crash, the colder climate, and the search for Iolo's wife, Gwenno, as well as the evil Batlin. There also seems to be a strange storm afoot, with snow flurries punctuated with lightning.

   

"Or her body, at least," the Avatar helpfully adds.

   

We walk off the ship and find ourselves on a grassy coast. Mountains block movement to the north and east, leaving only the south open for travel. A check of inventory shows that for the first time in an Ultima game, Lord British has equipped us properly. The Avatar has:

    

• The Black Sword from the Forge of Virtue expansion. It is upset about being in the new world.

       

What a whiny sword. Give me Lilarcor any day.

         

• A magic shield, leggings, armor, boots, and helm.

• An ankh amulet.

• A pocket watch.

• A spellbook full of spells, but I can't cast any of them because I guess I don't have any reagents. Doh. There are also no "cantrips" as in The Black Gate. You only get the "Great" versions of "Douse" and "Ignite."

      

I'm not sure how useful these ninth-level spells will be to my third-level Avatar.

      

• A glass sword.

• The blackrock serpent that I was supposed to have gotten from the goblins in Labyrinth of Worlds.

• Rudyom's wand, which makes blackrock explode (though curiously not the serpent; I tried).

• In Dupre's hands, the Magebane sword and Dupre's Shield.

• In Shamino's hands, a magic bow and 34 burst arrows.

• Iolo's item configuration is strange: he has his lute in one hand, a pair of leather pants in another (despite the fact that he's wearing chain leggings), and a crossbow in his pack. Why is he carrying a random pair of pants?
  

• Regular armor for the non-Avatar characters.

• Several items of food.

• Half a dozen torches.

• A combined 120 gold coins and a gold nugget.

• A note from Lord British explaining the most significant items in case the player didn't get them in the previous games.

     

"Doth make blackrock to explode"? Is English your first language, Lord British?

     

The Avatar, Dupre, and Shamino start the game at Level 3, and Iolo at Level 2. I guess they've spent the last 18 months letting their skills rot. The Avatar has 25 intelligence for some reason, and 18 strength and dexterity. The companions have a different balance of attributes. Shamino is 1 point less intelligent than the Avatar, but Dupre is 4 points stronger and Shamino is 5 points more dexterous.

    

The interface hasn't changed much from The Black Gate. If graphics have changed at all, they're too subtle for me to discern. You still get the excellent full-screen exploration window, with the mouse used along with hotkeys to call up inventory, character stats, and dialogue, and to activate combat. Movement can be by mouse or keyboard. The only major change is that the paperdoll inventory portraits show items equipped on the characters rather than just occupying certain character slots. It's an improvement, but not a huge one. No complaints here, however, as the interface to The Black Gate was one of the best parts of the game.

  

I think I'll wrap up here and get into the opening gameplay hours next time. As we contemplate heading south, my party feels confident that they're equipped to face anything this new land has to offer.