Moral Choices in RPG’s and why Ultima 4 is the best game ever made

TLDR: Ultima 4 is best on SMS

I’m going to talk about Ultima 4 again because it’s the only rpg which ever had moral choices.

Here is an article from tor.com making it’s case for it being the best game ever if your curious to read that which I think a case could be made for too.

https://www.tor.com/2015/03/18/whats-the-point-of-an-rpg-without-a-main-villain-how-ultima-iv-changed-the-game/

But what’s that I hear you cry?! Mass Effect has a multiple choice conversation system!

I’m not talking about Deus Ex or Bioware, I’m talking about a list of actions which can be performed on any tile, whatever is on it, be it a jester or a patch of poison. 99% of the time it will do nothing but sometimes it will attack Lord British and get your ass handed to you and you will loose all your ‘eiths’. Talk to a fountain. Guess what? You can have a conversation with it. Or an Ankh statue might give you some back chat or a bull might sing you a song. It’s kind of mental to have that kind of free reign.

Eiths are how you win the game if you didn’t know. You need all 8 to enter the Codex of Wisdom (alongside a load of other stuff). It takes about 150 hours to get some of them and that’s if you know what your doing. They all need different ways of behaving such as not killing good creatures or running away like a pussy or lying like a bastard to get some gold or something. I even lost one for not bothering to say goodbye (you can just turn away with B) so now I have to go to goodbye even time which can take ages sometimes but hey, it’s all in the day of being the perfect role model for a bored population with no monsters around to bother them any more and get tempted by being lazy and turning to grog and letting ghosts run around all over the place at least if the proud city of Magincia is anything to go by.

So this game punishes you hard for basically not being good in a world where you have 100% free reign.

In Lord British’s castle there is a crack in the wall (indicating you can pass through it). You do so you get one of the runes, needed for entry into shrines, needed for meditating in three times in, when you have the mantra (1 and 2 give you hints of what to do to) when your virtuous enough in that virtue, so you can get that virtue, so you can go the the bottom of the right dungeon and use the right stone and when you’ve done that eight times you’ve got to beat the Abyss and the Codex of Wisdom and become the avatar…

It just so happens to be under a load of treasure in lord British’s castle so naturally on your first time you grab the whole lot only to find you’re no longer honest, compassionate, noble and probably some others and you realise you’ve got to go give 1gp to the beggar another 50 times.

So basically there are moral choices, but if you’re bad you can’t win. It’s a game where Garriet was worried about the negative effect his previous games might have on suggestable young folks where you have to murder some innocent people to finish the game as well as the potentially corrupting subject matter of satanism, so you’ve got to be very moral and very sociologically inclined and not even get paid at the end.

If your not bothered about completing the game you can easily steal a load of chests. Go out the town and in again and steal all the money, give everyone magic wands then murder everyone in the city and repeat to your hearts content but you won’t be able to get into the Stygian Abbys and Codex of Wisdom without the bell, book and candle and all eiths intact.

So it’s not exactly nuanced and a bit binary but effort was put into making actions really have an impact on the playtime at least.

In terms of a truly moral game, you would have to devise a truly procedurally generated quest and character generation system in order to cater for any more moral/butterfly effect decisions in order to have a truly multifaceted game with stories not based on the amount of plotlines a writer can come up with even if it’s non-linear like Ultima 4, for it to be a genuine reflection of character choice.

I think the problem is with morality being subjective and or relative, a consequence laden game world would necessitate an algorithm to be written, to simulate causality in the passage of time within the game world like with different leaders taking power and allegiances changing.

I suppose it could be like World of Warcraft but you can potentially change sides.

That would be a game I'd buy.

I think most of the folk here probably haven't played Ultima and probably won't read that.

Admittedly I haven't, which is incredibly disgusting, but I picked them up on GOG to learn what a real RPG is in the hopes of washing away the console filth.

Maybe play something from the 21st century dude, like way of the samurai, cause it does all your stuff. You can kill everyone in the town and the game gives you an ending for doing it. I think 3 has 22 endings and 400 titles for doing stupid stuff, like bumping into 1 character 100 time on 1 playthrough.

I agree that Ultima series were the best for morals back in the day. I loved them.

But times have changed, and today we have piles of games that deal with morals and moral choices. One of the best migth be Sleeping Dogs and on current gen Mafia 3 goes very deep with what is wrong and what is right.

Ultima 7 still the best imo.

Am going to marathon all the Ultima games once. Great series and the godfather of the rpg video games.

I don't think that article is arguing it's the best game ever...

I also disagree. Great game, but I'd rather play Planescape again

With any luck, Stars in the next Mario game will turn him into a woman.

Cheers for the recommendation. I've been saying I'll go back and catch up on some older RPGs for a long time, and I know Ultima still gets a lot of love. Sounds like a big time commitment though, what with all those Eiths and things, and my attention span sucks lately, so I'll have to wait for just the right flu strain, lol.

I played every ultima and akalabeth too and the trouble with this is, with gaming there was so much they couldnt achieve thanks to technology that calling this the greatest RPG ever is just hollow. It was groundbreaking, the whole series was, but its so dated. Its like calling Nosferatu the best film ever made...the silent original.

@DocSanchez: yeah it's insane.

@henrythefifth “we have piles of games that deal with morals and moral choices.” - I would refute that. That’s not to say it’s a glaring gap in gaming or anything.

@Sancho_Panzer “it looks like a big time commitment”. It is, ridiculously so. I doubt more than a handful of people have ever even come close to finishing it, I don’t ever expect to. It’s fun till you realise you don’t have a hope if ever even getting within a mile of the codex of wisdom.

@DocSanchez yeah it’s old but a reboot would be cool if the core game is still there. I think it would work as a 3d game with cartoony graphics. But all that gruelling questing with no hint of what to do might not play these days with the marketers but I think people really would dig it.

Ultima 4 was a great idea.

But the execution left a lot to be desired. It was more grindy than anything.

'moral choices' is an oxymoron.

its not really a 'choice' you are either selecting to go against your own value system (whatever that may be) or you are not.

so not really a mind blowing conundrum

Nice, it's free on GOG.

lol, not sure how long I'll stick with it in that case, but I've added it to my library and will give it a shot some day. Cheers.

@sancho_panzer: the best way to play is on master system emulation. The graphics are a marked improvement on the AppleII/PC versions.

Just know ginseng and garlic make cure. You will need many, many cure spells.

Wow, this is intense. I spent my young days in the catacombs of the original Dungeon Master, was blown away by the unbelievably amazing graphics of Comanche Maximum Overkill and I still remember where every single loose floor panel is in the first Prince of Persia, but even I'm not old enough to remember Ultima 4.

Ultima Online almost made me drop out of high school though. Amazing game.