Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we continue our series on Ultima IV. We talk about the boat, we talk about dungeons (a tiny bit), we deep dive into NPCs and consequences, we talk about the quests and how everything is in the world, and answer some listener email. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary.
Sections played:
More of Ultima IV (Much more, in B's case)
Issues covered: revisiting locations and finding new things, a game that does a lot with a little, everything existing in the world, getting to know the world, NPCs sharing sprites and being hard to remember, getting a ship and fighting your way on, broadside combat, dying to a waterspout, wanting to search the oceans, badly simulating tacking, riding a horse, being interrupted in any location, trying to replicate the tabletop experience, feeling like a "yes" game, whether what you do matters, can you be a thief, watering down a morality system, having a limited palette of options at any one time, layering frosting, taking out the friction and icky feeling, the niche audience of some RPGs, taking elements from older games and bringing them into modern games, asking questions of the player who is also the character, avoiding the uncanny valley, an aside into adventure mode, the horseshoe effect on NPCs, reaching the limits of what the human brain can contemplate, an aside into Dunbar's number, facing the same challenges, chunking chapters, feeling the anxiety of there being too much, coalescing your notes from time to time, the telescope moment and seeing the map, the lack of loot, preparing to do things, validating your assumptions, having to revisit everywhere, the friction of Pikmin, getting good controllers, handheld mode, the Wavebird, bouncing off character creation, character creation we've liked, wanting a story to wrap around a more specific character, the generic hero, having fun with a character creator, a freeing character creator.
Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: Final Fantasy (series), Gold Box (series), Eye of the Beholder, Outer Wilds, The Witcher (series), Beowulf, Dungeons & Dragons, Wizardry (series), BioWare, Mass Effect, BioShock, Dishonored, CD Project Red, Cyberpunk 2077, Baldur's Gate III, Thief, Robin Hood, VtM Bloodlines, Undertale, Dark Souls, Land of the Lost, Dwarf Fortress, Planescape: Torment, Metroid / Castlevania, Richard Garriott, Sasha, Pikmin, Nintendo, Shigeru Miyamoto, Switch, PlayStation, Analog Pocket, Ashton Herrmann, Monkey Island, Wing Commander, Morrowind, Fallout 3, Dragon Age: Origins, Bethesda Game Studios, Blizzard, World of Warcraft, Diablo (series), Metal Gear Solid V, Hideo Kojima, Saint's Row IV, Call of Cthulhu, Asher, Cuphead, KyleAndError, Hitman, FFSZilla, MGS: VR Missions, Kirk Hamilton, Aaron Evers, Mark Garcia.
Note:
Because Ultima IV has very little music to speak of, I will be substituting music from later in the series in the openings to these episodes
TTDS:
38:30
Links:
Majuular Ultima IV video recommended by Chris
Next time: Finish Ultima IV
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