Ultima Underworld Retrospective | Forging a New Era

[Music] Following the release of Origin Systems' Space Rogue in 1989, the game's designer, Paul Neurath, yearned for a move to greener pastures. Figuratively, in the sense that he wanted to design even bigger, better CRPGs. Literally, in the sense that he'd been stuck in Origin's cold, lonely New Hampshire office for three years working on Space Rogue, with most of the studio's creative talent having left for the company's Austin, Texas office long ago. He'd essentially spent these years alone.

Neurath's game development was meant to be a collaborative, inspired effort, not whatever this was. The benefit of contract work is that a clean and amicable break was well within Neurath's reach. He parted ways with Origin and founded his own startup, Blue Sky Productions, whose name represented a brighter chapter in his game development career.

The company was co-founded by a longtime friend and associate of Neurath's, a man by the name of Ned Lerner, who he'd met in a university computer science course. While brainstorming the company's first big project, Neurath looked to the past for inspiration. Like many of Origin's own employees, he'd spent his college years playing Dungeons & Dragons, often to the detriment of his studies. This had left a big impact on his tastes. He leaned towards fantasy CRPGs, having cut his gaming teeth on Ultima 2 and Wizardry. It was the more contemporary dungeon crawlers, though, that really seemed to be blazing a trail.

The dungeon crawler had been around for as long as the CRPG. In fact, for many years, there was no distinction between the two. As far back as Calbith, Richard Garriott had been implementing dungeons displayed from a first-person view. These dungeons would utilize a mock-3D perspective to place the player directly in the shoes of their character. Character Ultima's initial dungeon-focused gameplay was gradually dropped in favor of exploration, dialogue, and adventuring across an overworld. The dungeon crawler, however, would go on to be refined by many other developers.

One of the more significant advancements in this genre had been the implementation of real-time gameplay. Rather than operating on a tick-based system where characters and enemies would take turns in combat and movement, games like Westwood Studios' Eye of the Beholder would allow the player characters and enemies alike to act independently. If you wish to turn around and walk away from a difficult encounter, you could do that, but there was no guarantee that the enemy wouldn't be stalking you through the halls as you caught your breath. Real-time gameplay was a major step forward in realism and immersion. Not even Ultima had implemented such a system.

FTL Games' 1987 hit Dungeon Master had been instrumental in pioneering a new frontier for dungeon crawlers. On top of its real-time gameplay, Dungeon Master also featured a mouse-driven interface that fundamentally changed the ways in which players would interact with the game's environments. The system was a milestone in the genre. It spurred the development of many games featuring highly interactive worlds in which the player's freedom and intuitive mouse-based control systems were prioritized.

Space Rogue had featured real-time polygonal 3D graphics, an impressive and uncommon sight in video games at the time. Neurath's concept for the game was, to put it in a word, immersion. "Can we trick the player's brain into believing that they're partaking in an actual space battle? Will you feel the adrenaline, the fear of failure, as you man the controls?" The problem with this, in the case of Space Rogue, was that the game featured multiple different modes of play. You would move from menus to Ultima-style top-down sections to first-person flight simulation. It was broken into pieces without much cohesion.

After graduating, Lerner had founded his own company, Lerner Research, whose goal was to advance the development of 3D in computing. The company had made some truly impressive 3D games, including F-22 Interceptor, which pushed the Sega Genesis to its absolute limits. Lerner's state-of-the-art resources would be repurposed by Blue Sky Productions and utilized with the help of some talented programmers. Enter Doug Church. Church, like Lerner and Neurath, was fascinated by the burgeoning world of 3D visuals. At just 21 years old, the MIT student was a programming virtuoso. After being given the elevator pitch for Blue Sky's first game, he was asked if he'd like to join up as a full-time programmer. It didn't take much convincing. Church immediately dropped out of university and joined Blue Sky Productions. What self-respecting hacker wouldn't want to be there, on the precipice of a new chapter in computing history?

After all, they began to develop the technology for a full 3D dungeon crawler with an unbroken first-person perspective from beginning to end. Not grid-based snapping movement or pre-rendered backgrounds, but a free-flowing system that emulated real-life physicality. The working title was Underworld, and the concept alone was insanely ambitious. Player freedom on the level that Neurath was suggesting was heretofore unseen in video games, never mind in 3D. Even getting Space Rogue to run properly was the result of tremendous effort and many late nights at the office. Underworld would be no different.

Neurath now had a team of employees working under him at Blue Sky. After several months of tireless effort and thanks to their programmers' prodigious talents, the team developed a tech demo. The technology was impressive, but the prototype struggled to run at a playable frame rate, often dipping below 10 frames per second. It was only with the arrival of Intel's i486 processors that the concept of Underworld became anything more than a pipe dream. The 486 was a huge improvement over its predecessor, the 386, which had become the industry standard. That extra computation speed would make all the difference.

Still, despite spending months shopping around for publishers, nobody seemed to be all that interested in Underworld. This included Electronic Arts, who otherwise seemed to be a natural fit for the project. Still without a publisher, the game was shown off at the 1990 Summer Consumer Electronics Show, where it caught the eye of Richard Garriott and Warren Spector of Origin Systems. That's almost enough to make someone believe in fate. Warren Spector took a look at the choppy, unpolished Underworld demo and thought to himself, "The world has just changed." Garriott suggested that Underworld be rebranded as an Ultima game. It was an obvious fit. Underworld was going to take place in a medieval fantasy setting, i.e., much like Ultima. Having the series boldly re-enter the dungeon crawling space after a hiatus also made business sense.

Neurath had some trepidation. He knew Richard Garriott well enough to know that any of his own creative decisions were going to be heavily scrutinized. Garriott would want the game to feel like Ultima, and only Garriott would really know what that meant. This would compromise some of that creative freedom that Neurath was looking forward to after his years at Origin. Still, the team at Blue Sky all decided that this would be the best thing for the company's future. Ultima Underworld was born.

As Blue Sky was working on contract, the role of producer would need to fall on somebody from Origin. The role was initially given to Jeff Johannigman, who'd worked as producer on Savage Empire. However, Jeff departed from Origin shortly after this assignment. As a result, there was an extended period of time where the game simply didn't have a producer, and that was a problem. The story outlined that they developed, Spector recalled, was just bad and it needed fixing. The young programmers at the company, such as Church, were largely hackers and hobbyists. This made them excellent at coming up with and developing interesting features, but it didn't make them good game developers. There was no shortage of cool ideas, but the studio was rudderless.

Eventually, the vacant producer spot was given to a very enthusiastic Warren Spector, who'd practically been begging to work on the project from the moment it had begun. His expertise, rough from previous Origin titles, was critical in re-calibrating and focusing Blue Sky's energy. There was room to do cool things, but they also had to finish a game. The studio received an initial stipend of just $30,000 from Origin, which simply wasn't enough to pay for a company's worth of employees for multiple years.

While the production of Underworld was happening, Blue Sky accepted a contract from Electronic Arts. They agreed to help develop the Sega Genesis version of John Madden Football '93. The financial windfall from this contract gave Blue Sky the wherewithal to fund Underworld's development, but it was not without its cost. It may be hard to believe, but for the bright-eyed programmers at Blue Sky, John Madden Football '93 was not a passion project. Employees were moved between departments, priorities were constantly shifted, and the Underworld team spent a lot of time coming to grips with their new 3D tools. The top-down organization of Origin was totally absent here, as Blue Sky employees worked in chaos, chain of command be damned. This meant 80-hour work weeks for many staff members, with much of this occurring during a dark and freezing cold New Hampshire winter. It was a brutal way to inaugurate the newly established Blue Sky Productions.

Spector was able to take the entropy of Underworld's development and somehow cut through the noise. He knew precisely what they were trying to do, and he believed in them and their goals. This also gave him a vantage point with which to see where they were going wrong, which was, well, a lot of places. With his direction, they became more organized and focused on refining what did work rather than continually creating new features. It was still a messy development. Origin constantly demanded changes be made to the game script, leading to a tense relationship between the two companies. Underworld also missed its original release date by months, resulting in an unfortunately predictable extended period of crunch. Despite the universe's best efforts, Ultima Underworld was finished and released in March of 1992.

The box art is striking, depicting the Avatar creeping down a flight of stairs surrounded by the denizens of the Stygian Abyss. Within the box, we find the game itself, stored on four floppies, the reference card, Origin's product catalog, and a few goodies. Note the player guide gives you a thorough look at the many different aspects of the game: combat, movement, survival, spellcasting, and some advanced tips for when you've got a handle on things. Included is a paper map detailing the first level of the Abyss itself, as well as a more general overview of its eight levels. Also packed into the box is a small satchel containing six metallic runestones. These represent some of the magical runes you can find in-game. It's been a while since we've had a real feelie in an Ultima game box, and this one is pretty cool. Finally, a booklet titled "The Memoirs of Sir Cirus," which introduces us to the game's story and the many changes that Britannia has undergone since we've been there.

The Memoirs are written from the perspective of one Sir Cirus, penned by his scribe, Corby, a member of the court of Lord British. Sir Cirus believed that the eight virtues could be unified into an unbroken whole. In an effort to prove the potential of living by this principle, he attempted to establish a society which would incorporate the beliefs and teachings of Britannia's eight cities: the Compassion of Britain, the Valor of Jolom, the Honesty of Moonglow, the Sacrifice of Minoc, the Justice of Yew, the Humility of New Magincia, the Honor of Trinsic, and the Spirituality of Skara Brae. Rather than being separated by cities and representing only one virtue, people would be brought together under a unified banner. In doing this, all could walk in the footsteps of the Avatar. Any who would listen to Cirus' words, man and beast alike, would be given a place in this new society. The colony would be established in the heart of what was once a place of great evil, but now existed as the center of virtue: the Isle of the Avatar, specifically the Stygian Abyss underneath it.

First to respond to the call were the brave Knights of Jolom, the Order of the Crux, and as well as the ancient Moonstone Seers of Moonglow. These Seers would be critical in establishing the colony, being familiar with spells of light and the creation of food. While these Memoirs are penned in a tone of hopefulness, the writings abruptly stop before being resumed independently by Corby, the Scribe. Whatever's happened in the time since the Abyss colony was established, Sir Cirus has passed away, and the underground colonies began to wage war against each other. Communication among those inside ceased years ago, and the Abyss has once again become a place of great danger.

The game opens up with a fully voice-acted introduction. The Avatar, who's at home on Earth, is visited by the ghost of a man named Gammond. "Treachery and doom! My brother would unleash a great evil!" The Avatar is warned of a great evil and, in the midst of his troubled dreams, is brought to Britannia by Gammond's magic. As the Avatar arrives, he witnesses a kidnapping. "No matter. Thou shalt serve to draw the hounds from the scent." A mysterious figure, in league with a troll, abducts a young woman named Ariel, daughter of Baron Alric, who governs the Isle of the Avatar's surface. The Avatar arrives just in time to be blamed for the kidnapping and is brought before Alric as a prisoner.

"Dragged below to accompany all were well. You'll now escape us, and when we bring him back, you'll both hang." "Hey, I just said it was fully voice-acted. I didn't say that the voice acting was good." "I posted guards at Ariel's door, and still, you took her from me!"

[Music] "They say thou didst drop her to a troll waiting below. What sayest thou?" "Richard, I am begging you, please stop lending your voice talent to these games." The Avatar informs Alric of his identity, but the Baron doesn't believe him. "None here can survive this abyss." "And did Richard Garriott just mispronounce the word 'Stygian'? He's the one who named the damn place."

The Avatar is brought to the mouth of the Abyss. If he is indeed the Avatar, then rescuing Ariel and bringing her back shouldn't be a problem. If he isn't, then being cast into the Abyss will be punishment enough. Some people have commented on how goofy it is that Alric wouldn't give the Avatar any weapons or equipment, after all, he wants his daughter saved, right? Honestly, I don't think it's that outrageous. In his emotional state, his daughter having been kidnapped, he assumes that the Avatar is a kidnapper and an identity thief. It's been ages since anyone has seen the Avatar. There's no reason to believe this random homeless guy in his daughter's bedroom is telling the truth. Besides, humility is one of the eight virtues. If the Avatar is, in fact, a master of virtue, then whether he's decked out in magical armor or in tattered rags, his victory should be assured. It's a win-win for Baron Alric, well, other than his daughter being kidnapped, I guess that's a lose.

Character creation here is arguably the most involved it's ever been. You're told to select one of eight classes, each with their own attributes, as well as different utility skills and weapon skills they can specialize in. It promises quite a complex adventure. Compared to recent Ultima games, you don't even have to answer a series of virtue-related questions to generate your character, which is a feature I don't think has belonged in the series for a very long time. At last, we're dropped into the Stygian Abyss, where the game begins.

For a PC gamer in 1992, booting up Ultima Underworld for the first time would have been a surreal experience. There was nothing like this on the market. The manual dedicates pages upon pages to just explaining the concept of 3D movement, simply because the developers knew that this would have been a totally foreign concept to gamers. So much so that the game actually features a novice mode, which locks you to a grid and only allows you to face in cardinal directions. Like dungeon crawlers of the time, this was implemented to help the player get to grips with the controls of Underworld. They had to make a concerted effort, even in the game's advertising, to show people what 3D meant in this context. Many would assume 3D was just referring to the first-person vantage point of games like Wizardry. Hell, Richard Garriott used the term "3D" to describe the dungeons of Ultima for years. Those games were 3D in the same way a photograph is real life. Underworld's marketing would use terms like "continuous movement 3D" in an effort to distinguish this 3D from its use in common gaming parlance. Half of this ad's real estate was reserved to show off individual frames, like, "Hey, you can see objects from different angles now." It was just something that you had to see to believe back then.

As the first 3D first-person RPG, you would expect Ultima Underworld to control clumsily, but you would be wrong. The game's control scheme is impressively forward-thinking. While most first-person games would for the foreseeable future use the arrow keys to move forward, backward, and turn, Underworld has something of a proto-WASD layout. W runs forward, X walks backward, Z and C strafe left and right, while A and D turn left and right. It really doesn't take long to get used to. You could even look up and down using the number keys, which again, was simply unheard of in a 3D texture-mapped game.

What makes Underworld especially easy to control is its mouse-driven interface. You can actually play the game almost entirely with the mouse, if you so choose. Click and holding while your cursor is on the edge of the screen will turn your character or move them in that direction. It's a bit unwieldy to look around this way, so a combination of keyboard and mouse is the way to go. With the cursor, you can interact with the environment, manage your inventory, and engage in combat with enemies. It's straightforward and, most importantly, it's intuitive. That's the key word here. You're initially tasked with picking up your gear by the entrance and equipping it by clicking and dragging the bag you can place it in your inventory. You can open up containers and drag and drop items in and out of them, too. Dragging certain items onto your character's paper doll display will equip them. You can toss things out into the game world and grab items off of ledges while jumping through the air. There's so much complexity packed into such a simple, manageable set of controls. For Blue Sky to have accomplished such a thing so early into the life of 3D games is really quite impressive.

So, you're left to explore the very first floor of the Stygian Abyss. You find a torch, which cuts through the darkness, a proto-dynamic lighting system, if you will, similar to that of earlier Ultimas, but in glorious 3D. You'll also find a flimsy dagger, a map to help you find your way around, and various other odds and ends. There are no in-game tutorials here. It's just you and the Abyss, and the Abyss is beckoning you. Besides, you can't turn around and run away, even if you want to. I tried.

The first level is fairly straightforward. You're introduced to the basic controls, the concept of navigation, combat, and one of the most critical skills you can develop: reading your map. Mercifully and necessarily, Underworld features an auto-map. This automatically fills up as you explore different parts of the Abyss. With each new level, the map begins as a blank slate, but as you contend with the area's challenges and visit every dark corner, it'll become more and more detailed. This is a huge weight off of the player's shoulders. Often, dungeon crawlers of the time expected the player to make their own maps, have a pencil, definitely an eraser, and a stack of grid paper on hand at all times. Now, there is a sort of charm in that methodology. Filling out your own maps really puts you in the shoes of your dungeon-delving character. In Eye of the Beholder, for example, you'd be hopelessly lost if you didn't do this. It's strangely satisfying to fill out your map and learn all of the different ways that passages intersect with each other. It also kind of sucks because you probably made a mistake somewhere that totally compromised the integrity of the map. Also, stopping every couple of seconds to write on a piece of paper really does a number to the pacing of almost any game.

Underworld eschews this philosophy. It simply wouldn't have been possible to keep your own map when you're capable of such granular 3D movements. The auto-map here even allows you to make and erase your own notes, which is a huge help. You can mark down the location of important characters or locked doors that you can't open yet. I don't think I've ever played a game where I've had to reference a map as often as I have in Underworld, so it's great that the mapping system keeps things so simple. It's also necessary because the environments of the Abyss are far more multi-layered and vertical than any prior dungeon crawler had been. This is thanks to the inclusion of slopes, stairs, and gaps in the ground, leading to several different sublevels within each area. Good luck keeping track of all that on grid paper.

The game's interface is similar to the games made on the Ultima 6 engine. You have a sidebar full of actions you can take: Speed, Grab, Look, Attack, and Use. This one's the Options button, in case you were curious. By activating any of these commands, the context of your mouse clicks will change. Grab allows you to drag and drop items around with the cursor, while Use lets you activate an object, such as pressing a switch. It also lets you combine items, like using a key on a door to unlock it. Look allows you to read notes or signs and gives you a description of the object you've clicked on. Thanks to the detailed sprite-based visuals, you can usually tell what something is at a glance, but there are many times where examination is necessary. For instance, looking at a door, you can tell if it's flimsy, sturdy, or massive. The Attack command simply readies your current weapon, placing your character in combat mode. This is largely used to fight enemies, but there are other uses for combat mode, too. For instance, if a locked door is flimsy or even sturdy, you can bash it open instead of hunting for a key. In exchange, your weapon's durability rating decreases, and it can even break. You can bash doors open with your bare hands, but unless you've got points in hand-to-hand combat (and I don't know why you would), I suggest putting on a pot of coffee, 'cause you're going to be punching that door for a very long time. You can only attack by holding the mouse button down and waiting for the attack gem to start shimmering. It takes a second, give or take, depending on your weapon of choice, so you can't just spam the attack command. Regardless, the concept of opening doors is a microcosm of what makes Ultima Underworld such a special game. It's the ability to interact with your environment in a way that just makes sense. Whether you find a key, or pick the lock, or break it down, there's a logic and reasoning behind everything. But we'll talk more about that shortly.

While walking around the dungeon, you'll find all kinds of items that can be manipulated: bones, rubble, broken sticks, much of it useless, at least for now. You can even pick up and carry around leeches. Why would you want to? It doesn't matter. You can't. Again, you never know if you're going to need something, so the wise Underworld player always makes mental notes of where they've seen an item. Thankfully, you can keep containers in your inventory. This lets you organize your clutter and carry a fair amount of it, as well. You can find food down here, and it's always important to have a supply of it on hand. Your character will gradually become hungry and tired, at which point you'll have to stop and rest, provided you have a bedroll. Resting is one of the precious few ways to regenerate your health and mana. The only way that a rest will be effective is when you don't rest near enemies and your belly is full. If your character hears creatures moving around, or they're hungry, your sleep will be less restful, resulting in little, if any, recovery. Not all food is created equal, though. It can gradually spoil over time, becoming less tasty and less effective at filling you up. You can find it in storerooms as an item for trade. You can even make a fishing rod and catch yourself dinner at any body of water.

Resting is an important part of Underworld from a story perspective because the ghost of Gammond will contact the Avatar while he sleeps. He'll offer us fragmented comments about our progress and the story, giving the player some urgency to keep moving. Despite that urgency, there's no time limit to complete the game, so you can rest as much as needed. From a gameplay point of view, resting is also necessary. Healing potions are quite rare, and healing spells are only available to casters. Mana potions are even more rare, making resting the only viable way to recover magic power.

Speaking of magic, the ability to cast spells constitutes a major difference between classes. Some are proficient in it, some can dabble, and others are altogether restricted. Without some major skill investments on the player's part, in order to cast spells, the player must first find the necessary runes to do so. In the back of the game manual, you'll find a list of spells that can be cast and their associated runes. Runes are found somewhat infrequently. Occasionally, they'll just be lying around, usually in dangerous or hidden areas of a dungeon level. Other times, you'll receive runes as a quest reward. Common runes can be found multiple times, while more powerful runes can only be found once, but once you have them, you have them for good. No matter what class you play, it's important to be thorough, but that's especially true if you're playing as a mage.

Once you have the right runes, you can arrange them in a sequence on the magic menu. Provided you meet the spellcasting skill requirement and have enough mana, you'll be able to cast the spell by clicking here in the play window. Some of the lower-level spells will act as a light source, heal minor wounds, or create food, many of which can save your ass. Depending on what class you play, even having the tiniest bit of magical prowess is basically an infinite cheese hack. More advanced spells allow you to call forth flame, wind, make yourself invisible, and confuse enemies, among many other things. Utility spells are available, too. Telekinesis lets you grab items from far away, and Slowfall allows you to survive drops that would usually be fatal.

The rune system works on a number of levels. It's a clever way to gate progression and prevents players from immediately casting the most devastating spells. More powerful runes are found on later levels, so you'll have to make do with what you have. Finding even a single rune is exciting because of how much it can increase your spellcasting potential. At the same time, if you're an experienced player, you can just jet through the dungeon quickly, avoiding enemies and navigating mazes to go grab those higher-level runes before returning to earlier levels and playing through the game. This makes it a versatile system that keeps the player from breaking the game unless they've earned the right through skill and knowledge.

Spells are incredibly useful as a utility, but it's tough to purely roll a wizard in Underworld. Non-mages can use magic tools such as wands or scrolls. These are imbued with spells that can be cast independently of your own skills, each with a set number of uses. They can be pretty helpful, but you won't find them often, so being able to cast your own spells is much more reliable. Mana depletes quickly, and potions are hard to come by. This forces a wizard to rest very frequently, which isn't always viable. So, no matter what class you play, it's a good idea to invest in a weapon skill. You can choose between swords, maces, axes, missiles, and unarmed combat. There's also a general attack skill, which boosts damage among all weapon types, but not as much as a point in a weapon skill. Good choice if you're indecisive. Most weapon types are versatile enough, with the exception of missiles. Arrows and bolts are simply far too rare to rely on, never mind how hard it can be to just hit an enemy. This means you'd have to rely on slingshots and rocks throughout most of the game. As enemies' defense levels increase, rocks quickly become outclassed by other weapons. Playing the game as an archer is basically the game's very hard difficulty.

If you do go for a melee weapon, it's a good idea to focus in on one category. The success of a swing is calculated by your weapon and attack skills versus an enemy's defense skill. If your attack doesn't meet a threshold, not only will you not cause damage, but your weapon can break. You'll want to commit to a build so you don't spread yourself too thin. In order to advance in a given skill, you have to first gain experience by slaying enemies. Then, you have to find a virtue shrine. Each level of the dungeon has one or two of these. To level a given skill, you'll have to chant the correct mantra for that skill, and you won't know these mantras in the beginning. You're initially given three of them: some, raw, mew, om, and oma, which translates to honor, valor, love, courage, and spirituality, sacrifice, respectively. These will level up a random selection of attack, magic, and utility skills. So, in the beginning, you can't really direct your character, and that may be a good thing. Having a few levels to experiment before zeroing in on a path takes some pressure off the player. As you explore, you'll learn new mantras from books, from NPCs, or notes. Of course, if you already know the mantras from a previous playthrough, you can just use them whenever. I guess you could also cheat and look them up, too, you son of a...

Well, on level one, you'll find the first few remaining groups from Sir Cirus' grand experiment. There's a crew of human prisoners doing what they can to survive, and that's the name of the game. There's no judgment down here, only survival. These people don't care about what crimes you've committed up above to land yourself here. Now, we're all in the same situation. They'll share information with you as long as you're not on their bad side. Some of the prisoners here claim to have seen a troll with a young woman slung over his back descending to a deeper level of the dungeon. Doesn't tell us much we don't already know, but it's a start.

The conversation system here is quite different than previous games. When talking to an NPC, the game window transitions to a conversation screen. Underworld doesn't feature the typed keyword-based system introduced in Ultima 4. Rather, it's a traditional conversation tree, at least traditional by modern standards. You're spoken to, and then given a set of dialogue options to choose from. Certain choices will lead to different conversation options and outcomes. There are points in a conversation where you can type your own keywords. Often, this is a good way to learn more about certain characters or topics, or give someone a password so they know that you could be trusted. You'll have to gauge the personality of the speaker, since saying the wrong thing can lower their opinion of you. If you repeatedly antagonize them or steal their belongings, they'll eventually become hostile and attack you, locking them out permanently as a dialogue partner. If a giant troll tells you that your new name is Rodriguez, your new name is Rodriguez.

It's a good idea to use the Look command frequently. This way, you can tell not only what kind of a mood characters are in, but also who, if anyone, owns nearby items. Of course, you can just show up in their cave, kill them all, and take their stuff, but for various reasons, I wouldn't advise this. First of all, you're the Avatar. You're supposed to be a good person. There was a whole game about it, remember? Any genocide that may or may not have been committed by the Avatar has been purely accidental, and I aim to keep it that way. Role-playing aside, the biggest reason you won't want to wantonly kill people is because many of them are currently, or will become, quest necessary, and you're not told who exactly that will be. Much like real life, you can kill people and possibly even have a real scream doing it, but also like real life, there will be dire consequences. You don't want to kill somebody, go through 15 hours of gameplay, and then find out that you need to deliver 10 squint feathers to the person you killed 15 hours ago, because Ultima Underworld will put you in that situation. It relishes the opportunity to make you upset. You can be screwed in unimaginably awful ways. Be smart. Make alliances. There are only four save slots, and you'll probably be rotating through them frequently. Always a good idea to lock in a save before you try something stupid.

Sometimes things that happen aren't your fault. You'll be walking around and see a message that says, "Underworld internal error. Problems in object list." What the hell does that mean? Did a quest item you'll only see 20 hours from now just get deleted by the game? Doesn't matter. Don't try to rationalize it. You smile, you say, "Thank you, Ultima Underworld," and you reload your most recent save.

This goodwill towards your fellow man extends to the various beast races of the Abyss as well. On level one, for instance, you'll find a pair of goblin factions warring amongst each other. The green and gray goblins don't get along with one another, but they can get along with you. This is quite a major change that's mentioned in the Memoirs of Sir Cirus. To prove the virtue of his undertaking, Cirus would invite many of the creatures that humans had long been at war with to live amongst them in this new society. Goblins, trolls, foot fetishists, menites—all who would listen would be given a place in the Abyss to live in harmony with others.

The lore of these creatures is also expanded upon. Goblins apparently were created long ago as a result of unethical magical experiments once performed on prisoners. During the events of Ultima 3, the cybernetic demon Exodus rallied the Goblins to his side, waging war against the people of Sosaria. Henceforth, goblins were assumed to be evil by nature and thus slain without mercy. Many years later, they reached an agreement with Cirus: they would try their best to live by the code of virtue in exchange for clemency. It's an interesting little alteration to the game's lore, and one that I appreciate. It's not unreasonable to believe that such knowledge regarding goblins was just never recorded until now, and that's because they were seen as savage beasts. This extends to monsters from previous games, such as trolls and lizard men, which are given detailed lore and origins that never assume malevolent intent. I really dig the unorthodox lore and traditions of these fairly run-of-the-mill fantasy races. I also think it's in keeping with the themes and attitudes of the past few Ultima games: this focus on diplomacy and understanding those who are vastly different from ourselves.

So, the Goblins are nice. Well, not nice, but they're not hostile, anyway. Your first inclination upon seeing a goblin may be to take your sword and cleave them in two, burning their fetid enclave to the ground, but that wouldn't be wise. The developers likely recognized your instinctual thirst for goblin blood, so they implemented a few safeguards to get you in the diplomatic spirit. The first thing is that in order to enter the goblin enclave, you have to speak to a gatekeeper through a portcullis. This also teaches the player that they can shout to distant NPCs, so long as there's not a solid surface between the two. The most important method through which you'll identify friendlies is the standard of Sir Cirus. These flags are hung by the entryway of all friendly areas in the game. So, if you encounter an NPC in the vicinity of this banner, you can rest assured that they aren't trying to kill you. I'm not joking when I say it can sometimes be hard to tell.

It won't take too long to get a grip on things. The first level, despite how intimidating it can be, is actually fairly easy to explore. Underworld features an entirely nonlinear quest structure, not unlike some previous Ultima games. Your initial goal is to find Ariel, which takes you deeper into the dungeon. From there, you'll come across all manner of quests and pressing tasks waiting for you. As the monsters become more difficult and the quests become more complex, your options begin to open up. You'll unlock shortcuts within dungeons, find new magic items and weapons, and also forge alliances with some of the groups in the Abyss. Helping people out is worthwhile, even when it's not pertinent to the central plot. There are a lot of interesting side characters with their own worthwhile little stories, and the rewards for helping them out can be pretty nice.

There are multiple stairways down to each floor, and even some secret ways that can be helpful. Once upon a time, there was a massive centralized stairway down called the Grand Staircase, but it's long since caved in. Nonetheless, if you really wanted to put the pedal to the metal, you could probably find your way down each floor in a matter of minutes, but you'd be missing out on a whole lot and probably ill-equipped to deal with some of the later challenges.

Enemies in the Abyss are plentiful. After the death of Sir Cirus, on top of clans drifting apart from each other, an evil presence began creeping back into the underworld. Goblins, mongbats, lurkers, gazers, and many other frightening creatures now await us. Within the first-person real-time combat of Underworld was again unlike any other dungeon crawler of its time. Well, the combat featured in most games would either be action-packed and reflex-heavy, or slow-moving and stat-based. Underworld marries these two philosophies in a way that probably doesn't seem all that amazing nowadays. That would be a result of the precedent that Underworld itself set, one that would be followed by so many RPGs at the time. It was novel.

When you're ready to fight, you can engage the enemy by clicking on the combat button or your weapon on the paper doll. You can swing your weapon in one of three directions based on where your cursor is located when you left-click. All weapons have a number of characteristics: they are primary damage type (slash, bash, or stab), as well as their durability and attack speed. Heavier weapons are typically more durable and deal more damage, but are slower to compensate. In the beginning, it's mostly rats and slugs you'll fight, and they're not much of a challenge. For the most part, you can just stand still and trade blows, but that won't be the case for long. Soon, you'll be attacked by roving groups of goblins who can fire rocks at you with slings, ghosts that can freely move on a vertical axis, and skeletons. Uh, lots of... "Wow, okay. I'm somewhere between 'we're so back' and 'it's never been this over.'"

In order to adapt to your enemy's increasingly diverse tactics, you must learn to strategize as well. You have to utilize your environment: bobbing and weaving between pillars, luring groups of enemies to choke points, and memorizing the rune combination of spells so you can quickly cast what you need to in a tense situation. You can sneak up on enemies, made easier by a superior stealth skill or an invisibility spell, but enemies can also get the drop on you, so awareness is key. It's also important to get a sense of enemy timing: getting close and baiting them into attacking. This puts you at risk, especially with some of the more erratic flying enemies, but also leaves your foes exposed and ripe for a sword to the gut.

Creating artificial intelligence within a true 3D space was just one of the many challenges the programmers of Blue Sky had to contend with. What they ultimately produced works quite well. Enemies pursue the player, but not with an unreasonable determination. Eventually, they'll give up the chase, but they're capable of some pretty advanced pathfinding, so it's not wise to rest on your laurels. The combat gradually becomes a sort of dance. You'll be moving back and forth, dextrously manning both a keyboard and a mouse, developing a rhythm for each enemy type. You do have an opportunity to overcome higher-level enemies, but it takes a lot of effort. The fact that you can simply turn around and run away from most enemies, sneak past them, or muddle their minds with a spell of confusion—it's all a testament to the player's freedom of expression offered in Ultima Underworld. Seemingly impenetrable blockades can be overcome in myriad ways.

This brings me to two words that I have individually used to describe the Ultima games, but never together until now: immersive simulation. This was a phrase that would later be coined by Underworld programmer Doug Church to describe a particular kind of video game. With the release of Underworld, gamers were no longer being asked to use their imaginations to fill in the blanks of insufficient presentation. The '90s ushered in a new era of interactive entertainment with the exponential growth of computing power. Graphics and sound were becoming more detailed, AI was more convincing, and the word "immersion" took on a whole new meaning. Once, to immerse yourself in a video game was to fall into that hypnotic state that one does while playing an addicting game—think losing track of the time playing Tetris. Now, immersion was becoming shorthand for a total suspension of the player's disbelief, a loss of self-awareness that only the most engrossing fictional worlds could induce.

The human brain has a nearly limitless number of responses to outside stimuli. These responses often have to be curbed while playing a game. The ability to reach out and pick something up and throw it; the idea of meeting a character in a game, being kind to them, being rude to them, punching them in the face, robbing them; the concept of coming across an obstacle and being able to decide how that obstacle is circumvented, whether you find a path around it, or leap over top of it, or destroy it. With most video games, especially at the time, your line of thinking would need to be adjusted in order to match that game's particular set of rules and limitations. If there's an obstacle, you'll follow the game's path, try to jump over. There's probably an invisible wall or something. What if, instead of constructing a game world from this sort of smoke and mirrors, the game world was simulated? If that were the case, not only could the player act on their own compulsions, they could be rewarded for breaking the game's rules. This was Ultima Underworld's mission statement, the origin of a video game philosophy that's still actively being pursued by countless developers to this very day. While Ultima 6 is often referred to as a proto-immersive sim for its emphasis on player choice, Ultima Underworld is widely considered to be the first immersive sim.

It's evident from the moment you first pick up a rock and throw it. Its arc is realistic. It bounces off of walls and falls down holes. Enemies throwing rocks at you can accidentally hit and kill their own comrades. If you and an enemy both lob a rock at the same time, those rocks can collide in midair and halt each other's inertia. The force of the rock thrown is affected by your character's strength score. This is the power of not simply programming the movement of a rock flying through the air, but programming the simulation that facilitates that rock's movement. The developers are simply designing the rules of the world; your experience as the player is hands-off, as far as they're concerned.

Those "realistic" physics extend to many facets of the game, including the Avatar's own body. You can hop in place or leap through the air, crashing to the ground and suffering damage relative to the height of your drop. The distance of your jump is affected by the velocity of your character when the jump is made. Annoyingly, you can even bounce off of walls and get sent several feet backward if there is too much force behind your jump. It's not just the simulated physics, but the tiny details that make the difference. You can hear your footsteps depending on the hardness of the surface you're walking on. Your head bobs from side to side as you swim through the water, more or less depending on your swimming skill. Light sources like candles, torches, lanterns, and light spells have varying degrees of illumination in the dark. You can hear the flapping wings of nearby bats above you as you explore. It all feels so cinematic, like a bespoke experience for the player, but it's not bespoke; it's simulated. In this way, everybody who plays Ultima Underworld is going to have their own stories to tell: sticky situations that they escaped from, or enemies that they overcame in their own way.

The spells and magic items make a huge difference here. Learning the Flight spell drastically changes the player's relationship to the dungeon terrain. Now, hard-to-reach ledges become viable entry points for other parts of the dungeon floor. You get thinking about all the ledges you missed up until this point, how much treasure you might find if you return to earlier floors. Fireproofing spells and water-walking abilities similarly flip the script on previously inaccessible areas. Running out of mana or playing classes with less magical ability will force you to improvise. This is where the utility skills of Underworld come in. There's quite a list of non-combat abilities that can be leveled up at a shrine. The Lore skill allows you to detect the properties of magical items or even just get more detailed descriptions of

mundane objects. This is important, as plenty of seemingly normal pieces of armor or weapons actually have helpful magical properties. You would never know it unless you had a wand of identification or the lore skill.

The search skill points out secret doors and hidden switches that you might have otherwise missed. Repair allows you to use anvils to restore your damaged gear. Tracking gives you a read on any enemies in the environment and where they might be skulking around. Acrobatics allows you to jump higher and take less fall damage. Stealth, swimming, appraisal, Charisma, lockpicking, trap disarming—all of these skills can be tweaked and advanced at your discretion, and they can all lead to different possibilities.

These unscripted moments, where your unique skill set allows you to circumvent a particular challenge, are the result of what's often called emergent gameplay. The developers haven't accounted for your exact situation, but they've allowed for it. If you're poisoned, you can quaff an antidote potion, or cast a cure poison spell, or simply sleep it off. Hey, remember those leeches from earlier? They can be used to suck the poison from your blood. It damages your character, but it can be done. I reiterate: leeches can suck poison from your blood.

This game demands, perhaps more than any other Ultima game, that you embody the Avatar. You think like the Avatar, and you act like the Avatar. Hell, the game even asks for your handedness in the beginning. A huge component of the immersion here is the game's 3D engine, which was among the first of its kind and yet so far ahead of its time. The engine was developed in part due to Ned Lerner's contribution. His startup had developed tools which allowed not only for the rendering of 3D objects but also texture mapping, and this is where the big difference lies. Space Rogue featured polygonal 3D graphics, but they were untextured, solid blocks of color floating through space. The Underworld engine utilizes texture mapping, which fills its 3D objects with detailed pixel art, not unlike the tiles that were being used in the 2D Ultimas.

Texture mapping 3D objects had long been a conundrum for game developers, and that was due to hardware limitations. There's a lot of mathematical calculations that have to be made in order to place an image over top of a polygonal surface, or in this case, surfaces plural. Being able to render and calculate the placement of a texture from each individual frame, accounting for the player's movement and view angle, was an extraordinarily tall order back in 1992. To display the textures correctly with no issues would cause massive performance hitches. Much of the computer's memory was devoted to calculating this huge and hugely interactive world, you know, down to whether or not two rocks are bumping into each other. This left less wiggle room for 3D performance, so Blue Sky sacrificed perspective-correct texture maps in favor of affine texture mapping. This will be familiar to anyone who's played a PlayStation 1 game, as the warbling effect. The warbling certainly does occur in Underworld, especially when looking up or down, which itself would remain a novel feature for years to come. The gameplay window also takes up only a small section of the screen, which was done to save on performance costs. In spite of these compromises and code which, according to Nearth, was barely holding together, this game engine is an incredibly impressive piece of work.

It helps that the artistic angle of the game is equally as strong. The game's art was handled by Carol Angel and Douglas White, making it Angel's first industry project and, aside from Madden Football and some packaging, the first for White as well. The game's art portrays a crushing darkness. You can't help but feel the sense of hopelessness as you make your way through the abyss. Grimy floors and walls covered with muck and creeping vines set you on edge. "Put some damn shoes on, Avatar! You're going to catch tetanus!" Except they haven't discovered tetanus yet, so they'll just say you died of some old-fashioned disease like Goblin Madness. The ceilings in some sections of the dungeon are barely taller than the Avatar, creating a sense of claustrophobia. You know it won't suddenly crush you, but what if it does? Other areas are so vast, with tall ceilings and interiors that stretch out far into the gloom, that you'll just have no idea of what to expect. It's a very moody game, a grim and isolating experience that feels wholly different than the Britannia we've come to know. The limited draw distance is well utilized to restrict your view and reinforce that subterranean mood.

To the average Ultima fan, this could be off-putting. The idea that we're spending not just an extended period of time, but the entire game, underground in some dank, sunless prison. "Where's the scenery? Where's the joviality?" Well, it's hard to come by, but not totally absent. The abyss dwellers have managed to carve out little safe havens that come to feel cozy in contrast with what's outside. There's still hope and civility to be found here, but it's in short supply. It can be difficult to landmark your environment when so much of it is just cave passages and brick walls, but Underworld actually circumvents the worst trappings of the dungeon crawl. Major areas of each floor are cleverly distinguished through the use of unique textures. As mentioned, there's always the standard of Cirrus, but it goes beyond that. The Grey Goblin settlement on level one is encased in peeling stucco, while the human settlement's floors are made from marble tiles. From a design standpoint, it's a simple but effective way of helping to designate important locations. From a technical standpoint, it's all the more impressive when you consider that Underworld was probably the first 3D game to bother displaying textured floors and ceilings at all.

Despite the through-line of dark dungeon flavor within the Stygian Abyss, each floor has a unique atmosphere. After spending a long enough period of time down here, you'll be able to identify which floor you're on at a glance. This is largely thanks to the designs of the levels themselves and the architecture within them. Most of the clutter you find on any given level will be 2D and sprite-based, ever facing the player. This includes campfires, projectiles, even NPCs, although they can walk around, which changes the angle you see them from. The chunky, heavily outlined sprites do a good job of standing out in the dungeon. You'll never mistake an item for a non-interactive element in this environment, and that is important. As an inevitability, the crisp pixel art is somewhat distorted in the 3D environment, depending on where you're looking at it.

The user interface, on the other hand, always looks great. The paper doll equipment interface is just as clear and intuitive as ever, and it's cool being able to always see your character. In first-person games, you often can't appreciate how badass your guy looks. I like being able to admire my character's stupid hat whenever I want to. The serpentine dragons coiling around the gameplay frame are an excellent touch, too. I love the way they occasionally twitch and flick their tails. All of the little details are just on point: a slab that the compass sits atop, a vampire bat staring the player down, the health and mana vials yanking this pull chain. On the inventory screen, it will rotate over to a stat view, which is a nice, efficient use of the UI. It also means that there's no pausing, adding to that sense of realism. Anything you want to do, from chugging a potion to checking your attributes, has to be done in real time. Certain objects, such as shrines, are also impressively modeled in 3D. There are a few standout sections that do a nice job of showing off the engine's capabilities.

The monsters of the underworld look suitably intimidating, too. Most creatures have multiple frames of animation, and some, such as the ghost, even utilize transparency. Up until this point, we've never had such a detailed look at our foes. The early Ultima games simply lacked in graphical detail, and in the Ultima 6 engine, enemies are projected from a top-down view. Facing off against Golems or giant spiders and seeing them approach you scares the hell out of you, adding a totally new dynamic to the game: up close and personal. The encounters feel intense because of these larger, more detailed enemies shown from a frontal view. The sprites and character portraits used also do a good job of utilizing limited space. Items are relatively small but translate well to both menu icons and in-game instances of objects. Despite the game taking place entirely in an underground dungeon, there's an impressive variety of textures used on walls and floors, giving the areas within each level a distinctive look and vibe. The addition of vines creeping on walls, stalactites dangling from ceilings, and small details marking the environment, such as windows which can even be looked through, go a long way in selling the authenticity of the underworld. Much of the visuals are still identifiably Ultima, but it feels like a much darker fantasy than how Ultima is typically portrayed. I think it's a great excursion for the series, especially following the world spin-offs, which were almost a little too bright and cheerful. The Stygian Abyss is a reminder that the world of Britannia, for all of its virtue, can be a violent and cruel place for those on the wrong side of the Codex.

Helping to shoulder this moodiness is the game soundtrack, which is short but very, very sweet. The music tracks that play while you wander the labyrinth are suitably dark, but also give off a sense of mystery and intrigue. This is a grim place to be, but within it, some hope can be found, and perhaps mysteries of ages past. The track "Maps and Legends" plays every time you speak with another person. The militaristic snare drum drives home the sense of having found order in the chaos of the underworld. The dark, pensive melody of the track is a reminder that nobody is down here to make friends. There are a handful of high-energy combat tracks, which are suitably intense and disorienting. These are queued up automatically when an enemy is nearby, which gives the game a context-sensitive soundtrack of sorts. This soundtrack, composed by Dave Goett and George Sanger, better known as The Fat Man, is terrific and made even better with a Roland synthesizer. The only issue I have is that there's just not enough of it. You spend so much time down here in the dungeons; hearing only a small handful of tracks can be repetitive. That's when you throw on some Judas Priest for a little bit. I swear, no matter what you're doing, the lyrics will fit the situation. It's weird. Interestingly, playing with a Roland synth can add a creative spin to a few sound effects. Opening doors sounds like a hi-hat clapping. Jumping into the water sounds like a digital slap bass. I mean, what is this, the Underworld or Funky Town?

So, with knowledge of many gameplay systems, the question is: how do the story and the various quests within the game unfold? When you first make contact with the goblins of floor one, you'll meet Verix, King of the Green Goblins, and an insufferable ass who needs his ego stroked, or else he'll tell you to "mosy." With sufficient toying, he'll clue you into a story of great importance. Apparently, the late Cabirus had gathered eight talismans, each corresponding to one of the virtues. He planned on giving them to the communities of the Abyss as gifts. Since his death, nobody knows what's become of the talismans, and they're assumed to be lost. Anybody with an even passing familiarity in Ultima as a series knows that somehow, some way, we're probably going to need those talismans.

The second floor of the Abyss is where things get really interesting. These are the halls of the Mountain Folk, otherwise known as dwarves. Yes, indeed, dwarves are back in Britannia, and I, for one, couldn't be happier. For the record, they get pretty pissed off if you call them dwarves; they prefer Mountain Folk. The Mountain Folk were brought here for their unmatched excavating abilities, easily carving out livable spaces from the bedrock. As a result, their enclave is well-organized and pleasant to look at. The ever-present darkness and tall ceilings of their royal hall bear a striking resemblance to the Mines of Moria. You're given several quests here. The leader of the Mountain Folk, Goldthirst, tells us of a vile gazer that's been terrorizing the Dwarven mines. These mines have since been abandoned, although a blacksmith named Shaq still works there. In addition, there's a fellow by the name of Ironwit, who asks you to retrieve some blueprints for him, although the directions he gives aren't exactly clear. Since we are likely not powerful enough to handle a gazer just yet, finding the blueprints seems like a good first step. We're told that they're off in an alcove, a much further distance away than I'm comfortable jumping at present. Ironwit mentioned that he's stored a potion for just such an occasion as this: a potion of levitation. The only problem is that the storeroom is locked, and it's being kept next to a deadly bottle of poison, and he doesn't remember which one is which. Trying to bash the door to the storeroom seems impossible; my lockpicking skill is also nowhere near high enough to be helpful. This means key hunting, and the nearby maze is a good place to start.

This labyrinthian area is filled with Headless, an enemy you might remember from earlier games, who make their return. Now, watching this back, you might not think too much of this section, but for just a moment, I want you to try your best to imagine that you're a teenager in 1992 playing this for the first time. You'd never experienced a 3D world like this. The eerie music that plays as you creep through these dark halls; your defenseless footsteps echoing throughout the level. "Are those mine?" Your torch is almost extinguished. You're surrounded by nothing but walls reaching high beyond your sight. You gradually become aware that only the Headless, living dead, accompany you down here. You'd wet your pants. These sub-areas within dungeons are masterfully paced and placed. They never feel out of rhythm with the rest of the dungeon, but they still serve as distinct areas with unique challenges. After leaving this area, you can breathe a sigh of relief. The rest of the dungeon doesn't look particularly different or much safer, but at least you're not there anymore.

When I say that playing these games gives every player their own stories to tell, this is what I mean. Like a game of D&D, you'll never forget about the time you ventured through the Headless maze, got lost in the dark, nearly became a Headless yourself. Also, like a D&D story, most people probably won't find it that interesting, but hey, it's a feather in your cap, and you'll never forget the experience. All right, time to quaff that potion and levitate on over to the other side. And fly! Son of a Rooney Dooney! The levitation spell effect is quite interesting. As mentioned, it really changes the dynamics of exploration. No dungeon crawler had ever featured such vertical layouts on each floor. The way slopes and passages wind amongst each other creates a lot of depth beyond the simple X and Y axis that a player would be used to using the Q and E keys. You can raise and lower yourself, cruising through the air with the greatest of ease. You move quite slowly, and the spell effect doesn't last long, but having this option to deal with certain obstacles is really helpful. On top of just being a consistently useful feature, it's a great way for the developers to show off, taking advantage of these full 3D environments.

Your reward for returning the blueprints is another levitation potion. Great. If you bribe Goldthirst, he'll tell you the password to his treasure room, just to look, not to touch. After all, it's located in a pit guarded by a Golem with no way back up. But I have levitation potions, so that won't stop me. If you can outmaneuver the Golem, you can get some great stuff. You're taught the concept of using passwords in dialogue, how to levitate, and giving gifts in conversations, which is important. There are plenty of characters who jealously guard information or resources, but they'll be more inclined to help you if you can appeal to their tastes. Dwarves love gold, hence the names. While certain other characters might be desperate for food, a light source, or other types of treasure, by figuring out what they want and obliging them, you'll often become privy to some very helpful information. In addition to this soft reward, you'll also find a rockhammer. While dealing with the blueprints, rockhammers are an example of a tool that can alter the environment. In this case, the rockhammer, unsurprisingly, allows you to hammer rocks. You can destroy them, which opens up new paths and serves as a source of slingshot ammo. Being able to pave your way through rocks is necessary in navigating the abandoned Dwarven mine to the South. You'll find Shaq working. If you've got a broken piece of gear that you'd like repaired, Shaq will restore its durability for a nominal fee. There's also a wait time, and yes, it's real time. You have to go dick around for 15 minutes while waiting for your sword to be repaired. It's actually a good trade-off and really hammers home the resource management that Underworld encourages. Good weapons aren't easily found, at least not for some time. You have to be cautious when using your equipment, lest you break something at a critical moment.

Even when you do find plenty of food, gold, and items, you will be held back by your carrying capacity. Encumbrance scales with your strength level, and it's a hamstringing force throughout the entire game. The better your armor is, the heavier it is. The heavier it is, the less you can carry. Food, potions, scrolls—they all add up, and you will frequently find yourself having to make decisions: Is it better to deck yourself out in plate mail, or should you leave your shield or gauntlets behind so you can take a few extra potions? Gold coins are especially insidious when it comes to weight; just a small handful can make a big difference. Your capacity is affected by your character strength, so warriors have a notable advantage here. Playing a mage, you won't be able to wear much armor, making magical buffs more important. Because of all this, it's a good idea to find a safe zone on each floor where you can store your gear. That way, you can return to it later when and if you need it. This is possible because your item placements in the game are persistent. If you kill an enemy and search their body, that loot will spill out onto the ground, where it will remain for the duration of the game. If you toss your gear onto the floor, you can rest assured that it'll be in the exact same place when you come back, unless, of course, you see the "old Underworld internal error problems and objectless" message, in which case resting assuredly would be about as far from your current emotional state as possible. Regardless of the odd bug, you'll be dropping stuff off frequently, so it's a big point in the game's favor that your errant items aren't wiped from memory the second you change floors.

It's also important that this doesn't happen. Much like the killing of NPCs, the game gives you the freedom to drop absolutely game-necessary items wherever you want. The easy solution: don't drop game-necessary items. The thing is, you don't always know what's considered game-necessary. I was carrying around a recipe for rotworm stew that I'd learned from the goblins on level one. I figured it was just something that I could do to create food, so I wrote it down in my physical notebook and tossed the recipe somewhere. You need that recipe, and I don't mean you need to know it; I mean you need the item itself. I can't tell you how panicked I was, scouring each and every level looking for this recipe. I'd made so much progress; if I had to start a new game over this, I would have been flushing many hours of gameplay down the toilet. I checked every nook and cranny, examining notes that I had tossed and scrolls that I'd come across. At long last, after much searching, I breathed a biblical sigh of relief. I found the recipe. In that moment, I learned one of many lessons that Ultima Underworld would go on to teach me: one man's junk is that same man's salvation when he later realizes that it wasn't junk.

When you've managed to slay the gazer in the mine, you can return to Goldthirst, who expresses his gratitude on behalf of the Mountain Folk. He awards the Avatar with a rare gem cutter, which, like offering gifts, utilizes the game's bartering interface. The bartering system of Underworld is a noteworthy aspect of the game. The circumstances of the Abyss's collapse have resulted in a trading system in which gold is only one small facet. Mostly, you'll be trading goods for other goods. During a conversation, you'll often have the option of choosing to barter. Sometimes this depends on your reputation with a given person. You can drag and drop your desired items to the barter window at the top of the screen, then click on whichever items you want from the NPC stash. If the NPC finds the trade to be favorable, they'll agree to swap items with you. Bartering is affected by two skills in particular: appraisal and charm. While bartering, you can gauge the quality of the current deal. A low appraisal skill will only give you a general idea of how balanced the current trade might be, while high appraisal gives you a more specific measurement. The charm skill simply lets you cut better deals. You flash him a cheeky Avatar smile, you flex your muscles a bit—all of a sudden, your stuff is all worth more. Because of this, gold is mostly treated as an equalizer, bringing deals up to parity with each other. It's a surprisingly robust little system and one that would later be used and expanded upon by so many CRPGs. I don't think anyone would have batted an eye if they just had a typical store layout where you bought things with gold. The inclusion of bartering really impresses upon the player the desperation that people are facing. Food, water, and survival equipment are far more important than gold and jewels for the average person here. The bartering screen is also used to turn in quest items to NPCs, simulating the act of handing somebody an object. It's another cool touch, necessitating you go through your bags and find the item as opposed to having it automatically removed from your inventory via a boolean check.

On that note, let's talk about inventory management. It's similar to Ultima 6's system but easier to control. This is largely thanks to the fact that you're only managing a single inventory and not that of an entire party. With that in mind, the system works pretty nicely. You can literally pick items up from the environment and just directly place them in the satchel of your choice. It's a good idea to organize your stuff with these bags. I had one for quest items, one for sundries, one for treasure, etc. It's up to you to keep everything nice and organized, and you're probably going to want to do that. As mentioned with the rotworm stew incident, there are a lot of items in this game that appear useless or look mundane but aren't. This can be somewhat frustrating. Unless you're playing a character with very high strength, you'll frequently be offloading gear to make room in your inventory, only you're never quite sure when a seemingly mundane item might serve a valuable purpose. You'll likely have a hell of a lot of keys and scrolls with you at any given time because, what if you need them? There's no key ring or tome of written material that you can use to store these items, leading to a little bit of inventory chaos, no matter what. In the beginning, I appreciated the decision-making involved with resource management. By the end, when you're powered up, it mostly feels like an annoyance. I think it would have been nice to have some method of inventory expansion at some point, perhaps having a backpack equipped could add a few pounds of capacity, but of course, hindsight is 20/20.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of Ultima Underworld's design is its focus on diagetic puzzles. When I say that, what I mean is this game is rife with puzzles, but attention is never drawn to the fact that they are indeed puzzles. Many puzzle dungeons and games are conspicuously puzzle-like in their design, clearly there for the player to solve and not because they make environmental sense. The puzzles here feel like natural extensions of the game world and the characters within it. A perfect example of this occurs on level three. This area of the Abyss has been completely flooded, a mire in which simply getting around can be a trial. It's here where the lizard men have established themselves. While they are non-hostile and can understand the common tongue perfectly, they can't speak it. With a few exceptions, those few lizard men who do speak common have taken an oath to never share the secrets of their own language. This makes communication seemingly impossible, as they ask the Avatar questions, and answering incorrectly lowers your reputation with the group. To make matters worse, a mute wizard named MGO has been imprisoned by the lizard men and would really like you to clear up a misunderstanding between the two parties. MGO, despite being mute, speaks the lizard man tongue. In order to build your understanding of the lizard man language, you must speak to them, write down certain words, then head back to MGO. You can manually type out words from the lizard dialect. Doing so, MGO will do his best to pantomime the common meaning of that word. You'll gradually be able to piece together sentences, although you have to use your imagination a bit. For example, "bika" means hello, "fapa" means lizard man, and so on. When a lizard man says, "Baa Sor click tosa, yes short click thea," they're saying, "Hello, stranger. You're a friend of the lizard men." Running back and forth between the lizard men and MGO can be exhausting, but it's a great idea for a puzzle, a perfect two-way miscommunication with no obvious solution in the beginning. You can eventually negotiate MGO's freedom, and he heads to a lower level of the Abyss. That happens quite frequently; when you help people out, they'll move elsewhere, often meeting you again later on. Learning the language in this context helps you communicate with other lizard men too, leading to the Avatar learning a helpful water walking spell that's not listed in the manual.

Situations like this serve as the game's quests, which are rarely so simple as collecting 10 squint feathers. The quests are often woven into the game and your exploration of each floor. Sometimes the rewards are tangible, while other times you're given information, which is often just as or more valuable. The game is seldom cryptic regarding puzzle solutions or how to progress, but a little advice can go a long way in helping you figure things out. Thankfully, the dungeons are also littered with notes. Notes were utilized in Martian Dreams, but they've really embraced the mechanic here. Everywhere you go, you'll find scrawlings of people who came before you. Sometimes they'll teach you mantras, other times they'll tell you the location of rare items, and often they're just there for the sake of world-building. This concept of world-building is such a critical component in the immersive simulation. Rather than explaining concepts via cutscenes or heavy-handed expository dialogue, you're just given disparate bits of often conflicting information in-game and then left to infer what happened to this world. Characters will speak with bias, and notes may not always be accurate either. Being able to piece together these backstories helps to make Underworld's conception of Britannia feel like a grounded and believable place. The concept of using notes in this way is really easy to take for granted, given how many games rely on such a thing, but at this point, it was still a very novel idea. Having to rely on secondhand info to give you a fuller picture of the story and life in the Abyss is a key component of the game, and any kind of instructions or concepts the game is trying to put across are delivered in-world. That kind of storytelling that only video games excel at is rare now, never mind when Underworld was dropped in 1992. It's an organic vehicle with which to deliver exposition and hints, and it suits the lonely atmosphere of the Underworld. It doesn't feel like the world is being presented to you; it feels like you're uncovering something, like you're partaking in a world that existed before you were present and will continue to do so after you're gone.

Level four of the Abyss is full of long hallways and tall ceilings with a primitive and cavernous layout. It's here where the trolls live, somewhat ornery and ill-equipped to understand the nature of virtue, but still not inherently evil or anything. On the opposite end of the level is the base of the Knights of Xylos. This is the Order of the Crux Anata, an honorable group of warriors persisting in their quest for valor despite the world literally crumbling around them. I appreciate that some of the broader groups from earlier games have been given these kinds of designations. The Knights of Xylos is a little broad and elementary; the Order of the Crux Anata, though, that's instant personification of those knights. Their personnel, young and eager, formed this knighthood to rival the Order of the Silver Serpent. The code of the Crux Anata includes an addendum: this orders the knights to renounce their prejudices towards the monsters who they co-inhabit the Abyss with. This commitment to temperance has created some tension, as they're often at odds with their neighbors, the trolls. It's from the knights that you learn more about the Abyss and what kind of place it was when Sir Cirrus still lived. "In better times, thou wouldst have seen our true glory. The splendor of our domain and righteousness of our cause were great indeed. But alas, the environs have changed, and the walls have fallen down. The just have been silenced by the desperate, and not even the strongest among us can hope to rebuild what Cirrus wrought." Look, I'm really sorry to hear that, really I am, but maybe you guys shouldn't have established your new digs in a place that is literally called The Stygian Abyss.

The importance of the talismans is reinforced here, and the knights even allow you to join them, though it isn't mandatory. What follows is a sort of prototypical faction quest line. You're given a number of different missions to prove your metal and are rewarded with both a title as well as access to the knight's armory. It feels substantial enough to be a chunk of the main quest, but it's entirely optional and very much worth doing. Whether you join them or not, you'll be asked to help the order slay a Chaos Knight named Rodric. He was once a member of the Crux Anata, but perhaps due to the nature of the Abyss itself, he's been corrupted by darkness. We speak to the last man who attempted to fight Rodric, a grievously wounded man named Biden, who was struck down by... excuse me, Rodric, the Chaos Knight, has assumed control of the old banquet hall, and what follows is a battle of attrition. Rodric has got plenty of health, high defenses, and many of the dungeon's creatures show up to help him. Thankfully, I was wearing a ring of leaping that allowed me to escape and cast a few healing spells in the nick of time.

Death is an interesting matter in Underworld. In the beginning, when you die, you simply reload a save, as you would any other CRPG. Not long after starting, though, you'll find the Tree of a Silver Seed. Interacting with it, the tree crumbles to dust, leaving only the seed behind. Anywhere you plant the seed, a tree will grow in its place. From that point on, if you die, you'll respawn at the Silver Tree. There aren't really consequences for death, aside from wasted time, and this is for the best. For one thing, this kind of game needs to push experimentation, and booting the player to the main menu every time they do something that doesn't work will only discourage them from playing. With this new engine, second of all, there are a few deaths in Ultima Underworld, surprisingly few, but still not none. A lot of this is due to the game's first-person platforming sections, which, despite being an impressive feature, isn't the best part of the game. Your character's velocity is unpredictable, leading to many ill-fated jumps. Sometimes having high acrobatics is just a curse; it's like you're flying through an anti-gravity tunnel. Of course, you can just save before every single jump, and I did. Oh boy, did I. But having the in-game fail-safe in the form of a harmless respawn definitely helps. It also places some responsibility in the player's hands. If you plant the tree on level one and just forget about it, well, you'll respawn on level one, even if you're close to the end of the game. Ideally, you want to explore each level, get your bearings, secure the exits and safe areas, then go back up and grab your silver seed and move to the next area, replanting it. You can play it risky if you want to, but you often have to backtrack to earlier floors anyway, so might as well just grab the seed while you're there.

With Rodric defeated, we not only bring honor to the knights but also find a key that opens up a lot of exploration on this floor. At this point, you'll be able to find a few of the eight talismans. The Standard of Honor is given to you by the order themselves as a thank you for slaying Rodric. The Taper of Sacrifice can be acquired from a mad outcast, trading food or torches to them. It's a pretty unassuming location for such an important item, which brings up questions regarding the importance of these relics. Are they truly imbued with the power of virtue? Would they have been enough to bind the groups together as Cirrus had hoped? Or are they just things, things that have been lost and found and passed around? Unlike anything else in the Abyss, perhaps they are mystical. I mean, it did still end up in the Avatar's hands, didn't it?

Certain items that don't have an apparent use for us can be used later to find important items. The Dwarven Gem Cutter from Goldthirst, for instance, can be traded to a knight named Derek. As a thank you, he'll tell us how to find the Ring of Humility. Without this information or the clue book, you'd never figure out how to find this ring. On level five, it's this level where it starts getting real, and you know this is the case because there's lava here. They only wheel out the lava when they're trying to intimidate you. While we're here on level five, I have to fess up to a mistake that I made. I'm not proud of it, but it must be said. I only hope that you don't follow in my footsteps. Level five is the first floor on which you'll start seeing ghouls. Ghouls are scary; they look scary, they act scary. I didn't recall seeing anything in the manual about ghouls. A ghoul attacked me, so I attacked back. That's the way things typically work with ghouls. Now, I didn't think twice when I saw a ghoul; I just started killing them. "Poor unfortunate ghouls," I thought. "I'm doing them a favor by killing them." Much later in the dungeon, I spoke to a wizard who told me to go talk to a ghoul. I have to say, hearing him say these words made me a little nervous. After consulting a guide, I realized that I had walked into an enclave of friendly ghouls and killed them all. What seemed at the time like self-defense was actually just me killing a group of friendly ghouls that were all just innocently standing around. The thing is, these ghouls need to be alive. It's not optional; they must be consulted for the sake of completing the game. If you kill them, you're trapped in the Underworld forever. I began to feel a pit of despair appear in my heart when this information was unfurled. Bit by bit, I could only really summarize it with the words: "Oh no. Oh no, no, no. Please no. Come on. No." I keep a steady rotation of saves. I'll save in slot one, then slot two, three, four, before restarting. It seemed like a good system at the time, so the odds that I had to save from before the whoopsie were not good. Yet there, by the grace of God, slot four was a save from literally moments before I killed the ghouls. I lost several hours of progress, and I wasn't too happy about that, but it was another of Ultima Underworld's trademark lessons: "Look for the flag, stupid. If you can see the flag, you can't kill anything, even if they're really scary."

This ability to have the player unwittingly lock themselves out of progression, I have mixed feelings about it. I can't deny that during this whole debacle and the rotworm stew incident, I felt nothing but dread until the situation was resolved, and I was really lucky. It's not unreasonable to imagine that someone might lose a key or piss off the wrong NPC in those situations. I mean, you're just well and truly screwed, and the magnitude of that screw-up probably wouldn't be immediately evident. There's no popup message saying "reload a save" or "persist in the doomed world that you've created." I'm sure many Underworld players have stories over the years of soft-locking themselves 20 hours in, and that is a ruinous game experience. On the other hand, it's kind of the epitome of player choice, isn't it? In Ultima 6, you can cast an Armageddon spell that literally kills everybody in the world. Any genocide that may or may not have been committed by the Avatar has been purely accidental, and I aim to keep it that way. What can I say? I'm encourageable. Regardless, I appreciate it having the option here. You're given control of your Avatar's destiny. It's easy to imagine a situation where a person who's killed probably 10,000 ghouls across the Ultima games sees a ghoul and instinctively kills it. Should that person still not suffer the consequences, even if it was an accident? In a way, screwing you six ways from Sunday is the ultimate show of respect for a player's agency and intelligence. You're trusting them fully. This doesn't make for the best game experience, but I have to respect the balls it took to commit to this uncompromising design. If you were really underground in a labyrinthian dungeon full of locked doors and you found a shiny golden key, wouldn't you guard it carefully? Or would you just throw it in a corner somewhere and say, "Eh, probably won't need this"?

It's on level five where much of your thoroughness from earlier levels is tested. First of all, there's the lava. It's not much of a problem now, but traversing it will shortly become a more important matter. Maros Suck will offer to make you dragon skin boots. It's like Rick Wetzel starting a chain of pretzels stores; if your name is Maros Suck, you pretty much have to become a ghoul. The dragon skin boots will allow you to walk on lava unscathed, but you'll need dragon scales. How do you get those? Well, you need to meet a troll named Cather on level four and offer to make him rotworm stew. The recipe for rotworm stew, of course, can be acquired from a goblin on level one. Various recipe-related mishaps notwithstanding, the ingredients also need to be tracked down. You'll need a bowl, a dead rotworm, and a green mushroom. One thing leads to another, and this is why it's best to be fastidious while you're still on an earlier floor. It's a nice timesaver to have already found the necessary items. You can simply go back and forth between floors, and indeed, you'll probably have to here and there. The levels are well-designed to allow for quick traversal, and there's even a gate travel spell. If you find a moonstone, you can plant it anywhere you want and quickly teleport there with the casting of a spell. It's basically like having a second silver seed, but you don't need to die to use it. Despite all of this, you'll likely want to minimize the amount of going back and forth between floors that you have to do.

In addition to the boots, there's also a neat little puzzle to find the Ring of Humility, one of the eight relics. You were told from Derek on the previous level to look for a room full of levers. He gives you the order with which to pull them and also tells you to avoid the center of the room, else the levers will reset. It's tough to explain this, but it's cool that stuff like this actually works. Often with early 3D games, there's limited ability in detecting finer movements and particularities, yet every time you're asked to do something physics-based in Underworld, it seems to function exactly the way you thought it would. When you're asked to place four emeralds upon four pillars, you just scoop them up off the ground and toss them onto the pillars, and it works first try. It's unexpectedly satisfying. It's like the player and the game are sympatico, thinking along exactly the same lines. I suppose it's surprising because this engine, in comparison to later 3D games, seems primitive, but in these cases, it works perfectly. I find myself impressed that the game knows how I'm moving around or accurately detects where I'm placing items. There's a margin for error with non-specific instructions like "stay away from the middle of the room," so it's kind of a delight when things play out exactly as you hoped. It also gives the engine wiggle room for some unexpectedly involved puzzles.

Another example of thorough exploration paying off is in Caliburn, the Sword of Justice, and one of the eight talismans. On level three, you may notice an odd indent on your map, uncovering a secret door amongst the vines. You'll find a switch which drains the water in a nearby area. If you head through this new passageway, you'll find the blade of Caliburn, the edge of a legendary sword which is said to cleave truth from falsehood. That's badass as hell. Later on level five, thorough exploration yields the hilt of Caliburn. Bringing these pieces of the sword back to level three, Shaq the dwarf will be able to repair the sword, granting you another talisman and an awesome weapon. If you're specked into swords, as I was, finding the pieces of Caliburn and thinking to yourself, "I remember where to find a blacksmith," and being vindicated is an awesome feeling. On top of dealing very respectable damage, Caliburn can never be broken. There's no need to lug around a bag full of weapons anymore or take trips back to level two to have your swords repaired by Shaq. Happenstance, I got this sword about as early as you can. Regardless of when you find it, though, it's an awesome reward. The blade itself is found in the Abyssal Catacombs, where many significant figures, including Sir Cirrus himself, were buried. What's interesting about Sir Cirrus is how opinions of who he was differ so dramatically between factions. Some people found him to be an egomaniacal scumbag; some, a misguided idealist; and others, a truly great man. With the Abyss falling apart in the wake of his death, you're left to wonder: Are a set of principles truly sound if their practice depends on the life and presence of one man? Some people in the Abyss endure entirely thanks to their devotion to Cirrus' dreams. Some, perhaps foolishly, believe that the Abyss can be returned to its former greatness. It's an interesting question to reflect on the nature of an idealist and how many of their fruits depend on their own charisma as opposed to the beliefs they espouse. Some think that Cirrus died of natural causes; others think it was poison or a magical curse. Foul play was involved. In any case, his grave has been looted, and his memory desecrated. Down in the catacombs, you'll find many graves, most unmarked, but some named, and a few even familiar to you. Gamyn's grave, for instance, can be found here. It was a surprisingly poignant little moment, almost literally stumbling across the forgotten grave of this person who's been speaking to me through the Avatar's dreams. It creates a much more tangible connection to the story, as well. You can also find an epitaph to the Gargoyles chiseled in the wall. "Although no more gargoyles will reside in the Abyss, we thank them for the sacrifice they made. Here lie those gargoyles who perished during the Great Plague shortly after the foundation of the colony of the Abyss. The effort they made to improve the Abyss shall not be forgotten." After spending so much time with the Gargoyles in Ultima 6, this is a sad little message to find, and one that players are likely to miss. The fact that the Abyss has once again become a forsaken place makes it likely that their graves and memory will be forgotten, which adds a sense of melancholy as you wander around these crypts. It's the casualness with which you find these writings that gives them significance. If you had no choice but to read the message, if the little stories you encountered were spoon-fed to you, they wouldn't have the same impact. It's the lack of pomp and circumstance that really works here. I just came through for the loot; I didn't expect to be reflecting on the passage of time and the nature of a legacy.

There are several other interesting occurrences on level five. You can find an old woman restlessly searching for her dead lover, driven mad with grief. You enter what was probably once a glamorous

Feasting Hall only to find it abandoned and filled with headless. You can help an alchemist find pieces of a rare mineral that he believes will allow him to create gold. Jack the ghoul will teach you a song that can be played via the number keys on your keyboard, provided you bring him a flute.

Each and every level is constructed slightly differently. No matter which level you're on, the ebb and flow to these areas is extraordinarily well put together. The first level is fairly simple, many narrow hallways connecting to each other with plenty of routes taking you wherever you need to go. The second level is shaped like a cross, with the center pillar branching out into four distinct regions: the maze, the mine, the mountain folk settlement, and a canal. Each area is like its own miniature dungeon, allowing you to return to the center and choose where to go next. The third level is built like a traditional dungeon crawler level with many mazelike interiors, jail cells, and branching hallways. The periphery of this area is surrounded by water, which once you have the water walking spell, acts like a circuit that easily connects the different sections to each other.

I could go on, but I think you get the idea. There's a rhythm to these levels, a great balance of puzzles, combat, exploration, and secret nooks packed with loot for you to find. Just when you're ready to throw in the towel, you'll come across a friendly community where you can catch your breath. Much of these areas are expanded upon and reused thanks to the keys you find, the levers you pull, and the spells you can cast. In this sense, the levels are anything but disposable. Through repeated expeditions, you'll become familiar with each one, relying on the map less and less often.

What's remarkable is that none of these areas are built like video game levels; they're constructed as actual environments. The prison cells on level three have been repurposed as homes for the lizard men. The cemetery on level five isn't designed for your convenience as a player; instead, it simply acts as an underground cemetery. Grave plots are systematically placed with rooms full of offerings, and cave-ins affecting the accessibility of the area. It's something I didn't notice at first, but looking back, it's obvious. Part of what makes Ultima Underworld such an immersive game is the fact that the Abyss feels like a real place. Huts have been dug out of soft ground, fires lit, and sleeping quarters placed next to wells of fresh water. Pits in the ground lead down to sewage canals where creatures scavenge for food, and leeches wash up on the shore. It feels like an underground city, like it was intentionally built for this purpose. I know that may seem obvious, but frankly, contemporary dungeon crawlers didn't abide by this philosophy; they were designed as video game mazes. There wasn't a sensible placement and flow of different rooms or the arrangement of furniture. In Underworld, you don't find the highest quality armor packed into a chest at the end of a combat gauntlet; instead, it's located in the knight's armory. Mushrooms are found growing in moist, humid areas such as the flooded level three. Bowls are found next to places where people eat. To have the exploration be engaging while making the levels pragmatic shows an understanding of design that game studios rarely capture on their first attempt. Apparently, the employees of Blue Sky would take camcorders and shoot video of themselves walking around the office in first person. They were trying to understand the logic behind movement and how that could be applied to a game. I think this obsession with creating something real ended up paying off in more ways than one.

The sixth level is where the game's challenge really kicks into high gear. This area is surrounded by lava flows, with the southernmost region being home to the seers of Moonglow. This is the most heavily populated area of the Abyss, with plenty of rooms carved out of the cave, albeit somewhat featureless. Maybe they're aesthetics or something; I don't know. It does go to explain why they need so many favors from you. Wizards are simultaneously the most hyper-competent group of people in fantasy, while also being the most utterly helpless. They'll tear your soul from your body and banish both from this mortal coil, while also struggling to get the wrapper off a Milky Way bar. That is to say, a lot of them need your help. Assisting one of the wizards and exhibiting honesty in your responses to his questions, he'll reward you with knowledge. Specifically, he'll tell you where to find the Book of Honesty, which is one of the eight talismans. Actually, brief aside here: the game calls it the Book of Truth, but it's referred to as the Book of Honesty. Why does it matter? Well, it doesn't really, but the Book of Truth was an immensely important artifact in Ultima 4. It was needed to unseal the Abyss and closely guarded within the Library of the Lium. Why the hell is it just sitting around down here anyway? Despite the wizard's helpful instructions, I had accidentally already found the Book of Truth. I was floating through the air following the lava flow and saw it sitting on a nearby ledge. I guess helping him was a waste of time, but hey, sometimes virtue is its own reward.

The fact that you can complete objectives out of order, and even accidentally, and that there's multiple entrances to these areas is all well within the glorious tradition of Ultima. If you'd rescued Mergo from the lizard man language incident earlier, his mentor Dr. Owl will tell you where to find the Wine of Compassion, hidden in a northern room underneath a tile in the Wizard's Lair. There's all kinds of secrets to find and hidden doors to unlock. You can find an upset Spectre named Warren. I don't get it; it's not hostile, but it won't talk to me. "Oh, Spectre Warren! Oh, that's very funny. I'm simply grinning from ear to ear." One thing that did get a chuckle out of me was this door. I was just going about my business opening a door when all of a sudden it started talking to me: "Open, close. Open, close. That's all anyone ever has time for. Things were not like this when I was thy age." What was different about opening doors back then, I wonder? Apparently, this is a wizard who turned himself into a door because he was tired of people asking him inane questions like, "How can I cast sheet lightning?" And now I must resist the temptation to ask how to cast sheet lightning, 'cause that sounds kind of sweet.

The wizards also tell you of an Iron Golem. "In better days, many would come to challenge the Golem in the name of valor. None would prevail, but the Golem was a mirthful sort, and those who participated would always earn his respect. The Golem has long awaited a challenger, and we can fulfill this role." You battle him in the center of a lava lake, which is pretty metal, and incidentally, so is he. His tough hide can break your weapons, and his defenses are almost impenetrable, so prepare for an endurance round. Defeating him, he awards you the Shield of Valor, yet another of the eight talismans. Like the Sword of Justice, this shield is equipable and unbreakable, making it another pretty sweet addition to your arsenal. You'll find some other great treasures on this level too. Some of the rarer runestones are located here, and the northern caves hold many secrets. It's here where you'll first encounter the Fire Elementals, which are some of the deadliest enemies in the game. Their fireballs are damaging and accurate, and even fire defense spells don't help too much. To make matters worse, they've got lots of health, and they're hard to hit. Even a skilled player can be easily overwhelmed. Sometimes, it's best to just run away. I mean, I've got the Shield of Valor; what am I trying to prove?

Among the seers, you'll find a man named Fgen. You startle him out of a dream, or rather, a vision. He sees a demon being summoned and wreaking havoc upon Britannia. Boy, I'd hate to be the guy who's got to deal with that mess. He also teaches you how to induce these visions. Huffing burning incense will cause "machine elves" to visit the Avatar, something like that. In our case, we can see one of the remaining eight talismans: the Cup of Wonder. Parts of a mantra are scrolled upon its surface, which we must put together. Now, I have to admit, finding the Cup of Wonder is one of the more questionable tasks you have in Underworld. What I mean by that is, I don't know how you would figure this out without the clue book, as I certainly couldn't. Speaking the mantra that you piece together from your visions, you'll be given a set of directions to follow. By repeatedly using this mantra, you'll triangulate your goal. On the third floor, you're only given a general direction, but if you hunt for it long enough, you'll find a hidden alcove with a Gazer inside. There's nothing really noteworthy in here, which is odd. What you're supposed to do is stand in this particular spot and play the flute song that you learned from I-Snack the ghoul. The album is coherent, it's thematic, it's conceptual. You're never told that the song should be used for this purpose; it just says "wondrous things will happen." Big deal, wondrous things happen all the time. I just argued with a talking door for 15 minutes. It's important to remember that people spent a lot more time with games back then, and the players' expected level of patience was much higher. CRPGs set the precedent, and many of them contained more cryptic tasks. It's not outside the bounds of reality to imagine that with enough time, you could figure this out. After all, "wondrous things will happen." Cup of Wonder, okay, I get it. I don't think it's necessarily a good puzzle, though. It feels somewhat disconnected from the rest of the game and an example of some of that "gaminess" creeping into Underworld's otherwise consistent design.

While I'm on the topic of complaining about things, let's dig a little deeper into Underworld's story. Your immediate goal is to rescue Ariel. For most of the first half of the game, you'll always be able to ask about Ariel with NPCs. Typical responses like, "Have you seen a girl around here?" What have you? The mountain folk are all just dudes, so I have to assume that she would stand out. Eventually, conversations somewhat abruptly stop giving you the option to ask after her. This is right around the time where you begin to piece together the bigger picture. The ghost of Gamon warns you of his brother's actions, a man named Tibalt, and the one who had Ariel kidnapped in the first place. Gamon and all were both inhabitants of the Abyss but somehow accidentally summoned a demon called the Slasher of Veils, which has got to be on the short list of coolest villain names of all time, if nothing else. While the two brothers vow to destroy the Hash-Slinging Slasher of Veils, Tibalt gradually becomes corrupted by the demon's evil. He's seduced by promises of great power, but only if he agrees to turn on Gamon and free the demon. Thankfully, prior to this betrayal, the brothers had created a Prison of Virtue located at the lowest point of the Abyss. Gamon manages to seal the Slasher in this prison, but alas, he is wounded and dies shortly after. Since then, Tibalt, who lacks the virtue necessary to unseal the door for his master, has been hard at work thinking up ways to free the Slasher. He decides that without virtue, the only way to open the door would be to sacrifice someone of great virtue in front of it. For some reason, I don't know the rules of the door. Also, this person has to be a virgin because that's the only way to prove that you're virtuous. Thus, I'm led to believe that either the Avatar is not considered the Paragon of Virtue anymore, or I'm supposed to believe that this guy, this guy right here, isn't constantly knee-deep in... you know what the point is that Ariel is going to be sacrificed, and we need to create a physical key of virtue in order to open the door. We do this by collecting keys of the three principles: Truth, Love, and Courage, as we did in Ultima 4. One problem I have is that this story's internal logic is so amorphous that much of it doesn't make sense, and it's just not well told. Almost everything I just told you was gleaned from the clue book, which has a whole section on the game's history. Very little of the game's main plot is described in the official manual, and even less of it in-game. I understand they wanted to keep it realistic, but I consider it a failing of the game's writing that I didn't know what was going on until the last couple hours of the game. If you have to seek out extraneous media to understand the fundamentals of a story, to me, you have not succeeded in properly telling it. It would be one thing if we were talking about an included game manual, but this was the optional walkthrough. You'll occasionally get scant bits of dialogue and note or fragments of a sentence from Gamon during your dreams, but for the vast, vast majority of the game, you have no concept of what's happening or why. I didn't even hear the name Slasher of Veils until I had almost finished the game. If there's a mention of him earlier, I didn't encounter it. I think one of the issues here is how they insist on having Gamon's communication be fragmented. You can barely understand him during your dreams, and I don't know what purpose that serves. In the intro, he was magically powerful enough to not only speak clearly to the Avatar but to physically pull him into Britannia. What is he going through a tunnel now? It doesn't create much by way of intrigue because you can't really understand him. It would have only helped the game if through resting, Gamon could clearly explain the fundamentals of the game's plot. That way, it wouldn't feel ham-fisted, and the developers could control how often you were given bits of lore. There are just so many unanswered questions: Why would sacrificing a virtuous person open a door that typically requires a key to unlock? How did Gamon's ghost pull the Avatar into Britannia? If Gamon and Tibalt were both virtuous enough to create a literal Chamber of Virtue, wouldn't that make them basically the most virtuous people to have ever existed? And in this case, why was Tibalt so easily convinced to betray his brother? I'm not saying that there can't be answers to these questions; I'm saying I'd like to know them. The answer, of course, is: "Shut up."

This is where it becomes clear that the Ultima part was retrofitted over top of the Underworld part. The intergroup dynamics are fascinating, and the side characters you meet have interesting stories. It's compelling to learn about life before the fall of the Abyss, and the game features some interesting themes. The problem is just the actual plot driving the whole thing; it feels slipshod and clumsily implemented. The clue book's explanation of the brothers' backstory seems like damage control. If you look at any summary of Ultima Underworld's plot, you'll inevitably come across the clue book as a source or reference. The characters in-game rarely have much to add regarding the situation, and you're left to infer much of what's happening. The challenge Blue Sky faced was to write a story that was consequential enough to drive the player forward, but not so consequential as to step on the toes of Ultima 7, which was being independently developed at the same time. The result is an ambitious plot that lacks a critical foundation. I believe they'd have been better off shooting for something much simpler and focusing on the gameplay. The ties to Ultima restrain the story more than anything else.

Following our tasks on level six, we at last reach level seven. My, oh my, how I loathe level seven. My first Avatar followed the path of the Ranger. It seemed like a fairly balanced class, so I thought it would be good for a first-timer, and I was right. I initially stuck with combat skills, but after a little while, I branched out to magic as well. I ended up relying quite a bit on spellcasting, healing, creating food, levitating, bolstering defense, hitting enemies at range. There are so many helpful things you can do with magic, that is, until level seven. This is the domain of the dark wizard Tibalt. As such, he's able to absorb all magical power present in the area, including yours. This leaves you unable to cast anything for much of the level. I hope you brought the Silver Seed with you, because you will be respawning.

To begin with, this floor is full of Goblin Soldiers, the personal thralls of Tibalt. A warrior named Cardan tells you that a medallion can be found to allow passage through the Goblin encampment. But I thought, you know what? No. There's an option to disrespect the goblins and tell them that you're going to come through without the medallion. Selecting this forces you to fight your way through the goblin and troll armies within the level. Without healing magic, there's a lot of resting involved here. Without the create food spell, that resting becomes less effective over time. Let's just say that by the time I was done here, this 3x3 ft square of water was at high risk of being overfished. I had to walk back and forth a lot, heading back to earlier floors to recharge and coming back swinging for a bit. It's amazing how naked I felt without access to magic, and I didn't realize just how much I relied on it until this point. By the way, did I mention that this floor is incomprehensible? In the winding caverns, you encounter a wizard named Naruto. I literally can't think of a joke that isn't lazy here, so you know, "Believe it or whatever." Naruto informs you that Tibalt's orb is behind the draining of magic. The only material capable of destroying such an orb is the substance that the orb itself is made of. It is at this point where the Avatar's life, and by extension my own, becomes markedly worse. I hadn't found any way into the prison section of the Goblin Keep where plenty of friendly NPCs are kept behind bars, so I tried to take the back entrance. A back entrance which is heavily populated with Fire Elementals. They all happen to be a crack shot and able to dispatch me even while I fly through the air. This entire molten hallway is one big death trap, made worse by the fact that I was dreadfully low on health, healing items, and food. Even when I did find a brief respite, it's not like I could rest and restore my health. I finally found my way to what looked like a promising area, but for some reason, I just died while I was there. Why are bad things happening to me? I shamefully backtracked through the area, if for no other reason than to catch my breath. On a previous level, I found an entryway down to the eighth level, which really brightened my day because it was the first new passage I'd come across. While it was mostly a dead end, I did find something called the Orb Rock in that bottomless well. After this, it was back to the slog. I have to admit, this entire section was just brutal for me. I felt unprepared, and yet I couldn't think of any other way to approach it. Under normal circumstances, I would have an item that lets me see invisible traps in this maze, but I had locked myself out of that possibility. Maybe, maybe I should have been nice to the goblins. No, no, it's the goblins who are wrong.

This marks the beginning of what I call the save scumbag's odyssey. I saved my game, I walked two steps. If I died, I reloaded. If I lived, I saved again and kept going. I applied this to the entire maze. It was unpleasant, frankly. I felt kind of dirty doing it, but it had to be done. After much saving, dying, and reloading, I at last reached Tibalt's Lair and confronted him, tossing the Rock at his orb. It shatters, restoring the Avatar's magical abilities. Now we're even. Tibalt flies through the air, sending spells at us, but two can play at that game. As a boss, he's mechanically not much different than any enemy we fought so far, but I have to say, it's pretty damn epic to be fighting an evil wizard in mid-air, floating above his lava arena. I won't soon forget the occasion. With Tibalt defeated, he sputters out his last words. Apparently, he was actually trying to save the world. His ritual would release the demon from its bonds and then bind it to Ariel's body, where it would be rendered harmless. We had interrupted him before the second part of the ritual could take place, so instead of just killing Ariel, there's more at stake. The Slasher of Veils has an interdimensional thirst for blood, and it won't easily be quenched. I wish you'd mentioned all of this before the fight. I literally initiated conversation with you. Is really saving Britannia if you're the one who endangered it in the first place? The Avatar manages to save Ariel, who's able to use her Amulet of Travel to return to the world above. Unfortunately, our work in the Abyss isn't over. The Avatar must still assemble the Tripartite Key. After all, he's, uh, he's not a virgin. Okay, plenty of, uh, plenty of sex. We are also contacted by Gamon once again, who asks us to find his remains and lay them to rest at his grave. With Tibalt's key, the Avatar is able to free some prisoners from this level. One prisoner thanks you but remains on this floor, telling you to recite the password "F" to one of the seers on the sixth level. Speaking this password, which is the name of the Shadow Lord of Falsehood, the seer will tell you to seek a book in their abandoned library. This book is called "F-Fanlo," and speaking the latter part of this phrase, "Fanlo," at a shrine, you'll be rewarded with the Key of Truth. Another of the prisoners will thank you by drawing you a detailed map of the surrounding environment. It's drawn on the back of a portrait of a man named Tom. Tom was the late husband of the grief-stricken woman back on level five. Returning this portrait to her, she's able to receive closure, and you're thus awarded with the Key of Love. Finally, the seventh level houses a hidden staircase upwards. This allows you to access a secret part of each level, one that you've likely seen but haven't been able to explore. The floor directly above you has you wandering through walls of fire to find your way around, which I found to be an incredibly atmospheric moment. That's the word of the day, isn't it? Atmosphere. It's not impossible for a 2D game to be atmospheric, not by any stretch, but 3D games have a supreme advantage. So much of what atmosphere is is tied up in our senses, which are more broadly engaged in a 3D environment. It's much easier to have crushing darkness portrayed or a grand sense of scale when you're in the shoes of the one experiencing those things. It feels dreadful, but in a good way.

Just when you think you've got a handle on the game, some new quest or mechanic is introduced to put you on the back foot. You're forced to be cautious and rational in how you speak to others, how you treat items, and how you approach hostile situations. The Underworld itself feels like a living, breathing entity, as much a character as the Avatar or anyone else. Try as you might, you can never truly conquer it. Treat these Stygian halls with respect, whether it's an army of skeletons marching up to take out the trash or the glowing eyes of a Golem emerging from the darkness, you'll never forget that the Avatar is an unwelcome guest. Speaking of guests, you can find a Zoraite Wisp here in the secret area. Wisps have made appearances in the past few Ultima games, spending their time studying those from other dimensions. This particular wisp offers us a spell that will end all life in Britannia. Stop offering me that! Doing this to the Avatar is like sparking up a Marlboro Light in front of a man trying to quit smoking. I, I don't want it. I don't want it. Well, maybe just one more time. "Avatar, thou hast some explaining to do. Why the hell does the Armageddon spell take my pants off?"

The Key of Courage can be found locked behind a door guarded by a Trent who, for all we know, just wanted to live peacefully like the ghouls. With the Tripartite Key assembled, we can finally head to the lowest floor, but before we do, it's time to talk about the Trent in the room. Ultima Underworld has a few weaknesses, some of which become more apparent as you close in on that grand finale. As much well-deserved praise as I've lavished on the game, it's only fair that we take a look at some of the things that didn't work out quite as well. First of all, much of the quest design. Ultima Underworld sticks with the tried-and-true scavenger hunt formula that the series has relied on for most of its life. Frankly, at this point in time, it feels stale. Having a big list of items to check off may be a serviceable vehicle for exploration, but it's not a great driving force for player motivation, at least not this player. It can also be somewhat annoying. Absent the clue book, you'll have no idea on which floors any of the eight relics or three keys are located. You may mistakenly think, "Oh, eight relics, eight floors, there's probably one relic per floor," but that would be incorrect. Some floors have many, others have none, and even thorough exploration can leave stones unturned. The optional side quests begin to feel mandatory because you simply don't know where you'll find an important object. It's certainly not unfair, at least not for the most part, but having necessary quest items unceremoniously tied to a single character, tucked away in some forgotten corner of an earlier floor, that's an Ultima tradition I'm willing to leave behind at this point. On that note, having critical items look so unassuming or placed so unremarkably, it's not a bad thing, but they do overdo it at times. When you're tasked with finding Gamon's remains, it's easy to cluelessly walk past those very remains many times. They appear identical to the many, many bone piles you've safely ignored for most of the game. Even using the look command doesn't yield a different result; it's just bones. The low-key circumstances of much of the game lead to some great, understated moments, like stumbling across the grave site, but sometimes, rarely, a little panache would go a long way, not just in creating memorable moments throughout the game, but in emphasizing when something major is afoot.

As for the combat, it mostly works well, but it never really evolves. It feels like the many magical buffs and status effects aren't worth using all that much; it's better to just beat on an enemy until they die. Some enemies remain a threat until the end, but most become trivial. There's not a lot of different enemy behaviors, which can make combat feel monotonous by the end, too. You have little to fear by the final level, and that somewhat compromises the tension. You'll also be so inundated with potions and gear that bartering quickly loses its place within the game. There's just something special about those first few initial hours when you've got nothing but a nearly broken dagger and tattered clothing to your name, hunting for food and resources while narrowly escaping punch-ups with groups of goblins. Then that feeling of overcoming, piecing together a set of armor, finding a suitable weapon, building a stockpile of food and survival tools. There's a great sense of the tables turning without altogether trivializing the game. An excellent balance of difficulty, while it comes out gangbusters in that regard, it loses some of that edge by the end of the game. What should be exciting stockpiles of treasure are easily ignored; you're unlikely to find anything all that exciting.

Finally, there's the skills. I love having a variety of skills to invest in, and refocusing the game on its traditional RPG aspect was the right move. The issue is that many of the utility skills feel superfluous and occasionally altogether useless. Tracking, for instance, is a neat idea. Pressing the F9 key to get a read on where enemies might be. In reality, if you see enemies, you can usually just turn around and walk away. The skill is a convenience, sure, but there's no reason to invest in it over a weapon skill. Lockpicking is similarly hard to justify when lockpicks are so hard to find, and your own fists often do the job just as well. Appraisal is again kind of convenient, but that's it. It's great to have a bunch of skills as options, and there is some high role-playing potential here, but it's just not rational to invest in many of these. This leaves only a small handful of useful "quote unquote" character builds, usually with a focus on weapons, magic, or a mixture of both. As I mentioned, even skills like missile aren't useful considering the scarcity of arrows. This is a shame because it cuts down on the novelty of a replay. While many concepts are introduced and nailed in Underworld, the skill system wasn't quite where it could have been.

The good news is that Underworld is such a well-constructed game that one doesn't need the promise of novelty to enjoy another playthrough. Eventually, you'll find Gamon's remains and return them to his grave. With his spirit at relative peace, I assume he's able to easily communicate with the player. He insists that a gate must be opened at the heart of the Abyss so that the Slasher of Veils can be returned to its own plane of existence. The thing about that is, he only really just came up with the idea; he doesn't know how to execute it. Wizards, man. To create a gate, we'd need to use something deeply tied to Britannia herself. In this case, the relics would do nicely. Dropping them into the center of the Abyssal volcano would cause a massive and dangerous vortex of energy. The final floor of the Abyss reflects the volcanic center with rivers of molten lava and Fire Elementals wandering around. Deep within this level, we find the Chamber of Virtue, where the Slasher of Veils is imprisoned. Inserting the Tripartite Key, we open the door and enter to find the demon standing in a pit of lava.

It's at this point that my mind drifted back to the dark ages of the CRPG and the crucible of Ultima itself. Back to Akalabeth. Richard Garriott was just 18 years old, programming a video game all by himself. The graphics were primitive to say the least, the interactions were limited, but despite its shortcomings, there was very little, if anything, quite like it. Powered primarily by the player's imagination, you would accept quests from Lord British and delve into the dungeons of Akalabeth. The player would gather food to survive, avoid traps, and face off against enemies. Initially, it would be rats and snakes, but soon they would become more fearsome. Carrion crawlers, orcs, and demons could be found on the lower floors, offering a formidable challenge. Finally, on level eight, at the very depths of the dungeon, you would find the Balron, a primeval being of pure malevolence. To defeat a Balron on level eight of a dungeon is to win Akalabeth. If only the 18-year-old Garriott had known how this seed would grow. The blank spaces where your imagination was meant to picture damp dungeon walls covered with overgrowth would be filled with just that. Where once you'd be tapping the 'A' key, having to imagine an epic battle, the clanging of swords, warriors dodging fireballs being sent down hallways, now this experience could be pulled from the world of abstraction and placed directly on the player's screen. Both Akalabeth and Ultima Underworld are games where the player must delve deep underground, reaching the eighth level of a dungeon in order to slay a powerful demon. Both games have the player finding precious loot, eating food to survive, and dealing with an increasingly challenging set of enemies. Despite these similarities, contextually, these games are worlds apart. And would you believe that they're only separated by roughly one decade of technological advancement? On some level, confronting the demon on the eighth level of the Abyss fulfills the promise of Akalabeth. The emergent experiences that were previously limited to tabletop gaming were here on the computer. The Slasher of Veils is invincible, impossible to defeat through normal means. Like Frodo relinquishing the One Ring within Mount Doom, we take the relics, many of which have been dependable tools for us, and toss them into the center of the volcanic, Stygian Abyss. This creates a powerful magical reaction, dragging both the Avatar and the Slasher into a hellish pocket dimension. The Avatar awakens in a kaleidoscopic nightmare, surrounded by lightning and pursued by the Slasher. As you run down the only path available to you, you are assailed by bizarre visions. Moving through the void with the Avatar's life force nearly depleted, he arrives at an exit portal in the nick of time, reappearing on the surface of the Abyss, outrunning a lava flow from the collapsing island. He dives into the water and is rescued by the crew of a lone boat belonging to Baron Alric. With his daughter saved and the demon imprisoned within its own realm, the Baron is grateful and apologetic. Well asleep that night, Gamon visits the Avatar one last time. We are informed that with the last of his power, he opened a gate to rescue those who resided in the Abyss. This with Gamon's spirit at rest and the Avatar victorious, our hero is returned to his own place and time, where he'll await Britannia's call once again.

That was Ultima Underworld. If you've been listening to me talk about Ultima up until this point, it may surprise you to learn that I try to avoid hyperbole. I know I tend to be a little, shall we say, passionate sometimes. That's because I love telling and talking about good stories. I want to put across how much the development of these games, and of course the games themselves, mean in the context of this medium's history. When you use words like "groundbreaking," "pioneering," and "first of its kind" enough times, the meaning of the words can be cheapened. If everything is groundbreaking, then nothing is groundbreaking. My problem is that Ultima is one of the most continually groundbreaking, pioneering, and first-of-its-kind series of all time. In so many cases, the series invented the wheel and then reinvented that same wheel again and again. How can I communicate such storied moments in gaming history without emphasis? I could just give you the facts, and the facts are important to me, but I'm trying to tell you a story here. If, in spite of all that, you raise an eyebrow every time I talk about how innovative or revolutionary an Ultima game was, here. If there's just one game where you can listen to me roll my eyes without being too skeptical, I really hope it's more than one. You're not going to get much out of this channel, but if it is just one, let it be Ultima Underworld.

People often default to id Software's Wolfenstein 3D when talking about the first 3D texture-mapped games. Wolfenstein was a huge moment in the history of gaming and technology. Incidentally, it was designed by ex-Origin Systems employee John Romero. The game was largely programmed, however, by John Carmack. Carmack was present at the 1990 Summer Consumer Electronics Show. He saw the demo for Underworld and said, "I can write a faster texture mapper than that." To Carmack's credit, and he deserves a hell of a lot, he did just that. Catacombs 3D, powered by Carmack's engine, beat Ultima Underworld to the market by several months. The more highly lauded Wolfenstein 3D was released two months after Underworld. The gameplay was smoother, the engine was faster, and it had lower hardware requirements to boot, but there were many things it didn't do. It didn't display floors and ceilings. It didn't allow the player to jump or look up and down. It didn't feature complex 3D geometry, slopes, multi-layered levels, or simulated physics. It didn't have bartering systems, conversation mechanics, or skill advancements that affect the player's abilities in-game. Now, Wolfenstein 3D didn't need any of those things because it was Wolfenstein 3D. Killing was its business, and business was good. Good, but it wasn't the first 3D texture-mapped game. Neither was Underworld. I generally find arguing about firsts to be a fruitless exercise and one that often misses the point. Being the first of something doesn't mean anything if that achievement doesn't leave an impact, if it doesn't change anything. Wolfenstein 3D inarguably changed the industry and ultimately the tastes of gamers for years to come. Ultima Underworld's influence is harder to explain but no less significant. This was the foundation of the immersive simulation: the emphasis on player choice, not only in how you deal with situations or even which situations you choose to deal with in the first place, but a choice in how involved you become in the game's story and world. This kind of environmental storytelling, in which little is explicitly stated, forcing you to use context clues and scattered writings to piece things together, this was a defining moment for the medium of video games. That's because this kind of storytelling is something only a video game is capable of. Literature tells, film shows, and video games involve giving a player the satisfaction of arriving to a conclusion, whether in the story, the mechanics of a puzzle, or a route through a difficult segment. That's at the core of what makes games special: the interactivity. The suspension of a player's disbelief is strengthened when you reward the player's intuition. It's a special feeling when you're able to utilize a set of tools to solve a problem without feeling led by the hand or bound by rules. Arguably, Underworld's greatest asset is its physicality. This is a rational game world, and the Avatar feels like an unrestricted, natural extension of the player. Finding things in the world, picking them up, and using them, it all just makes sense. Everything adds up in a way that never feels at odds with the player's own instincts. Since Ultima 4, this series had been almost single-mindedly focused on making you feel like the Avatar, as though this character in a video game is an embodiment of yourself, hence the name Avatar. This kind of player choice and expression of intent would reach new heights here. Once you've experienced the flexible, free-flowing movement, real-time combat, the logical physics system, and the uncompromising freedom of Ultima Underworld, it is very difficult to go back to the way dungeon crawlers used to be. This game is an emancipation, a moment where players could break free of shackles that most didn't even know were binding them in the first place.

Now, with all that said, telling you that Ultima Underworld is massively influential kind of distracts from the heart of the point. The most emphatic endorsement I can give Ultima Underworld is that I have no hesitation in recommending that you play it. It's still easy to control, it's still a rich and rewarding RPG experience, and it's still so much fun. These aren't things I can say about just any 3D game from the early '90s, and they're certainly not things I can say about just any Ultima game. Akalabeth is influential, but that doesn't make the act of playing it an entertaining way to spend your free time. Underworld, despite being the first of its kind in so many areas, still holds up brilliantly, and that is a testament to the timeless qualities of its design. The game's development was brutal, and it doesn't emerge from the forge totally unscathed. Sometimes the focus on realism compromises its playability. The story has a few good hooks, but its relationship to the Ultima series wasn't handled very well. The emphasis on side quests and even some proto-faction quests is a huge point in its favor, but the actual structure of those quests feels somewhat stuck in the past. It's far too easy to overlook critical items, and those scavenger hunts and their backtracking become small blemishes over the course of the game. It's a good thing, then, that the game is so enjoyable to play, and for just the right amount of time. As that feeling of a game having overstayed its welcome barely begins to crest the horizon, Ultima Underworld ends. You're left perfectly satisfied with the adventure and excited to experience it all over again someday. Through the blood, sweat, and tears of its development process emerged a legendary journey. Ultima Underworld is one of the most artistically, mathematically, and historically important video games of all time. It's also one of the great CRPGs, and something that anyone who values this art form ought to experience.

The Ultima games, by this point, had a long-standing tradition of receiving often compromised or just plain odd console ports. Well, in 1992, there wasn't any home console that could have run Ultima Underworld. The earliest dedicated 3D systems, such as the 3DO or the Atari Jaguar, hadn't yet been released. So for years, Underworld was available strictly on IBM compatibles and also home PCs in Japan. That changed five years after its initial launch, when Ultima Underworld would release on the Sony PlayStation, exclusively in Japan. There are some noteworthy differences in this version, starting with the game's intro. The pixel art has been replaced with higher-resolution illustrations combined with pre-rendered 3D graphics. While I love the art style of the original, the changes here result in a more traditionally cinematic setup for the game's story. I don't speak Japanese, so I'm probably not very good at gauging the quality of voice acting, but I feel comfortable saying that whoever plays Baron Alric does a much better job than Richard Garriott.

"If thou dost not return, Avatar, then thy life shall have brought thee low." From this point forward, the game is surprisingly unchanged, with some exceptions. You create your character and hop into the game. The first thing you'll notice is that this version of Underworld targets 60 frames per second, and while it doesn't always hit it, it's a pretty smooth experience. It wasn't a visually impressive game by this point, but in this case, it kind of works in the game's favor. The interface has also been changed to suit the PlayStation controller. Unfortunately, the Dual Shock hadn't yet been released, so there wasn't any hope of getting dual or even single analog control here. Thus, movement is pretty awkward. Like many PS1 games at the time, turning is performed with the D-pad, and strafing is done by holding L1 and using the D-pad. Most of the controls are relatively modernized for the time, anyway. You can sprint by holding L2, jump by pressing X, and quickly cast spells with Square. The worst part of controlling this port has to be navigating the menus. They took a very complex PC game and brought it to console beat for beat. Sadly, there's just no substitute for the original's mouse-driven menu navigation. Being able to drag and drop items to toss, equip, and activate, or even just digging through a bag, is a luxury that I appreciate all the more after playing this version. Here, you have to navigate menus within menus, each of the face buttons performing a different function. It's slow and clumsy. With Underworld so heavily focused on inventory management, it's a frequent speed bump. Something as simple as splitting a stack becomes an exercise in frustration. You have to take the entire stack of items, toss it on the ground, then pick it up again, manually selecting quantities, then moving those stacks to containers in your inventory before picking up more. You have to do this when you barter with someone, for example, and it's just exhausting.

Perhaps the most noteworthy addition here is the game's polygonal 3D graphics. The enemy, weapon, and NPC sprites have all been faithfully recreated in 3D, perhaps a little too faithfully. Not only is the art style a dead ringer for the original, which is nice, but the frame rate of the animations is also identical to the PC version. In practice, this makes motion appear awkward and jittery, especially with the game running at 60fps. I suppose it's kind of charming in a weird way. I think these might be the best giant rats I've ever seen, for one thing, and there's a lot of competition there. That sweet PS1 gouraud shading does the trick. The scene after your character is killed, where they're revived by the Silver Seed tree, it's also kind of wicked. Thankfully, the PS1's hardware imperfections just worked out nicely here. The innate lack of texture filtering and the affine texture mapping are a perfect fit for Underworld. It looks nearly identical to the original. Outside of the visual improvements, the game also runs at full screen 4:3 now, as opposed to the game window taking up less than half of the screen. The music has been remade with a much fuller mix that still manages to capture some of that low-fidelity creepiness from the original. The sound effects are also much better, taking advantage of the CD audio quality. If you ask me, it's a straight improvement in the audio department. All in all, not a shabby port of the original, thanks to the efforts of one Gus. The game's text has been translated in its entirety to English, so it's a perfectly viable way of playing through the game. If you were using an emulator, you could also remap controls and play at higher resolutions, among some other tweaks. Regardless, I wouldn't say that this is the definitive version of the game. Even with the ability to remap controls, many of the bigger issues aren't solvable, such as menu navigation. Still depending on

Your priorities. This may be a great way to experience Ultima Underworld, and the pros could very well outweigh the cons. Thanks to Gus for giving English speakers a chance to experience this curious little relic from Origin's past.

Upon its release in March of 1992, Ultima Underworld was among the most universally acclaimed games in the Ultima series and one of the highest-rated CRPGs of all time. Ace Magazine's review stated, "Ultima Underworld is a real knock-you-down game. At first, it's truly hard to believe that it's running on a standard home computer. It's not only great to look at, but it also plays superbly and has enough depth to keep even the most experienced dungeon-delving veteran going for months, if not years. If you've got a PC, then you've got to have Ultima Underworld."

The November 1992 issue of Dragon Magazine awarded Ultima Underworld with a score of six out of five. A dramatic gesture, perhaps, but the message was clear: it just doesn't get any better than this. Sales were okay, but the numbers didn't come anywhere close to reflecting the glowing raves that the game was getting. As a matter of fact, Origin found the initial sales numbers to be disappointing and didn't consider the game to be a success. It must have been discouraging for Nehrath Church and the hardworking developers who'd sacrificed their own well-being for this project.

It was then that word of mouth began to pick up the slack. Underworld became a sleeper hit. As the months rolled by and more PCs were decked out with modern processors, sales unexpectedly started picking up. Despite its slow start, it eventually became one of Origin's best-sellers, outpacing all of their previous Ultima games. The future suddenly looked pretty bright for Blue Sky Productions. They'd established a relationship with Origin Systems, who wasted no time in greenlighting a sequel to Underworld.

Meanwhile, Nehrath and Blue Sky co-founder Ned Lerner decided to pull the trigger on an arrangement they'd been talking about for some time. Lerner Research and Blue Sky Productions would be merged and rebranded as Looking Glass Technologies. This merger would mark a significant new chapter in the history of PC gaming.

The release of Ultima 6 in 1990 ended what is now known as The Age of Enlightenment, a trilogy of games encompassing Ultima 4, 5, and 6. What an incredible run it had been. Each of these games managed to tell unique stories via drastically different storytelling methods. At the core of each game was a focus on spiritual warfare, where virtue strengthens us, how our perception of that virtue can lead us astray, and how difficult it can be to practice virtue at all. It seemed that this philosophical focus on natural law and mankind's role within it was running out of steam. It had served its purpose well, introducing concepts of morality and an awareness of one's actions that had previously been absent in CRPGs and, well, really just video games in general.

But more and more often, the Ultima games were relying on plot-driven quests, individual characters, and tasks that gave players a sense of purpose and direction in the game world. Technology was beginning to catch up with Richard Garriott's ambitions for the series, and as a result, the more abstract elements were no longer necessary. Ultima 6 in particular had been a bold step forward in terms of mechanical complexity. The game had reinvented Ultima's identity, while its limitations still left something to be desired, perhaps more obviously in light of Ultima Underworld's qualities. There was something special there, something that demanded to be expanded upon, not just incrementally as the worlds of Ultima games had, but significantly. A game that lived and breathed in ways that nobody would have believed a video game could.

In 1992, Underworld was a high watermark for CRPGs, but for many Ultima fans, the best was yet to come.

Next time on the Ultima Retrospective.

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Treachery and doom. My brother would unleash a great evil. Britannia is in peril. Sure that the ghost can take you to Britannia. You allow yourself to be drawn to him.

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W. W.

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Hey, thanks very much for watching this episode of the Ultima Retrospective. I hope you enjoyed it. Till I see you next time, stay healthy, wealthy, and wise.