![]() For the grand experiment of Ultima IV to succeed it was critical that the opposite point of view prevail, that the player feel it to really be her in the game. Infocom also had tried to sell their players, to decidedly mixed success and occasional howls of outrage, on seeing interactive fiction through the eyes of people who weren’t necessarily the same as them. The very term “role-playing” would seem to imply that the player was not just playing herself thrust into another world, that she was playing a role there, performing as one of Gary Gygax’s idealized Shakespearian thespians. Of the eight noble virtues of Compassion, Honesty, Honor, Humility, Justice, Sacrifice, Spirituality, and Valor, which ones matter most to you?īy 1985 gaming had already seen its fair share of debates about who the player’s character in a role-playing game or interactive fiction really was. Ultima IV‘s opening parable culminates in a mysterious gypsy fortune teller who poses a series of ethical dilemmas designed to determine not what class or race you’d like to play but what kind of person you are. There’s the echo of another spiritual journey’s beginning, that undertaken by the narrator of Dante’s Inferno: “In this the midway of our mortal life, I found me in a gloomy wood, astray, gone from the path direct.” The sound seems to be emanating from this glowing portal. As you open your eyes, you see a shimmering blueness rise from the ground. Searching inward for tranquility and happiness, you close your eyes.Ī high-pitched cascading sound like crystal wind chimes impinges on your floating awareness. The buzz of dragonflies and the whisper of the willow’s swaying branches bring a deep peace. That willow tree near the stream looks comfortable and inviting. The soil and stain of modern high-tech living begins to wash off in layers. Yet this afternoon walk in the countryside slowly brings relaxation to your harried mind. You are being pulled apart in all directions. The latest in a series of personal crises seems insurmountable. The day is warm, yet there is a cooling breeze. I get some of that thrill when I think about those first people who booted up Ultima IV expecting to create a party via the usual min/maxing routine, only to be greeted with a simple story with the gravitas of a parable - a parable about, well, you. A willingness to rip it up and start again is pretty high on the list of things likely to draw me to a creator. As for me, though… they always send a thrill up my spine. ![]() Lots and lots of people run screaming from these sorts of switcheroos. I think sometimes about how the first folks who listened to Revolver must have felt when the erstwhile cuddly Fab Four unleashed the otherworldly chaos of “Tomorrow Never Knows” how the first buyers of Achtung, Baby must have felt when they hit the play button and heard not the expected soaring anthem but the grinding industrial murk of “Zoo Station” how, to choose something I’ve already written a bit about here on this blog, viewers who tuned into The Prisoner‘s “Living in Harmony” episode must have felt when instead of a spy drama they got a Western that refused to reveal itself as a dream sequence but instead just kept going and going right through the show’s running time. There’s lots of somethings to be said for sheer audacity in art, for a willingness to stick your neck out and give your audience something they never, ever expected from you. ![]()
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