🚀 go-pugleaf

"Damocles" <phae...@yahoo.com> wrote in
news:ajr8hf$bf...@mercury.cc.uottawa.ca: 

>> but what ARE they?   what games were like this, or
>> maybe...[hope...hope...]
>> or maybe, what games are like this today?
> 
> I played most CRPGs back in the "old days", and I think there' some
> nostalgia clouding memory going on. Bard's Tale, Wizardry, the early
> Ultimas, etc. were all very simple games with limited plots and
> storytelling. Ultima 3 was somewhat more interesting but even the
> middle Ultimas aren't nearly as deep as Fallout (which is relatively
> recent, all things considered) or Planescape: Torment. I found
> Garriott's moralizing sanctimonious even while I enjoyed the games.

Well, indeed...  Sanctimonious, naive and quite childishly idealistic...  
Yet at the same time, Ultima IV had some stuff that was really beautiful, 
and some things that I haven't seen in other games.  One thing which I 
really really like, which RPG's have generally taken the exact opposite turn 
on since then, is this sense of "OK, here's a world...  Some of it has 
purpose in what you have to do, some of it doesn't...  Explore me!  You'll 
find some interesting stuff!  You'll get to know me..."  And Ultima IV had 
*ideas*.  Not ideas in the "I'm writing a novel, and here are the story 
developments that will surprise you" sense...  A computer game is not a 
movie or a novel, and those early Ultimas realized this!  I found it really 
cool (albeit weird!) that a guy would base an entire game on that "three 
makes eight" thing...  Eight virtues from three principles.  Eight 
corresponding stones from three primary colours, eight dungeons (well 
almost:) )  the three-part key, bell-book-candle, eight levels of the abyss, 
eight classes with three primary attributes, eight moongates/towns ruled by 
three keeps, eight letters in the "axiom", eight starting locations based on 
a series of eight questions in the three principles...  and I'm sure I'm 
missing other things...  It's childish, and it's kind of facetious, but it 
also managed to be really cool, in my opinion.

> There was no grey in the Ultimas until Black Gate. The only 1980s CRPG
> that had much depth that I can remember is Wasteland.