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Let's Play Ultima VII [WARNING: Pic-heavy]

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RavynousHunter:
Table o' Contents
1. The Preface or Prelude or Whatever
2. In the beginning, there was Dave
3. At least I'm wearing pants
4. Dave finds his Robin
5. Dave teaches Spark the Avatar's "Path to Success"
6. The world's shortest murder investigation
7. The last bits of Trinsic and Dave's flight
8. Dave heads north
9. Making money, the Dave way
10. Dave acquires transport
11. Dave raids again
12. What to do, what to do...?
13. What is love?
14. Conquering courage, Part One
15. Conquering courage, Part Two
16. In which a senile old fucker gets what's coming to him
17. Obtaining the truth, in the most ass way possible.
18. Dave visits Cove
19. In which Dave solves Nastassia's mystery

1. The Preface or Prelude or Whatever



A simple, black expanse of a game menu.  This is one of the first things that greets you in Ultima VII Part I: The Black Gate.  There's the intro, and its really cool...well, it was for the time, but we'll get to that in a sec.  First off, why start with #7?  Why not start with the first?  Or at least Quest of the Avatar?  I'm not saying I won't get around to those, I may well do that.  I'm starting with #7 because it has the biggest story (and biggest world) with the most interaction and the most dialogue.  This translates into a lot of potential to screw around and that translates into fun.  Few things in life are as enjoyable as this game.  Even though I just beat it a few days ago, I'm coming back to it specifically for the purposes of this LP.

"Okay, that's cool and all," you say.  "But, why do it in text?"  One, I have yet to find a mic that doesn't butcher my voice.  Two, there's a lot of futzing about that would get rather boring if I were to record it, and that's with editing.  Lastly, screenshots and dialogue transcripts more than suffice to convey the story of the game and I can still convey just how much you fun you can have if, at first, you completely ignore the main plot, fuck off, and do your own thing, which you can totally do.

Now, then, what am I using to run this game from the early-to-mid 90s?  Exult is the short answer.  Exult is basically a wrapper around the original game's data files, a recreation of the engine from the ground up to work on modern operating systems.  There's a few lingering, random crashes, but all in all, its a very stable and very accurate experience when compared to what you get with DOSBox and the original game itself.  It also adds such neat features as an expanded save list (no longer limited to a set number of slots), screenshot capabilities, and so on.

Just as a side note, I may end up double-posting due to how I want this to be structured.  Without further ado, let's get moving, shall we?

RavynousHunter:
2. In the beginning, there was Dave

(Note: I am using the Avatar Pack from Seven Towers.  The portraits are more interesting, to me, than the vanilla ones.)


Because who else is going to bother with a single-player game in this series?


Annnnnnd, my computer screen immediately goes on the fritz.  God damned CRTs.


Huh.


A big, red face appearing on my monitor without my doing anything?  This is either going to be really threatening or really sad.


: "Avatar!"

Still not sure if threatening or sad, red dude.

: "Know that Britannia has entered into a new age of enlightenment.  Know that the time has finally come for the one true Lord of Britannia to take his place at the head of his people!  Under my guidance, Britannia will flourish, and all the people shall rejoice and pay homage to their new... Guardian.  Know that you too shall kneel before me, Avatar.  You too shall soon acknowledge my authority.  For I shall be your companion...your provider...and your master!  Hahahahahah!"

Oh, so its a challenge!  Bring it on, asshole!


He crashed my computer, too!  That is it, red motherfucker, you are dead!


Oh, crap.  I promised a kid I'd see her recital after solving that whole gargoyle thing.  ...She's probably dead, now, isn't she?


Either which way, my orb's glowing, so that means somebody over there wants words with me.


Not even gonna bother packing anything.  Not like a handgun would be useful, or anything.


Well, that's not normal.


LEEROY!



And, we are greeted with the menu!  Whelp, I just kinda charged into a sword-and-sorcery world fraught with dragons and giant spiders without any planning, forethought, or even basic supplies like trail mix, a flashlight, or a fucking gun.  I mean, the Avatar lives in Texas, so he's bound to have at least one firearm.  But, nope!  No telling where the hell this crazy, interdimensional portal is taking me, I just Leeroy right in like a jackass.  Well, let's get around to actually making our dude.  Let's introduce you to...Dave.



And this is why I like the Avatar Pack.  Dave now has a permanent look of "you've got to be shitting me," which is appropriate, given some of the crazy shit that goes down.  Well, now that we've got our man, join me in the next bit as we finally delve into the game itself!

Dakota Bob:
I have the entire Ultima library on my GOG account, tried playing VII a while ago. I guess I've been spoiled by modern RPGs too much to get into this game, gave up a few hours in, lost track of what I was supposed to do. I'll keep my eye on this thread, should be interesting to see what the game is like past the first few hours.

RavynousHunter:
3. At least I'm wearing pants

We join our story already in progress.

: "I can't believe it..."
: "I know, 'tis shocking."
"Who could have done it?"
: "I know not..."
: "He had no enemies..."
: "Poor man."
: "What is to be done?"


Iolo's something of a broken record, here.



: "Hey heyyyyy, Iolo!  Barely looking a day older, guess I haven't been away that long, have I?"
: "Dave!  If I did not trust the infallibility of mine own eyes, I would not believe it!  I was just thinking to myself, 'If only the Avatar were here!'  Then..."
: "Lo and behold!  Who says that magic is dying!  Here is living proof that it is not!"
: "Let's just simmer down there, dude.  Seriously, I'm starting to get a little uncomfortable, here."
: "Dost thou realize, Dave, that it hath been 200 Britannian years since we last met?  Why, thou hast not aged at all!"
: "What."
: "What?"
: "Two hundred years?"
: Iolo winks conspiratorially.  He whispers, "Due no doubt to the difference in the structure of time in our original homeland and that of Britannia.  I have aged, as thou canst see. But of course, I have stayed here in Britannia all this time."
: "That makes no kind of sense at all, but whatever.  Still, it has to suck, outliving almost everyone else on the planet several times over."
: "You have no idea.  Oh but Avatar!  Wait until I tell the others!  They will be so happy to see thee!  And welcome to Trinsic!"
: "Thanks, I guess...  I suppose it beats being summoned by a bunch of pissed off gargoyles and nearly ending up being sacrificed."
: The distraught peasant interrupts Iolo. "Show him the stables, milord!  'Tis horrible!"
: Iolo nods, his joy fading quickly as he remembers the reason he was standing there in the first place.  "Ah yes.  Our friend Petre here discovered something truly ghastly this morning.  Take a look inside the stables.  I shall accompany thee."
: "Well, that's a hell of a greeting.  No fanfare, no feast, just 'Hey, Dave, let's go look at this grisly scene!'"
: "I welcomed you back, man, what more do you want?"
: "Time to get my bearings before-OH SHIT, RUN!"


: "Keep running, Iolo!"


: "Okay, I think we lost him!"
: "What the hell was that all about?  Run from who?!"
: "The dude in the blue get-up!  Didn't you see him, he was charging right at us!"
: "That was the mayor, you idiot!  He wasn't charging, he was walking to us at a leisurely pace."
: "How the hell was I supposed to know that?  Last time I came thru a red moongate, I nearly ended up getting shanked for some ritual!  For all I knew, that guy was trying to finish the job!"
: "He was a human!  And besides, you solved all that nonsense 200 years ago, the whole 'False Prophet' thing died down after you left."
: "I still stand by my decision."



: "See?"

And here, we have the save menu!  Simple as simple gets.  Unfortunately, right away, we hit a little bug.  You see, overwriting saves...doesn't quite work right so, if you want your recent actions properly saved, you need to make a whole new savegame.  Fortunately, the saves are tiny, so its not a huge issue.  The save menu in Exult is quite a bit more useful than vanilla.  The vanilla save menu just had save names and the buttons at the bottom, and that was it.  Exult gives you Dave's stats, a little preview pic, current game time, how much game time you've spent, and a visual listing of your party members.  Very handy for bookkeeping, and seeing just how little time it takes to cause massive damage to society.  While we're at it, let's go over a couple more interface elements, shall we?

Hit escape, and you get this menu:


Its got access to anything you'd need, options-wise.  The save/load menu, we've already covered, and you can easily reach that by pressing 'S' in-game.  The first section is video options:



Full Screen is obvious; it toggles between full screen and windowed mode.  Note that, without scaling, Exult (and Ultima VII) uses a default resolution of 320x240, so it'll be pretty tiny in windowed mode.  There are a few minor bugs when you run at full screen, since U7 really expects to be running at 320x240.  Mostly, the only problems are that you'll see certain characters pop in during scripted events when, normally, it'd look like they're coming in from off-screen.  Not a huge problem, but it can be a little jarring/amusing, at times.

Display Mode is the resolution the game runs at in both full screen and windowed mode.  I default to 1024x768 to give a decent resolution while minimizing the bugs I mentioned earlier.  The Scaler dictates what scaling algorithm Exult uses for running at non-native resolutions.  I leave it at the default 2xSaI and haven't had any real problems, thus far.  The others aren't anything I've fiddled with, so I dunno what they do, sans the bottom one, which should be fairly obvious.



Audio options are another thing I don't really fiddle with, personally.  Just make sure that the music and SFX and speech are enabled, and you should be good.



Gameplay options!  Again, the Exult team did a good job of making them mostly self-explanatory.  I don't know what autonotes does, but I'd venture a guess that it works much like a quest log in other games.  Exult does come with a notebook (which the original game lacked) which you can reach with the 'N' key.  Its really quite handy for keeping track of what the hell you're doing because there is a lot to do in this game.  Also, yes!  You can change the difficulty of the game, if you find it too easy.  I think I have it a the default, I dunno, but either way if you're focusing on combat, you're quite frankly doing it wrong.



And, lastly, misc. options!  Status bars are the little bits at the bottom of the screen with the faces and, well, bars.  Another handy Exult addition that makes tracking how well your party is faring a lot simpler than it is in the base game.  Cheats!  Yes, there are cheats.  Extensive cheats.  Hit 'F2' to get to them, if they're enabled.  Few cheat menus are as verbose as the one in U7.  Lastly, the paperdolls (keybind 'I' in-game) are a Serpent Isle feature that got back-ported to Black Gate because, quite frankly, they're a lot nicer to look at.  Don't take my word for it, look:


(Image c/o LPArchive.org and Nakar)
This is the default inventory screen for Black Gate.  Bare-bones, kinda ugly, and hard to follow.  Now, let's look at the back-ported SI paperdolls!


Much nicer!  You can see where everything goes visually and its a lot simpler to use.  It does use the inventory slots for Black Gate, so you can either wear two rings or gloves, not both, and ammo (arrows, bolts, and yes, bullets) takes up the slot that you also use to put a shield on your back.  Generally, I prefer gloves over rings, as they offer better protection overall and the only rings that might push them out are rings of regeneration, but even with two of them equipped, I honestly don't notice that much of an increase in healing factor, so gloves it is!  Yeah, Dave's dumb ass only came to Britannia with a knife and barely any supplies.

The icons at the bottom of your paperdoll are as follows (for Dave): Toggle Combat Mode (keybind 'C' in-game), Combat Strategy (never found it that helpful, so I leave it at default), Stats Panel (keybind 'Z' in-game), and the disk is the save/load menu.  The halo at the bottom-right of Iolo's paperdoll puts him in "protect mode," which basically means other party members go out of their way to protect him in combat.  Lastly, the stat panels!



The max for strength, dexterity, intelligence, combat, and magic is 30.  As you can see, Dave is slightly above average in everything but magic, where he kinda sucks.  Strength gives you more melee damage, HP, and carry weight.  Dexterity helps with ranged attacks (might add extra damage, I'm not sure), and intelligence determines your mana stores.  Combat is how good you are at hitting people; Iolo is actually better at it than Dave, but that gap will be bridged easy enough.  Magic is a Dave-only stat, since he's the only one that can use it (even the wizard companion, Mariah, can't use spells) and helps with spellcasting in...some way.  Training points are something you spend (along with money) at trainers throughout Britannia to boost your stats.  Some trainers are complete rip-offs, so be careful.  I think the max level in Black Gate is 8, and each level grants 3 training points, so spend wisely.  Except on Dave.  I will spend on nothing but combat and magic.  Why?  Because we've got Forge of Virtue, and that invalidates every other bit of stat training Dave could possibly need, outside combat and magic, and getting to it (and finishing it) is almost trivially easy, given enough firepower.

Well, that's about it for this update.  Next time, I'll wander around Trinsic, maybe get clues to a murder, and teach a child about the fine art of serial kleptomania!

Even Then:
Why am I reminded of Something Awful...

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