Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we continue our series on 1985's Ultima IV. We talk a lot about the mysterious sense of the game, the talking interface and mechanics, and dive a bit into combat before turning to reader mail. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary.

Sections played: Another number of hours

Issues covered: missing out on talking to someone, sleeping sprites, having a talk prompt and fallbacks, having generic topics per town, putting together with nouns and verbs, adding to world-building, introducing riddles and puzzles, having a sense of what's going on under the hood, exploring through talking, the technical implementation issues, the letter limits, likely implementation details, iterating on a design, fast travel, the many eights, explaining the moon gates, fleeing a boat, the ways you can pause the game, how the moon states work, the persistence of the world, the long table, more arguments for the persistence of the world, getting into combat, the zoomed in battlefield, strategizing around leveling up characters, readying/switching weapons, anticipating dungeon combat, the combat soundscape and understanding the battle, using every key on the keyboard, how many monsters there are, leveling combat, leveling up by talking with Lord British, non-linear XP table, reinforcing the relationship with both Lord British and Richard Garriott, having the cycle of leveling up, the surprise of discovering Magincia, a question of controllers, swapping between screens, distinctions between different Pikmin games, our favorite Pikmin types, charity unlocks, capybara attacks.

Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: Sierra, King's Quest (series), LucasArts, Dungeons & Dragons, Larian, Baldur's Gate (series), Eye of the Beholder, The Outer Wilds, Her Story, Sam Barlow, Deadly Premonition, Ultima Underworld, Final Fantasy Tactics, The Elder Scrolls (series), Serious Sam, Richard Garriott, Ultima Online, Darren Johnson, Star Wars (obliquely), Pikmin, Dark Souls, Missile Command, MysteryDip, PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo, Calamity Nolan, Virtual Boy, Okami, The Simpons (obliquely), Asher, FSSZilla, Cuphead, Hitman, Metal Gear Solid, Dwarf Fortress, Kirk Hamilton, Aaron Evers, Mark Garcia.

Note: Because Ultima IV has very little music to speak of, I will be substituting music from later in the series in the openings to these episodes

TTDS: 59:13

Next time: More Ultima IV!

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