Uneducated Opinion
Effed in the Eight
By Mike - February 4, 2010
EA's business plan in action.
Shortly after the epic win known as Ultima 7, Origin Systems was put in an unavoidable situation and forced to sell its rights to Electronic Arts, a company infamous for consuming gaming studios far greater than their own and delivering steaming piles of shit covered in cancerous flies to the market year after year. Ultima 8 was the first game of the franchise built under EA’s regime and as a result this potentially great game suffered severely.
Yes, the treasured Ultima series, home of the Avatar and his crew of virtue defending militants, was put in the hands of heartless vampires whose most creative title to date is probably Madden 96 or some other god forsaken sports simulator. The EA takeover of the Ultima Franchise is one of the 20th centuries greatest tragedies if you ask me, followed closely by the holocaust or when I got a mustard stain on my favorite Spider-Man shirt.
The idea behind Pagan was very much a solo experience, to make the player feel alone and doomed on some island of despair, all hope lost. The lack of a party system is not necessarily a bad thing, but certainly a change of pace from previous releases.
What about the gaping plot holes and paralyzing dead end sub-quests that go no where? Or the robotic combat system that’s about as satisfying as giving sponge baths at a seniors home? And repetitive marathon of confusing dungeons that made us want to chew glass? And the mind boggling jumping puzzles that caused 1 in 2 gamers to kick a hole through a wall or choke their little brother to death? Well…can’t defend any that. And portraits sure would have been nice to go along with the coma inducing banter of the NPC’s.
This is all just a bunch of inexcusable bullshit shoveled on top of a half-baked game that was pushed through deadlines and drowned in red tape by the corporate drones of EA. This realistically should have been a fantastic game, revered as highly to some as other RPG greats. Thanks to the rat race of the EA dictatorship with their iron fist rule and crippling time constrictions, what was delivered was instead a decent game that gave us heart burn and far too many reasons to bitch and complain.
Essentially you’ve been banished to this little hell hole in the armpit of the universe by the Guardian, an extra-dimensional limp dick who the Avatar has been pissing off for far too long. You need to figure things out and master four (*cough* three) different schools of magic before you can get the hell out of this unrelated detour of a game and back to your own world. This task can be a tedious nightmare that will make you want to punch babies but it can also offer a lot of fun along the way.
The first thing you experience on Pagan is a bad-ass public beheading of a poor shit-talker who defied Mordea, the nasty witch who rules these parts in what looks like a wedding dress. This scene was uncensored, axe to the back of the head in traditional Ultima fashion. Within 5 minutes you know how shit rolls in Tenebrae and who not to fuck with.
Mordea doing what she does best. Being a bitch.
The atmosphere is dark and brooding and I can even look past the fact that there is no day/night cycle which was brushed off as eternal twilight due to the Guardian being an asshole or some lame excuse I can’t exactly remember. The music is also excellent and very different from most other music produced in earlier Ultimas. It plays a big role in the overall mood and really makes the player feel immersed.
Ultima 8 is very detailed in the fact that you can interact with a nicely rendered environment and nearly any object can be picked up and put in your backpack. (No where near as dynamic as the Ultima 7 engine which allows you to bake bread and fight disabled people with utensils.) Eventually you’ll realize that you’ve collected way too much garbage and you’ll probably spend a good portion of time sorting it all out.
Once you’ve separated all your potions, scrolls, quest items, obsidian coins, reagents and other things into their own bags and then placed each precisely 2 pixels apart you’ll go back to your old ways and your backpack will look like Hiroshima did in 1945.
The bottom line is that this is a great game that devoured a good portion of my teen years which should have been spent masturbating and doing homework. Yes it has some flaws, and despite EA’s famous touch of death I encourage any serious gamer to pick up a copy and give it a whirl because it can still offer hours of fun to any RPG fan.
For some interesting reading material, check these links out:
http://www.artfulgamer.com/2007/11/10/electronic-arts-the-destroyer-of-worlds-sets-its-eye-on-bioware
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_14/87-The-Conquest-of-Origin
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