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Which Ultima games are you thinking about? The series definitely was pioneering in simulation elements (day/night cycles and NPC routines in V, movable objects

by djur 5y ago

Which Ultima games are you thinking about? The series definitely was pioneering in simulation elements (day/night cycles and NPC routines in V, movable objects in VI, stacking and layering in VII), but the dialog system was always pretty simple keyword-based stuff, and NPCs mostly do not have any kind of memory. Are you thinking about how companions in VII will abandon or attack you if you do too many crimes with them around?

aidenn0 5y ago
You are right that the dialog was simple and the NPCs basically got mind wiped every time you left a region. However, going back at least as far as Ultima IV, for the time within a region if you stole or killed, that actually had some repercussions. AFAICT the lack of persistence was due to technical limitations rather than a design choice.
- djur 5y ago
  IV is an interesting case because the entire game was built around repercussions for your specific actions, although the only long-term repercussion of doing comically evil things was that you had to spend a bit more time throwing money at beggars and overpaying at the reagent store. V switched to a simpler karma system that mostly affected how badly you were penalized by dying and whether you were able to complete the game. Reputation systems were pretty common in CRPGs starting in the '90s. In practice, though, a lot of those systems just boiled down to "does everyone in town want to kill you the moment they see you or not".
  - aidenn0 5y ago
    I think my original point that I made poorly was that in, say 1987 one would see that games were exploring the possibilities of the sorts of thing that the original commenter was hoping to see, but were held back by limitations of the hardware. What we ended up with was 2-9 factions with up to 3 levels of response (hostile, neutral, friendly) which would be a disappoint to an optimistic CRPG player from the late 80s.

by djur 5y ago

aidenn0 5y ago

You are right that the dialog was simple and the NPCs basically got mind wiped every time you left a region. However, going back at least as far as Ultima IV, for the time within a region if you stole or killed, that actually had some repercussions. AFAICT the lack of persistence was due to technical limitations rather than a design choice.

djur 5y ago
IV is an interesting case because the entire game was built around repercussions for your specific actions, although the only long-term repercussion of doing comically evil things was that you had to spend a bit more time throwing money at beggars and overpaying at the reagent store. V switched to a simpler karma system that mostly affected how badly you were penalized by dying and whether you were able to complete the game. Reputation systems were pretty common in CRPGs starting in the '90s. In practice, though, a lot of those systems just boiled down to "does everyone in town want to kill you the moment they see you or not".
- aidenn0 5y ago
  I think my original point that I made poorly was that in, say 1987 one would see that games were exploring the possibilities of the sorts of thing that the original commenter was hoping to see, but were held back by limitations of the hardware. What we ended up with was 2-9 factions with up to 3 levels of response (hostile, neutral, friendly) which would be a disappoint to an optimistic CRPG player from the late 80s.