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NotM: Ultima Underworld–Sights and Sounds
By Corvus | January 16, 2008
Welcome to Narrative of the Moment feature here at Man Bytes Blog. I’m starting the year by taking a look at Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss (UW), an older DRPG that is often, I feel, overlooked by the narratology crowd and exploring the game’s narrative components. Today’s post discusses the Visual, Auditory and Musical Components.
Visual Components
UW certainly wouldn’t win any prizes for its graphics in today’s world of photo-realistic attempts. Its fully-3D world is presented via a viewport in the UI, the NPC sprites are pixelated and the on-screen text is obviously not anti-aliased and is therefor hard on the eyes. Still, running the game via DOSbox with the 2xsai scaler allows me to play it full screen (on a good sized flat panel, no less) without turning everything into a jumbled, illegible mess. That counts as a win in my books.
The textures on the walls and floor provide good contrast, allowing you to easily navigate the environment. There’s even a bit of camera bob as you move, giving you a sense of really walking through the environment. Object sprites are well drawn so you invariably know what’s worth picking up and what isn’t. I recently tried to replay Tomb Raider without the benefit of 3D acceleration and had to give up because the environments (seemingly trying to be as “realistic” as possible) were a smear of bland colors. But UW clearly had quality art direction, which is in no small part responsible for its continued replayability.*
The UI itself is also very nicely done. As text appears on the scroll at the bottom of the screen, the fingers of its two supporting dragons twitch as they roll up the scroll. Clicking on your rune bag or the chain under your character and items results in the panel turning to reveal your collected runes or character stats, respectively. Your currently selected spell is to the right under the viewport and any active spell effects are displayed to the left. Your equipped light source changes to indicate whether its lit or not. The life and mana vials bubble nicely as they empty and refill. Your red life vial turns green if you’re poisoned. The gem in the lower left glows to let you know how powerful of a strike you’re about to deliver. The eyes of the gargoyle at the top of the screen flash green, yellow and red to let you know how healthy your opponent is with each strike.
Note that many of these Visual Components overlap a bit with the Ludic Components. To explain my thinking–the decision to communicate certain information to the player is a ludic one, but how its done is a visual one (unless, groan, they decide to make it a textual).
The final two Visual Components I want to mention are, I feel, a very important part of UW’s appeal. They do not in any way effect gameplay, but they add immensely to the fabula of the game. The first involves the ability to choose a gender. The only thing this changes within the game is the use of pronouns. Not only are you given a gender choice, but you’re then presented with five different portraits to choose from, ranging from the standard blond hero(ine) to an avatar of color to some truly atrocious 1980’s rejects (is that supposed to be Sheena E in the lower left?). You’re also allowed to choose your character’s handedness. This does not affect gameplay, but as a lefty myself, the simple visual of seeing the correct hand pop up on the screen with a sword makes the game that much more satisfying to play.
Auditory and Musical Components
I’m going to lump these together as I don’t have a lot to say about either of them. Both are pretty horrible by today’s standards. The audio effects are barely recognizable as representative of real world noises. Still, each noise is distinct from the others and once you’ve figured out what sort of events cause what noises, they do help you navigate the Abyss. You’ll learn to tell when there’s a rot worm around the corner, or a lurker in the nearby stream. If a door or portcullis swings shut behind you, you won’t have to turn around to know you’ve just been trapped.
The music is similarly difficult to tolerate. The melodies are actually quite nice, but the lack of quality instrumentation can be a bit difficult to bear. But again, like the audio effects, the soundtrack actually serves to help you navigate the Abyss. The music is situational, alerting you to danger, flourishing when you’ve bested a foe and setting a definitive mood. There have been times I’ve wanted to turn off the music (which is easy to do via the options menu), but wandering around without it is less satisfying than learning to not hyper-focus on its bips and squawks.
It occurs to me that UW is a fine example of how to create excellence within the tight constraints of a medium. While nearly every aspect of the game appears to be the result of the early 90’s technical limitations, they worked to ensure that all aspects of the game consistently communicate their game world.
Be sure to stop by next week as we focus on the central components of videogame storytelling–the Ludic Components.
*There’s a good argument against the drive towards photorealism.
Tagged:narrative components, NotM, storytelling, ultima underworld. | 9 Comments »
February 6th, 2008 at 11:43 am
Great post so far. I found that some of the visual/audio properties you mention also have some excellent atmospheric and narrative value. For instance, the richly textured objects (they all use a form of dithering to get this effect) gives them a “rougher” look – like stone that’s been worn away for centuries. The light sourcing is also incredibly good – the torch, oil lamp, etc all provide different kinds of lighting, and gave me the sense that I was traversing a *huge* place with narrow corridors and deep tunnels.
As for the music, since you mention that you enjoyed the melodies but are disappointed with the instrumentation – you definitely should be running the game in Roland MT-32 mode! The Soundblaster just doesn’t have a great midi chipset (OPL3 I think..). Take a listen to those same melodies patched through the proper instruments: http://www.stygianabyss.com/uw/music/uw1.htm
I found the music to be subtle and amazingly atmospheric. The battle melody has a lot of timpani’s and large drums – reminiscent of the scene from the book ‘Fellowship of the Ring’ where the Gandalf, Frodo, etc are caught in the Mines of Moria (and the Orcs play huge drums down the hallway). The exploration themes all make use of a crystalline sound (I think it’s a few high notes on a xylophone) giving me a sense that it’s an underworld full of hanging stalactites and protruding stalagmites.
I found the sudden onset of the battle music (when an enemy comes nearby) or the weapon-readying music profoundly distracting. It was as if a siren went off saying “enemy nearby!” instead of slowly transitioning into the melody. I guess that’s what makes iMUSE so special…
February 6th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
I considered linking to those files, but decided against it for some reason. They do sound nice though, don’t they?
Getting Roland MT to work under DOSBox on Linux has thus far eluded me.
Atmosphere. That’s what the game had in spades. Unrelenting atmosphere. It’s a quality lacking in many games, including the early Elder Scrolls titles.
February 6th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
I just wanted to point out that this is Chris from Artful Gamer and not me. I get so used to posting here as “Chris” it’s shocking to see someone phreak me.
Perhaps he feels the same way about me!
February 6th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
*eltrohc* Perhaps we need to institute a last initial rule for the two of you?
February 7th, 2008 at 8:31 am
Ugh, no I never want to be “Chris B” again – I had enough of “Crispy Bacon” and other such puns in school.
It’s easy enough to mouse over our names to get our identities, and I’ve learned that the internet reduces billions of people to composite identities anyway, so why fight the trend!
Best wishes!
February 7th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
Oh man. I was called “C.B.” in elementary school due to there being a second Chris in the class. Nicknames like “C.B. Radio” and “Crayon Brain” never got tiring…
Jeez, this REALLY makes things confusing now.
Besides, Chris always says stuff I wish I would have said. This way I get to bask in the reflected epithetical glory.
February 8th, 2008 at 7:56 am
And I get a sterling pinch hitter to make me seem more active in Corvus’ comments. Everybody wins.
April 25th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
Very good article on the game. However, I couldn’t find any mention of the horrible bugs this game had.
I did manage to finish the game, but only with an inventory that was so corrupted that I couldn’t use much (or anything, I’ve fogotten) in it.
Ultima Underworld was a typical Ultima game in one way – interesting gameplay ruined by crippling bugs. I don’t miss these games at all, I wasted so many hours on games I couldn’t complete.
April 25th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
The inventory bug was easily avoided and a patch was made available pretty quickly. It was also, to my knowledge the only “horrible bug.”