Sometimes, while looking for a particular screenshot, I stumble on others along the way. I'm currently replaying Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar on an emulated Commodore 64 in an attempt to recreate my favorite bug in all of video games. In order to get just the shot I want, I need a party of a certain level with access to certain items, so it's taking a while to get all the pieces into place. In the meantime, my avatar-to-be, Zogby, has begun his adventure across Britannia, accumulating the companions Iolo and Jaana.
While roving through Britannia's northwestern forest in search of the druidic town of Yew -- where Jaana can be found -- my nascent party came across the castle of Empath Abbey, a structure devoted to Love, one of the three essential principles (the others being Truth and Courage) out of which the eight virtues are composed. And I took this shot because I had forgotten that there were windows in Ultima IV. The real-time line-of-sight system, which was introduced in Ultima III and blackens anything behind an object that would obscure it from your avatar's view, shows itself nicely in this shot. The transparent windows, through which slices of exterior scenery can be seen beyond the castle walls, add an immediacy not usually seen in God's-eye, tile-based CRPGs. In a way, the middle Ultimas got to have their cake and eat it too -- the overhead tile system was attainable with the crude graphic engines of the day, but the line-of-sight system and its attendant concealment allowed some of the atmospheric and even narrative effects usually reserved for first-person games.
The more I replay older CRPGs, too, the more I admire the spare aesthetic of the early Ultimas, particularly in the Commodore 64 translation. The decision to restrict each tile to a single color works quite well -- the overall effect is still quite colorful, but each individual element feels abstracted, iconic, and instantly recognizable.
Anyway, this is not the screenshot I'm questing for, but it will suffice for tonight.
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