Generation XX
The semi-autobiographical account of someone who should never have been given any power; me.
Gosh, Ultima IV has aged well, hasn’t it? That moment in the tutorial where you can forgive, execute or MARRY the prisoner who insults your queen? I’d forgotten how wacky videogame choices were in 1985. I’m sure, as an innocent child, I’d have chosen forgiveness. Not this time. It was execution, all the way. Of course, the executioner couldn’t execute any prisoners because I also ordered him to execute himself and so he was waiting in the execution queue. Until I married him, then he moved into my chambers.
No, my queen wasn’t keen on all the people, and barrels of fish guts (plural), who I married during this playthrough, but what could she do? It was all totally legal. I’d reformed the church. Why? To impress a guy. (So many bad decisions in videogames, and life, are made for this reason.) I also fronted the cash for superfluous badgers and a Golden Flan. Ultima IV has fancier food than I’d remembered. Same trails of false walls, though, as indicated by a single misaligned pixel, and secrets to find, behind line-of-sight-blocking trees.
I’m also not sure I recall getting my character quite so drunk, with the bubbles and wonky control scheme. Certainly, it took me a good twenty minutes to remember how to sober up. Did Chuckles always pay his taxes in onions? How did I maintain any kind of virtue score, if I’d sent every second serf to the execution queue for briefly blocking my passage? (Even if they were never actually executed because the executioner was otherwise occupied, by bickering in the bedroom with my other beloveds.)
By the way, you can marry the bed. Where you consummate that marriage, I’m not entirely sure. And, yes, OK, I’ll admit the truth. I haven’t been playing Ultima IV, just a game that looks and plays EXACTLY THE SAME (but is otherwise completely different). Fit For A King is described as a ‘King Henry the 8th simulator’. Perhaps deliberately in counterpoint to Richard Garriott’s famous morality system, any action is moral, if you decree it. You’re the king, after all. (Except in other lands where, hilariously, everyone refuses to recognise your authority.)
I’m also not sure I recall getting my character quite so drunk, with the bubbles and wonky control scheme.
I did initially wonder whether the ability to ‘marry everything’ was an insensitive way to approach satire, given the marriage equality vote where an Australian senator suggested that voting ‘yes’ could lead to people “marrying The Harbour Bridge”. When I wed this game’s many inanimate objects, they clearly consented. Some did not, so the marriage didn’t proceed. That seems important, but I will admit that a lot of this game’s humour goes right over my head, especially the darker, more nihilistic, moments.
I do understand the gags relating to classic RPGs very well, of course. When a princess told me that her favourite song was, “245676531,” I knew she meant Greensleeves, even before I found a lute, to test it out. I also knew how to navigate to (seemingly) hard-to-reach places and ask probing questions via text parser. Finding a whole new populace I couldn’t converse with, because of the language barrier, was brilliant. And, interacting creatively, from digging with a shovel, to ordaining weird animals (and items) as priests, was a joy.
If you have an interest in satire or the Ultima series, do play Fit For a King. Do not expect Ultima IV. Expect to explore morality, agency and interactivity, while you strive to impress a guy. It’s about time you got to be in charge up front, rather than the hero who rises from nothing. You deserve it. Pushing the boundaries of who, or what, you can love, just seems like icing on a cake you can definitely marry. You could probably also marry the wedding cake at your own wedding TO a wedding cake. Or something. This was a very confusing experience.