The RPG genre has recently been trying to return to the origins, which then had no dialogue ring, were pretentious and made mainly by groups of enthusiasts. This is especially facilitated by Inxile with their Tides of Numenera, along with Obsidian with Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny, and Pillars of Eternity II has recently been released: Deadfire. And all this began a series that could not go on a wide sale. Series that is going to get a new part. And it all started with a guy nicknamed British.
Richard Garriot and the creation of Akalabeth
British is Richard Garriot, developer, astronaut and founder of Origin Systems. But the development of games did not start by entering a job in any company, but simply from the school Teletype car in the classroom where it was taught by Basic and in which he spent additional hours behind the development of text games. These are not serious projects and did not carry him any commercial benefit, he was just interested in doing this. But then he went to summer earnings in the Computerland shop.
In this very shop, he saw Apple II who, with his graphic display, inspired him to create a new game – Akalabeth: World of Doom. After the release of Garriot, he showed her to his boss, who convinced him to put up the game for sale. Akalabeth was also not very interesting to the public, because there were not many copies, and they were sold in one store. But one copy came to California Pacific, which signed a contract with Garriot that they will publish his game. After the publication, the game was sold with a 30 thousandth circulation and Garriot studied 150 thousand for them all. So the series originated.
Everything with the entry is over and you can write a little more freely from various sources. Akalabeth, even if it is considered Ultim №0, but at the time of the release of the ideas about the series is still careless, and it was an independent game. Only then, she went to the Ultima Collection in which she began to be considered zero. But it is not so much connected with Ultima, although by the standards of the game you can say otherwise. Let’s figure it out in order.
Plot
The entire plot of the game was transmitted in the manual, which went together with the game. But it is not so much even in it. It tells that some King Wolfgang, the ruler of Akalabeth, had two sons. The youngest of which was called Mondain, and the name of the elder is never mentioned anywhere.
Mondain was quick -tempered and evil, with love for murder for the sake of feeling power. In attempts to fix this, his father decided to give him to study in the abbey, and after returning to give him the magical gem of the sun. But the father underestimated the treachery of his son and was killed in a dream, and the crystal was stolen and occupied the throne. What did
Mondain with his brother is not clear, most likely also stabbed in a dream.
Mondain began to rule in www.spins-heaven-casino.com/ the world and create new dungeons, monsters, flood the lands and spread diseases. But the hero of the world British came and … just expelled Mondain without even taking away the gem from him, he himself took the throne and began to rule.
Here we come down to history – someone who wants to become a knight and get glory. And for this we need … no, do not finish off Mondain, kill the monsters that he created.
And that’s all. In the very game of the development of history, if one is not considered alternately incoming quests, there is no. We just wander around the dungeons, look for gold and food and kill the monsters.
Game process
The gameplay is more and more interesting. Garriot created Akalabeth under the impression of Tolkien’s works and adventures in D&D. From the first he took the name of the game and Balrog’a, and from the second he took the dungeons and partially characteristics of the character. Even in the game, management was carried out through commands according to the type South (S), Enter (E).
First, the player must create a character. Enter a “good number” which affects the location of objects on the map. And also choose the “level of game” from 1 to 10 which is the complexity of the game. And only after the creation of characteristics is given: the number of lives, strength, dexterity, endurance, wisdom and amount of gold in the pocket. But here the player does not distribute glasses according to the parameters that interest him, and everything is distributed by a conditional toss of the cube, the benefit you can transfer as much as you like. And at the end the choice of a class between a warrior or a magician. Accordingly, wars cannot use magic, and the magician (which replaces the sword) and onions, but for some reason can use the ax.
After creating the character, the player immediately falls into the store, where he is offered to buy weapons and provisions for the money that he had fallen to create a character. And more importantly, of course, this is, of course, the character cannot do without food, and if there is no food, then the hero will die in place.
And here you go into the world and see the extremely empty scope of 20 by 20, of which 3 by 3 are visible, and do not understand where to go and what to do. In a good way you need to find the British Castle, but this is also the task, because there is not enough money for food to get around the whole card, and it would be nice to buy a weapon. And the fight against hunger, constant walking into the dungeons begins only in order to buy another bunch of food and weapons.
And so you found a dungeon, went into it and the classic Dungeon Crawler begins with the first person. Only here food is spent on every action you have done, which greatly complicates the game. On the surface, one can still imagine the scale of the map so that it does not seem very strange, but in the dungeons then why? And the first enemies that you come across are thieves and they can pick up your weapons directly from hands and provisions in addition. It is still complicated by the fact that the walls in the maze appear by themselves and become extremely easy to get lost in it. True, after a while it becomes clear that this is just a grid from N to n the size in which every two steps there is a crossroads even if it is not visible. So it turns out that it is good if the costs of the store have fought back to zero, but this is not always the case, it may simply not be stole, because the result of the battle also decides in the cube. Well, at least when returning to the surface of life, they are updated in accordance with the opponents you killed, so you can bring the number of HP to at least 9999.
And soon you will understand that your character is weak for immersing at the lower levels. This is for this you need a lock. Entering it British will ask you if you want to become a knight. The game will end to the answer “no”, and for “yes” you will be given a quest for the murder of monsters from the lower levels. With grief in half, you fulfill it, come back and you are raised one random parameter per unit. And here comes the awareness that the only option to pass the game is to fight about enemies until you have enough health in order to have enough health to return to the surface, to add health and repeat until the HP becomes 9999, and only then go down to the lower levels, but the battle algorithm will still be the same – to fight your head against enemies about enemies.
On this, in principle, everything that can be said about Akalabeth, then you just continue to perform Britisha quests to the victorious end, in which he simply gives you a knightly title for the murder of a fucking barlog’a!
Conclusion
As a result, in my opinion, the game is felt raw and strange. In it, the character parameters created at the beginning are not so important, it is much more important that he has more HP than the enemy and of course luck, and the player is a lack of food and enemies who steal it for the player. The dungeons are of no interest and just just boring. And the surface has no value at all and it could be reduced to the size of the city 5 by 5 with the castle, the store and the cave and nothing to lose nothing. But it was at least an interesting experience.
But it was from this project that the serious career of Richard Garriot began. And already in Akalabeth you can see the developments for Ultima: the use of commands (fast keys), the forever required food that will be with the series for a long time and the main fear for people who are unknown – British English, but now it is not as scary as in the future, when the text has become larger than the text.
In general, as I said, according to Ultima, the game does not bind the game, because Ultima herself subsequently had much more opportunities and interactivity, much more development. Really large, which pumped in Ultima I from Akalabeth-these are dungeons, they remained practically unchanged. In a sense, Akalabeth is a demo Ultima I in which the dungeons are represented, because for some time they occupied most of the games. But the game received its recognition.