There's a certain surrealism to Ultima Underworld. I feel it is the combination of the games immersive elements and the striking, primitive fear and comfort of the cave. Was it Plato that said that caves are "a world of dusk and dreams"? Then playing this game fills me with a weird sense of awe.
i don't know if you're memeing, but the atmosphere is quite unsettling. both deliberately so, and just the way the tech makes it. those DOS/MIDI synth sounds, the fog, the way geometry fades in. EVEN the warping as you look up/down (was UU one of the first games to implement this?)i remember falling down a bunch of levels to a much tougher area. i found a pit trap and kept luring enemies into it because they were too strong to actually fight.i also jotted down the different goblin words to deduce their language. i think there was a phrasebook in the manual, as a soft form of copy protection? i just pieced together what i could from the game itself.amazing game, and i only scratched the surface.
it's just fantasy, bro
>>12503607Not memeing. And yeah, the low-fi that attempts to be realistic is the reason for my claim. Mostly because it succeeds. I didnt feel this with SS or Deux though weirdly enough
>>12503609Fantasy too is a segment of the mind akin to the cave
>>12503614fair enough.i think UU 'holds up well' because it's really just a few small systems, not a clusterfuck of RPG rules and mathematics. drag-n-drop items to move them, combine them, or equip them on your character (what did they call this again? a something- doll system?)there are some interesting non-/vr/ spiritual sequels. makes sense given all the shit you can do with physics and whatnot. Legend of Grimrock is fun, but i'm curious to see how Neverlooted Dungeon and The Secret of Weepstone turn out.more /vr/, Daggerfall has a cool framework for dungeons but they're too random/pointless, rather than 'crafted'. a traditional D&D dungeon, you can figure out WHERE hidden doors are based on your (actual) map. just want that feeling in vidya, tbqh.
>>12503591>Was it Plato that said that caves are "a world of dusk and dreams"?What does that even mean
>>12503632Aren't Daggerfall dungeons literally randomly generated?
Remeber thinking the same sort of thing with ArxCaves are dope
>>12503873Caves are the physical manifestation of a weird part of the human psyche.>>12503617As I explained here, mixing the too is just obvious.>>12503873It's the seemingly endless maze where the only sign of life is water, you and the crushing hope that you will see the sun again. It is natural, it feels both like the womb and a prison. So it is the most surreal of natural environments in my opinion
>>12503874same for Arena which tried to copy UUW1 very badly.
>>12503591Oh, that was lucky I'm playing it right now and can't find any good information about questions I have. I'm surprised how little info there is beyond the Ultima wiki (which also doesn't answer most of my questions) and I usually just have to guess or figure it out myself. What does the Standard of Honor do? I know it's a talisman but is there a reason to carry it around? Does it increase stats or is it just a key item to be used somewhere?
>>12506302It's one of the eight talismans IIRC, you need them at the end. They're all magic, but I don't recall if they do anything in particular. You'd have to get them identified. I recall hearing the sword talisman is really good though.
