MANY questions about Ultima VII from a noob

[almost-done]

I'm a totally noob of Ultima VII, even if i've read many reviews of this game and they're all enthusiastic. I'd like to know something:

How much advanced is the interaction with the world? I mean, you can interact with everything? Like, for example, place a cannon near a bed when a person is sleeping and then fire with it? Once i read a post in this forum that said about what you can do for roleplaying, which normally would be considered as a hack: build a house with logs, make a pic-nic, fish in the sea. Is the interaction with the world really so advanced?

How much advanced is interaction with NPCs? Do they remember you for what you did? Do they act accordingly if you are a scoundrel or a hero? Do they have full schedules? I've seen in the exult studio some NPC's actions like "thief". Does it mean they can steal things from houses? In general, how much living is Ultima VII world?

And now some miscellaneous questions, related mostly to interaction with the world: can you forge weapons, bake bread, take milk from cows (and maybe even become a farmer, as i read in one of those "hacks") etc.? Are there lots of secrets in Britannia and lots of sidequests? I read there's even a House of Games with some mini-games. Is it true? Can you have your own ship and maybe customize it? Can you even drive it where you wantor are there pre-built "roads"? Is it true that there are branches in dialogues, where what you say can influence what a person will tell you or what he will think about you? Is the world a dynamic one, which means that environment and people react to your actions?

And finally: is it true that you can kill Lord British????

[Neutronium Dragon]

You can generally interact with something that's manipulable. A cannon can be fired, although I think they're too heavy to move around normally. But devices will generally function the way you expect; to answer this and the third question, you can bake bread on a hearth, or spin wool into thread, then turn the thread into cloth, then cut it into bandages to heal party members when they're injured. It was advanced beyond all else when it came out in 1991, and remains ahead of many modern games.

NPCs will remember some things that you've done; most will at least remember if you've met them before, and (especially for major plot points) they'll be aware of significant changes - and sometimes react to things you're wearing, etc. And yes, dialogue choices can affect some NPCs' later responses or disposition. (Showing a particular egg to certain NPCs in SI certainly influences their reactions! ) They do have full schedules (in SI they're also dynamic), and sometimes they'll pilfer (among many other things they might do).

The House of Games exists; the mini-games are relatively simple (though they can be entertaining enough for a while), and while you can't customize ships and carts much beyond decorating them with items, you can drive/sail them pretty much anywhere they'll fit (carts have problems off-road simply because there tend to be too many obstacles, but you can take them off road).

And yes, you can kill Lord British. There're actually two ways to do it.

Neutronium Dragon

[pak150]

Aren't there three ways to kill LB?

[SB-X]

> I mean, you can interact with everything?

Not everything, but most things.

>Once i read a post in this forum that said about what you can do for roleplaying, which normally would be considered as a hack: build a house with logs, make a pic-nic, fish in the sea. Is the interaction with the world really so advanced?

Things you drop on the ground (logs for a house) disappear when you leave the area. (at least in the original U7)

> I've seen in the exult studio some NPC's actions like "thief". Does it mean they can steal things from houses?

No.

> And now some miscellaneous questions, related mostly to interaction with the world: can you forge weapons, bake bread, take milk from cows (and maybe even become a farmer, as i read in one of those "hacks") etc.?

You can only forge one sword for one plot-related event in the original game. In Exult you can install a 3rd party patch that lets you forge swords.

> Is it true that there are branches in dialogues, where what you say can influence what a person will tell you or what he will think about you?

There are branches in dialogues, but most of the time you can go back choose all of the branches no matter how you proceed in the conversation.

[olarin_had_a_password_once]

> Things you drop on the ground (logs for a house) disappear when you leave the area. (at least in the original U7)


Is this true? I seem to remember, the first time I played through the original, dumping a couple of shields and weapons just outside the entrance to a dungeon (simply because I didn't need them) and I don't recall them ever dissapearing even after I'd been gone from that area for quite a while (and saved and reloaded). Perhaps my memory is just faulty. It wouldn't be surprising. I can't remember for the life of me what my password for this forum was.

[SB-X]

HMM. I may have been thinking of U6. Or shields and weapons and other important items can be left because they don't have the TEMPORARY flag set.

[Samatar]

That sounds right, some things stay but unimportant things tend to disappear.

[TdI]

Everything that has been in your inventory stays. If you took loot from bodies and put it directly onto the ground, stuff like that would disappear.
This is how it was in the original.

[Neutronium Dragon]

As I recall, any object that was initially part of the game world tended to stick around no matter what, but things that spawned during gameplay (such as loot from corpses) would go poof unless it was stashed somewhere.

Neutronium Dragon

[drcode]

Exactly. There's a 'temporary' flag that gets set for most of the things that are spawned during the game, and they'll disappear if you walk away from them. But once you put one of these items in your inventory, the flag is cleared, so the object will never disappear.