Ultima: Worlds of Adventure 2 - Martian Dreams | Retro Reviews

A retrospective review of Origin System's 1991 entry in the "Worlds of Ultima" roleplaying-adventure franchise, following up the first game's lost world romp with a trip to Mars - albeit, the Mars envisioned by late 19th-century scientific romances! This video covers the background to the game's development, an introduction to and analysis of its gameplay, its art and sound direction, a general overview of the story, and finally some(!) thoughts on its relationship with Victorian sci-fi and astronomy. Many thanks to Mike McShaffry, Denis Loubet, Jeff Dee, and The Fat Man for fielding my annoying questions! Chapter timestamps are below.

The story analysis for this video is a bit unusual in spending so much time covering the literary background to the game, but I felt it was justified in light of Warren Spector's repeated statements to the effect that he meant Martian Dreams to be semi-educational. I understand not everyone is interested in a 2hr discussion of the game's fidelity to Martian irrigation and lost Aryan princesses though, so feel free to just watch the intro to that section and skip to the ending if it's not your thing! There are slightly more spoilers in the video than I would usually prefer to include, but Origin pretty much laid out the whole story in their pre-release marketing anyway. And obviously there are by necessity spoilers for 100-plus year old sci-fi novels in the Story Analysis. Quick correction to the story overview - when I refer to the Martian "arborists" in the game, I meant to say "agrarian". I didn't notice this until I'd already recorded most of the video :O With regards to the pronunciation of names (I'm sure I'll get comments...), where possible I tried to mimic recordings of native speakers (e.g. Jules Verne/George Melies), but sometimes I either couldn't find a reliable source (Gustavus Pope, Eugene Antoniadi) or nobody could agree (NASA can't make up its mind how to say "Argyre" or "Hellas", for example, so I used the most common Anglophone version for most of the video and switched to the other for the story overview). And of course, sometimes I just messed up and couldn't re-record the lines (sorry Andrea!). Also, I deliberately mispronounced certain names out of pettiness, but I'm not telling you which. Enjoy!

00:00 Opening
01:15 Chapter 1 - Introduction and Overview
09:30 Chapter 2 - Behind the Scenes
10:07 2:1 - Warren Spector and conceptualizing the Worlds franchise
18:22 2:2 - "Time Travel" enters development
33:41 2:3 - Release and aftermath
42:08 Chapter 3 - Gameplay
42:23 3:1 - Gameplay Basics (Minor Spoilers)
1:01:25 3:2A - Gameplay Analysis introduction
1:04:49 3:2B - (GA) As an adventure game
1:15:12 3:2C - (GA) As a CRPG
1:29:11 3:2D - Gameplay Analysis conclusion
1:35:01 Chapter 4 - Art and Sound
1:35:24 4:1 - Visuals
1:57:54 4:2 - Audio
2:07:39 4:3 - Running Martian Dreams today
2:11:48 Chapter 5 - Story and Writing
2:12:14 5:1A Early Story Overview (Minor Spoilers)
2:28:51 5:1B Midgame Story Overview (Medium Spoilers)
2:36:29 5:2A - Story Analysis introduction
2:47:27 5:2B - Jules Verne and the scientific romance
2:54:46 5:2C - Mars and Victorian science (Major Spoilers from here onwards)
2:59:26 5:2D - Percival Lowell and the Martian Canals
3:06:02 5:2E - Mars as the Abode of Life
3:13:13 5:2F - H.G. Wells and other Martian civilizations
3:18:15 5:2G - Dark Satanic Mills
3:24:57 5:2H - Barsoom and the lost era
3:33:25 5:2I - Untime-ly Travel
3:40:08 5:2J - The New Martians
3:46:36 5:2K - Utopias and Dystopias
3:52:53 5:2L - No City on a Hill
3:58:38 5:2M - A Victorian Ensemble
4:06:35 5:2N - A Day at the Fair
4:09:26 5:2O - Story Analysis conclusion
4:16:56 Outro and Acknowledgements