That last one may come as a surprise, because to a lot of people Ultima VII is all about the extraneous details - the villager's daily schedules, the working blacksmith equipment, etc. But I think if you'll look closely, you'll see that as "sprawling" as the game might appear, it's actually extremely TIGHT. City populations are actually very small (And why is 95% of the population of Britannia single? That can't last...), and the world itself is actually not that large size-wise. Most of the towns are really quite close to each other (a fact that is obscured by the limited top-down viewpoint of the game). Like Ocarina of Time, the world isn't big so much as full, which is to be preferred. Each character in each town has a little role to play in either the larger quest or that town's mini-story. And no, there aren't hundreds of unrelated miniquests to do. Usually, each town has one main story and maybe a couple of tiny side stories to explore, but very few (if any) of these qualify as "side quests" in the traditional RPG sense. No one asks you to "kill ten bears" or to go get a staff from a dungeon halfway around the world unless it's relevant to the main, single-threaded storyline. What's more, there are secrets and treasures to find everywhere. One of the great design principles of Miyamoto (designer of Mario, Zelda, and other Nintendo titles) is rewarding exploration, and Ultima VII follows suit. The game's world might not really be "for me," in the same way that King's Quest or Final Fantasy was, but there was still a whole lot of treasure at the end of just about any given dungeon.

I should probably note that when I say Ultima VII is a brilliant storytelling game, that I don't mean that there's a whole lot of plot or cutscenes in the game. In fact, apart from the brief beginning and end, there are NO cutscenes. Due to the nature of the game, you are constantly arriving to a town just after story has occurred - a grisly, ritualistic murder was committed, a wussy little man was challenged to a duel to the death by a warrior's guild, etc. So even though you uncover clues to the story after the fact, there is still a story being told. What's more, a story is being told in the very interactions and agendas of the characters you interact with. "Plot" might be sparse in Ultima VII, but "story" is not. (I should also mention how fantastically grateful I am that every book in Ultima VII contains only a blurb of text!)

What's frustrating to me is that I seldom hear game developers or game reviewers expound on these principles (screenwriters, musical theater writers, theme park attraction designers do though), even though they seem critically important to me. It's possible I'm one of only a few who values them in application to the games world, although back in the 90's it seemed like they were just understood. Given that the games that I do love are loved by many others, however, suggests that I'm not alone in valuing these things - or, at least, I hope I'm not.

Maybe one day we can have another Ultima VII. Until then, I guess I'll just have to settle for the somewhat duller, emptier world of Skyrim.

...

Nah, I'm gonna play Ultima VII again.