Last time I talked about how games inspired me to improve my morning routine.
Today, I’m sharing how games taught me to be a better person.
A child without religion
Here in Finland, children inherit religion from their mothers.
Before I was born, my mother decided that the Bible is not a book that children should be forced to experience. She left Christianity behind her.
And so, when I was born, I was born without religion.
I was an “atheist” some thirty years before I really even grasped the accurate meaning of the word.
Games with morality systems
It was something of a fad to add a morality system to your game some 10-20 years ago. Games like Mass Effect and Undertale allowed you to choose whether you wanted to play ruthless or kind.
But before any of those, there was another game that had a morality system.
Sometime around 199X, a friend of mine came to visit me. His mother had bought him a NES game from the flea market. However, the game was on an American cartridge, so it didn’t work on his PAL (European) NES.
Knowing that I had a modified NES that could play the game, he brought it to me.
That game was Ultima: Quest of the Avatar – an RPG about being a hero, a champion of virtue.
And unbeknownst to me at the time, it contained something that I would later come to describe as my religion.

(image source: Ultima Codex)
Where did Ultima IV come from?
Back in the eighties, American parents were concerned about the state of these newfangled “computer games” and “role-playing games” that were starting to get popular. You could play some unholy creation called a “dwarf” and go around killing people with an axe! Not to mention the practice of pagan magic in these games!
And even in the games where you played a human hero (including Ultimas I-III), the most efficient strategy was still to go around and gather experience by killing civilians and stealing their money!
None of that seemed very good for the developing brains of the American youth.
Ultima IV was created by Richard Garriott to answer that criticism. And it remains somewhat unique to this day in that, unlike games like Mass Effect or Undertale, you must be virtuous to be able to finish the game.
You do have the options and tools to attack, steal, lie, and cheat. But the end of the game is only available to you once you voluntarily stop using them and work long and hard to prove that you’re only doing good things.
The Gameplay of the Avatar
Ultima IV is a game about virtues and being good. But doesn’t that sound boring? Is it just about studying scriptures and praying? Are you getting stopped every 30 seconds to answer questions from a holy book?
Not at all. Outside of the moral theme, the game is still a fantasy RPG: it has combat, talking to people, buying gear, learning and casting spells, traversing dungeons and the world, and so on.
There’s two main differences to other RPGs of the time:
- You’re expected to improve your virtues on top of doing all the generic RPG stuff
- There’s no villain or last boss in the game (or any boss fights, for that matter)
I’ve heard plenty of people say that Ultima IV is unplayable in this day and age. And I agree with those sentiments.
But not because it’s a game with a morality system, but simply because it’s an RPG from the 80’s: it’s an open-world game with a distinct lack of modern day’s game design or quality of life features. There’s no handholding or pointing you towards where you need to go.

The control scheme gets really clunky at times, especially when you’re maneuvering up to eight characters on a battlefield. (A general suggestion is playing through most of the game with only 1-3 characters and recruiting the rest only when you’ve collected everything.)
It has a heavy focus on reading materials and listening to NPCs. That’s how you learn, not just of the virtues, but of the world of the game, its flora and fauna, the creatures, land and dungeons.
Your character remembers nothing. You’re expected to jot down things on paper. You’re responsible for remembering things and asking them yourself from the NPCs by typing.
There is fast travel (in many forms even!) but it’s not the “open map and click to teleport there” kind. Instead, you’re expected to understand the geography, vehicles, magic and moon cycles of the world, so you can take full advantage of the means to travel around.

There are no neatly lined corridors to take you straight to your goals: you need to look at maps and learn the layout of the world. (There are magical gems that allow you to view the world from a bird’s eye view, but they’re somewhat expensive and single use!)
Finally, there’s several ruthless parts where, even if an NPC has warned you about a place, you might still think “How was I supposed to understand that without a walkthrough?!”
But I’m not here to talk about the gameplay. Let’s dig into the morality!
The Eight Virtues of the Avatar
The eight virtues are as follows: Honesty, Compassion, Valor, Justice, Sacrifice, Honor, Spirituality and Humility.
The three principles that form those virtues are: Truth, Love and Courage.
A cool thing is that the virtues and principles tie into each other quite logically. Everything has a color, a mantra and a symbol. In the game each virtue also has its representative rune, stone, town, dungeon, and shrine.

(image source: Ultima Codex)
Now, although I previously mentioned that I ended up calling this system my religion, the truth is that the eight virtues are more like a set of guidelines.
The virtues aren’t holy or divine, and there’s no gods, traditions, worship, or even ceremonies (outside of “visiting shrines to meditate”). Finally, from what the NPCs of the game tell you, the virtues are actually completely optional for ordinary folk in the world: you can pick and mix, and strive to follow or study as few or as many of them as you wish.
(Of course, the player in the game is expected to “master them all” and become The Avatar – champion of the eight virtues.)
Honesty
Honesty is respect for Truth.
“Take not the gold of others found in towns and castles for yours it is not!”
“Cheat not the merchants and peddlers for tis an evil thing to do!”
Honesty is a simple enough concept, but where in the game do you get to use it?
Well, the magic spells in the game require things called reagents. Basically, ingredients that you use to make spells. (Yes, spells in Ultima IV are like cakes that you need to bake before you can cast them!)
And conveniently, every reagent seller in the world happens to be blind. (Must be something to do with handling hazardous materials all the time.) So whenever you’re buying reagents, the shopkeeper kindly asks you to leave behind the correct sum of money.

However, you can just leave a single coin and walk away seemingly scot free. The shopkeeper is none the wiser and the guards don’t come after you or anything.
But to show proof of your honesty, you need to pay the sum that the shopkeepers ask of you (or more).
You lose honesty by stealing from chests (in towns and castles) or by paying less money than the reagents sellers ask you.
Honesty in real life
Here’s what Garriott has to say about honesty in the game:
Honesty was easy – I let you cheat shopkeepers and steal things, but the game kept a record where it could, later in the game, come back to haunt you. Just like the real world. Why is it you don’t steal from people? Because if you do they’ll throw you in jail or disown you.
~Richard Garriott
Now, you can argue that if you’re an atheist (like I was) this doesn’t exactly apply. The game keeps a record of your lies, but in real life, if you don’t believe in any kind of god, you won’t think there’s anybody keeping track. (Unless you get caught.)
But what Garriott says in the end remains important: it’s the fact that it’s humans that will punish you that is the rule.
You can get away with dishonesty sometimes. If you’re sneaky, you can even get away with it a lot. But this still remains the actual rule: even if there isn’t a god to judge me, there are people who will.
And just because you thought you made it out without anybody realizing it, there may still be consequences. Are you ready to live your life in the constant stress and fear that one day, someone’s going to find out?
The other big thing with honesty, is that you don’t need to remember what lies you’ve spread around. Dishonesty is a slippery slope – one that will make your life needlessly complicated and insufferable.

Compassion
Compassion is Love of others.
“Kill not the non-evil beasts of the land, and do not attack the fair people!”
“Give of thy purse to those who beg and thy deed shall not be forgotten!”
The primary way to increase compassion in the game is to give money to beggars.
The PC version doesn’t have this, but the NES version has some beggars claim they have some disease but accidently blurt out the name of another disease once you give them money, revealing that they’re probably just coming up with whatever excuses.
Should you still give them money? This is not something addressed directly in the game, but you gain compassion from giving money to any beggar, so the intent seems to be that you should give money to the needy, even if they in their desperation resort to lying.

Another means to increase compassion is running away from non-evil creatures (animals such as snakes and bats), or only damaging them enough that they flee by themselves.
(The distinction between evil and non-evil creatures seems to be mostly intelligence: is the animal just following its instincts, or purposefully trying to rob you even though they don’t need to?)
You lose compassion by purposefully attacking non-evil creatures (animal cruelty). However, you’re not penalized for killing animals, as long as it’s in self-defense.
Compassion in real life
I used to give money to beggars, but I stopped once some of the regulars started recognizing me and got a bit too chummy, suggesting we go to the bank so that I can withdraw big sums of money to give to them.
From what I’ve seen in adulthood, I think that the situation is frustratingly complex – and I don’t think giving money to people is often the right answer.
There are people who know how to handle money. And when such people happen to run into a bad financial situation, giving them money to dig themselves out may be the right call. But people who never knew how to handle money in the first place won’t be saved by just receiving more money.
“If you give a man fire, they’ll be warm for the night. If you teach a man how to make fire, they’ll be warm for the rest of their lives.”
So the correct answer would be to teach these people how to manage their finances.
However, that’s a whole lot of work. Too much work, even. Who has time to invite every beggar they meet to study sessions? And even if you have the time, inviting a penniless stranger to your home is scary.
It’s a cop out, I know. But it requires time and preparation to the point where I think teaching poor people finance is not something you can just do without a dedicated system in place (such as a volunteer organization).
For me, the biggest takeaways in compassion are general understanding and kindness, especially towards strangers. Especially in this age when being on the internet is part of everyone’s daily life.
And it’s that understanding and kindness that has allowed me to meet many people on the internet way outside of my personal hobbies and beliefs (from “far-right nuts” to “far-left nuts” to people with rare and weird fetishes). And I’ve been able to have meaningful conversations with those people and see for myself that under their labels exists an actual, often intelligent and interesting, person.

Valor
Valor is Courage to stand up against risks
“Victories scored over evil creatures help to build a valorous soul!”
“To flee from battle with less than grievous wounds often shows a coward!”
Despite being a “game about being good”, Ultima IV is still a fantasy RPG. There’s orcs and ettins and dragons and many other creatures to fight.
The only way to show valor is to win fights and not run away. Removing wounded party members from combat is allowed, but anything aside from that costs you valor.
The exception to this is rooms in dungeons. The game never explicitly tells this, but in dungeons you’re allowed to (and sometimes even have no choice but to) leave the room while there are still enemies present.

The fact that the game never tells this detail can cause some distress. You’re taught that you should never run from fights or you’ll lose valor, but then you come across these kinds of situations. Do you rack your brain trying to think how to defeat every enemy, possibly wasting lots of time and expensive spells? Or do you just leave the room and risk the game marking that as a sign of cowardice?
Valor in real life
There are three major anti-patterns that both games and cartoons in general teach:
- evil exists and is concentrated on a single entity (“the big bad boss”)
- if you defeat that entity, then world will be free of evil
- evil is defeated by beating it up or killing it
Ultima IV pretty much rids itself of the first two anti-patterns. However, the third one remains a problem: conflicts are usually solved with violence.
As much as some people may try to convince you otherwise, we don’t exactly have evil ogres or ettins in physical form in real life. It’s an especially troublesome anti-pattern, because you can’t exactly just go around “beating bad guys” without facing repercussions (jail time or worse).
So you feel powerless, not being able to “do what’s right” and end up simply praying for a Robin Hood to come and rid the world of injustice for you.

But actual valor comes down to mindset. Such as not fleeing from uncomfortable situations and being able to face your inner weaknesses.
Another misunderstanding with valor is thinking that you should never back out from your beliefs, when it’s actually the opposite: it takes valor and courage to face your beliefs and accept that you might be wrong, or at least that what you believe in isn’t entirely without flaws.
And it’s that valor that also allowed me to transition from being an atheist to seeing the world as an agnostic. (From being sure that God doesn’t exist to admitting that I can’t know that… among many other things.)
Justice
Justice is Truth, tempered by Love
“To take the gold of others is injustice not soon forgotten. Take only thy due!”
“Attack not a peaceful citizen for that action deserves strict punishment!”
“Kill not a non-evil beast for they deserve not death, even if in hunger they attack thee!”
Justice is the one virtue that used to confuse me the most as a young boy. Usually when you think of justice, you think of people getting their just due – of crooks being thrown to jail. (And indeed, followers of justice are running the Court of Law in Ultima IV.)
But here, it’s “Truth, tempered by Love.”
So, it’s not about strict punishment, but more akin to understanding.

So, dispense punishment, but only where it is actually due. Understand that even if somebody attacks you (whether it’s physically or verbally), they may have done it out of fear or desperation.
In the game, you show justice by running away from non-evil creatures, and making sure you give the blind reagents sellers what they ask.
You lose justice by stealing from chests, attacking non-evil creatures or cheating the reagents sellers.
Justice in real life
To be honest, I’ve always really liked this tempered version of justice.
Don’t hate people for their actions. Try to understand them, and what drove them to do what they did or become what they are.
Try to see people, not as evil or as enemies, but as people, with all their flaws, weaknesses, wants and needs.
Only if, after understanding them, you still find that they require punishment, then follow procedures to see that they are dealt with accordingly.
It’s an idealistic view and very hard to put into practice in reality. But like with compassion, this kind of thinking is especially important in our current age where people are losing their jobs for posting funny memes with no bad intentions or getting attacked and harassed for something they said 10 years ago.
Regardless of whether you’re planning to write an angry post on Twitter/X against someone or going on a murder spree with an actual weapon because you feel that’s righteous – don’t. Temper your truth with love.
Next up
That’s the first four virtues down. Due to the length of this post, I’ll go through the last four in a follow-up article.
But by now you should know where I come from and where Ultima IV comes from.
And there are a couple of other interesting things about Ultima IV that I want to go through.
I’ll see you in the next article.