This is a weekly column from freelancer Rowan Kaiser, which focuses on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. If there's any video game on the planet that demands a remake, it's Ultima IV: Quest Of The Avatar. As arguably the most important title in what I still believe is certainly the most historically important series in video game history, it's something that deserves to be played by as many people as possible.

Yet the years have not been kind Ultima IV. Unlike certain other games commonly cited as "needing" remakes, Ultima IV comes from an era before in-game tutorials and before the mouse had achieved market saturation. It is, unfortunately, just out of the range of accessible for many, regardless of its reputation.

So when I first heard about Ultima Forever, I was cautiously optimistic. Perhaps a respectful remake could maintain the core of the story while appealing to a much wider audience. Of course what that "core" is may be different things to different people. For me, the core of Ultima IV is the combination of open-world mechanics, conversational freedom, and its rigid morality system. These aspects of the game work together to make Ultima IV an exploration of the world, its inhabitants, and one's self - which, as the time, also meant an examination of the player's relationship with computer games as a whole. Yes, it really was that special.