Ultima IV further advances the franchise with dialog improvements, new means of travel and exploration, and world interactivity.

Lord British felt the people lacked purpose after their great struggles against the Triad were over, and he was concerned with their spiritual well-being in this unfamiliar new age of relative peace, so he proclaimed the Quest of the Avatar: He needed someone to step forth and become the shining example for others to follow.

Unlike most other RPGs the game is not set in an "age of darkness"; prosperous Britannia resembles Renaissance Italy, or King Arthur's Camelot.

The object of the game is to focus on the main character's development in virtuous life—possible because the land is at peace—and become a spiritual leader and an example to the people of the world of Britannia.

[10] After proving his or her understanding in each of the Virtues, locating several artifacts and finally descending into the dungeon called the Stygian Abyss to gain access to the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom, the protagonist becomes an Avatar.

Though Avatarhood is not exclusive to one chosen person, the hero remains the only known Avatar throughout the later games, and as time passes he is increasingly regarded as a myth.

Instead of simply choosing stats to assign points to as in the first three Ultima games, players are asked various ethical dilemmas by a gypsy fortune-teller using remotely tarot-like cards of the eight virtues.

These situations do not have one correct resolution; rather, players must rank the Eight Virtues and whichever stands as their highest priority determines the type of character they will play.

It is the first Ultima to feature a dynamic conversation system;[8] whereas NPCs in earlier games would only give one canned answer when talked to, now players could interact with them by specifying a subject of conversation, the subject determined either by a standard set of questions (name, job, health) or by information gleaned from the previous answers, or from other characters.

The Eight Virtues of the Avatar, their relationship to the Three Principles of Truth, Love, and Courage, and how gameplay has been designed around them are as follows: Richard Garriott has said that he received no customer feedback for his first three games because neither California Pacific Computer nor Sierra On-Line forwarded him mail.

After his own company released Ultima III, Garriott—who attended an interdenominational Christian Sunday School as a teenager—realized (partly from letters of enraged parents) that in the earlier games, immoral actions like stealing and murder of peaceful citizens had been necessary or at least very useful actions in order to win the game, and that such features might be objectionable.

"[12] To encourage a sense of responsibility for their character's actions, players were intended to feel they were playing themselves transported into a fantasy realm, not a separate person.

Garriott removed gameplay elements he believed would prevent players from identifying personally with their character, such as playing as a non-human.

[13] Decades after the game's release, 1UP.com described Ultima IV as "a direct barb at the self-appointed moral crusaders who sought to demonize RPGs" and complained that "the irony in seeing an 'evil' RPG better present the Christian admonition to back faith with works in quiet modesty than the Bible-waving watchdog decrying the medium seems to have been lost".

[14] The game's moral dilemmas were designed to give players the opportunity to reap temporary rewards for amoral behavior, only to realize later that they have been penalized.

Though one playtester threatened to quit over this dilemma, Garriott refused to remove it from the game, reasoning that it had served its purpose in provoking an emotional response.

[13] The game's concept originated from when Garriott was watching a television documentary about religion that covered the Dead Sea Scrolls and a Hindu temple in India.

Garriott described the playtesting as "slightly rushed" to make the Christmas season; he was the only one to finish playing through the game by the time it went out for publishing.

[17] Like previous games, Ultima IV does not permit saving in dungeons because of technical limitations that Garriott described as "non-trivial".

Like previous Ultimas, Richard Garriott wrote most of the core code himself; as the games were getting too complex for one person to handle, however, he was required to call in outside assistance for programming tasks with which he was not familiar, such as music and optimized disk routines.

With this character not responding properly, players were forced to guess the correct answer or find it from sources outside the game to complete it.

[citation needed] The Commodore 64 port was the first in the series to take full advantage of the computer's hardware rather than simply converting the sound and graphics from the Apple II, and include in-game music.

The NES port of Ultima IV is very different from the other versions: the graphics had been completely redone, as was the music, and the dialogue options were greatly reduced.

It seems that most of these cartridges were produced for the European market, as they contain a multi-lingual (English, French and German) manual, both books from the original version as well as a folded paper map.

The books were of different colour for each of the three editions (blue for the UK version), fully translated and did not fit inside the game's box.

[35] In 1987 Scorpia cited Ultima IV for taking the genre away from hack and slash—"for the first time, we have a CRPG whose focus IS character development.

"[40] In the September 1986 issue, Mike Gray lauded the game as "the best computer simulation of a true fantasy role-playing experience I have ever seen.