I remember plotting dungeon maps for hours on graph paper. For the gold box D&D games you had to translate things with a decoder wheel.
In the case of Ultima IV you had to had to actually converse with people or they didn't give you any information. For those that don't know what I'm talking about you basically have to say:
- name - job - <virtue like humility>
to everyone in town. If your lucky they will lead you into another piece of conversation that you have to find 'tag' words in to ask about.
Games like Zork (which literally had NO graphics) had to reel you in on the story alone.
I think it's because the target audience was "bored kids who live in the suburbs." For all intents and purposes, it was like living on your own island, and you had a ton of free time.
Nowadays though we have the Internet, as well as smartphones, much more variety on TV, and many more things competing for attention. Most gamers today are casual gamers, therefore most games are pretty shallow.
There was always the urban legend that if you said just the right thing to a wisp, good things would happen...
So ahead of its time, that game. And so unable to evolve to become relevant after most of its groundbreaking ideas were dropped because, for 1998, they were unattainable.
In some respects, it was a victim of its own success...