I'm not sure where else to put this one. It's not a Wild Mass Guess, as I've actually seen the document in question; it's not an Epileptic Tree, as it had official backing (to a point). Anyway.
There was a lot of plot that wound up on the cutting-room floor with Ultima IX. I don't recall WHY any more, just that at one point I got to peek at a draft of the back-story, one that would have basically explained every loose end in the entire series.
The biggest one — the part that, ten years later, is still clear in my memory — explained the Guardian's origins. Simply put, the Guardian was much like the Avatar in another world... until he cast the Armageddon spell. Wiped out every living thing except himself, and found out the spell made him functionally immortal to boot.
So this guy, literally the last man on Earth, wanders the world for a very long time, totally isolated. Worked himself into a nice state of dementia, then started wandering the various planes. By the time he ran into Pagan, he'd convinced himself that he was supposed to protect everyone there by taking over.
All those cut scenes in U9 were supposed to tell a totally different story: how the Guardian ruled over Britannia, a war between the free regions and the, well, not-free ones, and the Avatar needing to sneak through all this and organize a resistance. He also would've had to hunt down artifacts from every prior game to beat the Guardian for good.
If you know where to look, you can see traces of this stuff in the game. All the pre-rendered scenes (including a few hiding on the discs) tell the right story, they just re-ordered them to tell the chop-job that shipped. It's why some of those cinematics don't look right; they were meant to be used at different times. Places like the museum were supposed to have more impact.
There's a fan-made mod of U9 that tries to fix this somewhat by replacing the dialogue (though you have to turn off speech). Pity it didn't fix the physics engine.
Should we change the titles of the Ultima games to include the subtitles so the pages would be VideoGame.Ultima I The First Age Of Darkness, VideoGame.Ultima II Revenge Of The Enchantress, VideoGame.Ultima III Exodus, VideoGame.Ultima IV Quest Of The Avatar, VideoGame.Ultima V Warriors Of Destiny, VideoGame.Ultima VI The False Prophet, VideoGame.Ultima VII The Black Gate, VideoGame.Ultima VII Part II Serpent Isle, VideoGame.Ultima VIII Pagan VideoGame.Ultima IX Ascension? After all, the Ultima wiki uses the full names. Also, should we move this page to Franchise.Ultima?
Edited by Brainiac0982 Hide / Show Replies