The Reconciling the Past Series
Reconciling the Past
Ultima is a series with a long history of games. Many of the early games feature events and settings that make them difficult to tie to the rest of the series, although some retconning has been done toward that end.
Older games are not the only culprits, however. Shortened development cycles, pressure from executives, and team changes have also resulted in continuity errors, slight blunders, and even some gaping logic holes. Over time, these could be smoothed into a cohesive story structure. Unfortunately, those days are gone, so it is up to us, the fans and future developers, to find and eliminate inconsistencies. These may seem like nitpicks, but can deter from some people enjoyment of the games.
What this series of posts will entail is how the events of each game could be manipulated, by a dedicated Game Developer, to clear out lingering doubts about these events and tie them more strongly to the rest of the series.
Each post in the series will focus on a specific game, or on a speculative theory. Each will offer suggestions about what could have happened, or what may need to be changed, in order to resolve discrepancies between games. These are living documents, and will be expanded and time goes on to allow for new theories and suggestions. If you have any ideas, please feel free to create your own articles, which I will happily link here.
The Age of Darkness
- Akalabeth
- Ultima: The First Age of Darkness
- Ultima: Escape from Mt. Drash
- Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress
- Ultima III: Exodus
The Age of Enlightenment
- Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar
- Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny
- Ultima VI: The False Prophet
- Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss
- Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire
- Worlds of Ultima: Martian Dreams
Age of Armageddon
- Ultima VII: The Black Gate
- Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds
- Ultima VII Part Two: Serpent Isle
- Ultima VIII: Pagan
- Ultima IX: Ascension
Other Series
- Runes of Virtue
- Lord of Ultima
- Ultima Online
- Ultima Online 2
- Ultima X: Odyssey
How to “Reconcile the Past”…
- What is Canon?
- What is my Interpretation?
- What is my Speculation as to how it all connects?
This is my next project, after I finish one more Ultima Game Developer post. I know it can be a controversial topic, but I hope everyone likes it and joins in the discussion.
I’ll definitely be tagging along in the Ultima IX post since I have spent many days worth of time thinking on this topic.
Feel free to shoot me an email with questions anytime Jayson.
I’m trying to decide now what order I should do these. I have lots of things for the Speculative group, and I’ve got some notes for U6/7/8/9, but its hard to build on them without getting U4/5 established, since this seems to be the baseline for all the others. House of cards, and all that.
Ultima 9 may either be a great place to start, or shooting myself in the foot, since it tends to polarize fans. I may do something safe and start with the Age of Darkness so we can build toward a (slightly) more stable Britannia…
Thanks for the invitation, Iceblade. If I run into a block on U9, I’ll hit you up.