Ultima VII Dev Document Dump at UltimaCodex

[Infinitron]

http://ultima7.ultimacodex.com/

Check out in particular the "Cluepath", which reveals the existence of previously unknown cut content: http://ultima7.ultimacodex.com/ultima-7-design-documents-cluepath/

 

[taxalot]

Well, at least U7 was a complete game. Can't say the same of U7SI, U8, and U9.

 

[Infinitron]

Well, at least U7 was a complete game. Can't say the same of U7SI, U8, and U9.

Yes, I was rather surprised to see that it had cut content. The game feels complete. U7 was truly an impressive technical achievement.

 

[taxalot]

I am not too sure about the cut content. As it was mentioned in the comments, the weird name near the end could very be Ambrosia, the sea serpent the Hydra, and as for the "new dungeon" some random cave.

edit : shouldn't the Vesper mines be the new dungeon? I can't remember if those mines were actually Covetous or not.

 

[Jaesun]

I am not too sure about the cut content.

EA Forced them to rush this for profits, so it could not get fully developed. Which we as fans of the series is quite sad.

That said, Serpent Isle as a whole wasn't too bad as a game. It certainly could have used a bit more dev time to fully develop the plot (just like VIII) suffered from). Oh well. Publisher funded gaming. That is what you get.

 

[taxalot]

Er, I was talking about U7 which was pretty much finished and on par with thsoe design docs. Of course SI got rushed, any fucking anyone could see that.

 

[SCO]

I prefer SI anyway. Besides having that whole new virtue/anti-virtue system that makes sense and is integrated in the story, i loved the ophidian backstory, and the missing/incomplete parts made it have (by necessity) lots of lose ends to ponder on, which is better than the alternative nowadays (lead-by-the-nose-digested-narrative).

And the scrolls around and the transcribe spell are brilliant, pity about the mages still selling you them at the drop of a hat.

For instance, i much prefer spinebreaker mountains, and the serpent teeth you might, or might not gather, the vampire you might or might not confront - the backstory of both the fortress and the vampire, which you might or not learn, to the whole sequence on Skara Brae, which you MUST do and do only one way.

Granted there are also parts of SI where you're lead on a noose - both trials and castle of the white dragon for instance, but they seemed smaller somehow

 

[Quetzacoatl]

I heard that the gameworld's size was limited by memory space. Is this true?