New Video: Ultima 9 Bob White Plot Endgame
Courtesy of Joe Garrity of the Origin Museum, and to the hard work of both him and the team at the Wing Commander CIC — especially Dan Chisarick, who archived the CD on which this material was stored — Ultima Aiera is pleased to present what I suspect is one of the original endgame cutscenes for the “Bob White Plot” version of Ultima 9.
I say “one of” the original cutscenes because, as you can see, this is the Armageddon cutscene spoken of here. The latter half of this scene was used in the release version of the game in three places: the vision triggered by the mirror in Lord British’s bedroom, the vision at the gypsy camp, and the “bad ending” achieved by handing over the Codex Lenses to Blackthorn.
Dragons and Dragonettes may recall that the planned good ending to the Bob White Plot involved the citizens of Britannia taking shelter from the Guardian and the Armageddon spell on the island of Skara Brae which, protected as it was by the Barrier of Life and the Runes of Virtue, floated off into space away from the shattered world once home to Britannia, in a manner not unlike what could be found in a Roger Dean illustration. This video doesn’t show that happy fate befalling the people of Britannia; their end is rather more dire. Also, the Avatar and Lord British do not get infused into the spell and pass on with its casting; the video ends with them standing there looking rather…remorseful.
All of which leads me to suspect that the Bob White version of Ultima 9 might just have had a rather more branching story than has been known thus far, one in which it was possible to “win” the game (by means of casting Armageddon) without sacrificing the Avatar and without saving the people of Britannia.
Cool… I wish I could hear what they are saying.
Reminds me of what I was doing with the ending of Infinity Eternal. Not all of them were good (in fact… one ending was very similar to that)
That’s incredible. If this video was found, there has to be more material out there.
To those that are interested-
The CD that this came from has some more video on it, but we are unable to access them, because they are in an unknown format–here is a synopsis:
The following files are all the .movs on the disc (like the video that I gave to ultimaaiera)–the quality is bad, and there is no sound–they all have the same ‘introductory’ screen as the one you see above-I assume they are ‘quickviews’ of the big videos. All are the same as the final game, except ‘armageddon’:
ambush.mov (-leaving Despise)
armageddon.mov (the one you see above)
branding.mov (raven branding the hero)
column.mov (the intro of the farmer getting crushed)
goodending.mov (the finale)
intro.mov (dragon scene/blackthorn+guardian)
meteorite.mov (corrupt-not viewable)
ring of fire.mov (corrupt-not viewable)
teleport.mov (corrupt-not viewable)
The rest have no extensions, and they are of a larger size than their .mov counterparts. This could mean that they are higher quality:
ambush videovision (16346k)
column videovision (25004k)
Desktop DB (260k)
Desktop DF (48k)
Icon (0k)
U9 Armageddon (36643k)
U9 Exodus (33434k)
U9 Intro (60086k)
U9 Sending 1 (49348k)
U9 Sending 3 (27804k)
U9 Sending 4 (34212k)
UA intro re-capture (87688k)
I am making an assumption that they are in some kind of old format called ‘videovision’. It may be that the videos were done in this format, but sifting thru the ‘junk’ on the internet for info on this is nigh impossible–anyone willing to help, or does anyone have any insight into this ‘video vision’ format? I have a feeling it’s an Apple format, but I’m not sure.
I do thereby issue a challenge–
If you have an FTP site, and can give me some solid proof that you can decode and transfer these to a more useable format, I would be happy to upload a sample. Send me an email, and help us bring back a piece of Ultima history!
I’ve seen parts of this video among the Ultima 9 game files. There is a video file that contains an unused endgame. It was a very long time ago and I remember little about it. However there are scenes in this video that I’m sure I’ve seen, and others that I’m sure I haven’t seen.
This is an outstanding example of the greatness, which was meant to be Ultima IX Ascension in it’s original planned version.
Nevertheless I think, we are in luck that there was this (of course very downgraded) version of UIX released back in 1999.
There are many examples in Video game history, where promising products could not be released, simply because publishers thought it would be not worthy, and as far as I know, this was nearly the case with UIX.
From the actual point of view, even the actual version of UIX shows many innovative concepts, which still are used in modern games. For me, UIX is therefore one of the greatest games of all time. That’s of course a reason, why I try so hard to make it better with “Beautiful Britannia”.
Many thanks to Origin Museum for providing this history lesson.
I agree with the assessment that this must be some sort of “Bad Ending” for Ultima IX – the tone feels like this, and it also explains a decrepency I’ve noted ever since we had the full summarry of the original plot: the Armageddon video (as a reminder we had the whole of it except for the conversation in that infamouse E3 98 heavy metal trailer) showed Lord British casting the spell, while the plot says the Avatar does it.
I’d suspect both this video and the true ending would have used a common base: with the destruction going on and the character throwing the spell changed and of course the ending of it.
From that list of corrupt file, I would suspect “U9 Exodus” would be the video for the ending that would fit the theme of this end.
As I recall the original plot didn’t not have that many cut scenes in any case… there was:
The Intro (which was left as is in the final game as far as we can tell)
The First Sending (reworked into the Pyros video)
The Second Sending (reworked into the Raven branding/love scene)
The Third Sending (reworked into the Prison scene)
The Fourth Sending (the Avatar and the armies… not used at all in the game)
The Ending(s) (Most likely two of them from what we know)
So I would suspect this discs HAS all the cutscenes from the original. Some of these sounds odd from the title though (such as “ring of fire”) so I wonder if there were other scenes done that wern’t used.)
Alas I have no idea about the videovision things so I’ll keep my finger crossed that you’ll find a way to read these files, this would be awesome!
“I’ve seen parts of this video among the Ultima 9 game files. There is a video file that contains an unused endgame. It was a very long time ago and I remember little about it. However there are scenes in this video that I’m sure I’ve seen, and others that I’m sure I haven’t seen.”
You’re probably thinking of the “Armageddon” video. It used in the game almost as is, except it is lacking the casting of the Armageddon spell (the video starts by the spell spreading from the bottom of Stonegate) and the conversation between the Avatar and Lord British. It can be seen at three occasions ingame: when you break the mirror in Lord British’s bedroom, when you show to Future to Lazlo in Britain and if you give the lenses to Blackthorn in Shame (thus serving as a “bad endgame”).
One other thought I’ve had, I wonder if the video as is was not considered as a “bad endgame” even for the final plot – technically this could also have been used as a bad endgame for this version of the plot, there are probably occurence that could have lead to armageddon being the only thing leading to killing the Guardian.
And taht would explain why the endgame is called “goodendgame” 😛
Very interesting indeed. A pity it never made it into the final product, though. I’m interested to see if this will affect Eriadain in terms of what it’ll include in its plot.
Thanks for your thoughts, Sergorn–yeah, I hope I have all of the files, but we’ll never know without help…I’m going to contact a friend of mine who may be able to decode some of these–he’s done some amazing things with video–perhaps he’ll be able to lend a hand (?)
[WTF–do you have a ‘public’ area on your FTP site? I might need to give the guy a link].
I seem to recall someone saying (on this site) that they actually have the entirety of the Bob White plot–is this true? If so, who has it?
Videovision is a Radius codec, is it not? http://www.vintagemacworld.com/radiusmain.html
It looks like it vaguely might be what you’re looking for.
YES–it is. (just found out myself)–a friend tipped me off to this format.
Bad news-A PC can’t read this file format.
Good News–my brother (who has a MAC) is converting the files for me–I’m uploading them to him now.
Bad News-the test he did (ambush videovision) is not good quality in Videovision format–he sent it back and it is roughly the same as what we’ve already seen. There is no sound on the videovision version either.
Good News-We at least get to *see* the others (including U9 Armageddon, U9 exodus, and sending 1, 3, and 4) to see if we uncover any more gems.
I’ll probably have them by tomorrow, and I’ll shoot them to WTF’s FTP server then.
I assume that you would want to see them, yes? (even if they’re the same?)
HECK YES WE WANT TO SEE THEM!
Uh…I mean…sure!
I think I speak for everyone here when I say that even if the cutscenes are in a not so great quality, we’d definitly want to see them ! 😀
Thanks for all the work you do
My pleasure Sergorn–glad folks are enjoying this stuff.
(now should I upload the Lost Vale tomorrow?)
JUST KIDDING!
(no–really–I don’t have it!)
(seriously!)
It’s really fantastic seeing this stuff. U9 and UO were the only Ultimas I could follow through development as I never really came across the series until shortly before Ultima 4 was released for free.
It was dissappointing to see the trouble U9 faced and despite enjoying the final game, I always yearned for the original plot that I have no doubt was a better game.
Seeing these shots, and even the high quality UO intro shots, is fantastic. Thank you.
This is just awesome! Thanks! Thanks! Thanks!
Wonderful! Part of this was here in this trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vx1cbsAzCsg
Something that is different from the original is that the Armageddon spell spills some water over the camera. I don’t know why they’ve cut this part.
And it’s even more wonderful that Joe promised he will release The Lost Vale tomorrow! I’ve already told many people to come here and greet him in return! We are very anxious now!
jk’ing… thanks for all your efforts, Joe! We’ll still look forward to the Lost Vale though… hehe…
You know, I’ve always found rather ironic that “The Lost Vale” has become this kind of holy grail of the Ultima series that we all hope can be recovered someday.
Because I’m pretty sure it would have been VERY poorly received had it been released back in 1994 and probably hated by many fans just as much as the original game was. Even the lead designer seem to think it was pretty bad and was rather baffled that so many people were interested in it.
I actually think this is basically the reason EA pulled the plug on TLV and the Enhanced U8 CD Edition at the eleventh hour – because after the huge backlash Ultima VIII suffered, they probably thought the add on would not sell well anymore and was not worh the money that would have to invested to distribute it in spite of Ultima VIII’s commercial success.
(Before anyone bring this up: no, U8 was not a commercial failure – this is a misconception probably of the fact that since fans thought it sucked, they thought it must have sold poorly with the cancellation of TLV being a direct “proof”. But as a matter of fact, Ultima VIII was the best selling Ultima game of all time before UO came along.)
Kobra Kai–jeez…you had me going there. 🙂
Sergorn-I actually asked Garriott himself about Lost Vale, and why it didn’t come out. He said that at the time the EA bean-counters were starting to watch every penny. They did some calculations on the add-ons for U7 and Serpent Isle, and found that less-than 25 percent of people who bought the game also purchased the add-on. With a little quick math, they figured out how much they would make using this percentage as a guide, and then compared it to the cost of creating the boxes and the distribution costs to get it in the stores. With distribution being more, they cancelled the project. You are right that it had nothing to do with it being a ‘bad’ game, it was simple economics–why put out a game that will lose money? The CD version was released 2 days after the disk-based version (I know this because I was pissed that I bought it day one, and then saw it 2 days later in the same store), so I assume LV wasn’t ready for CD release. Why it wasn’t rereleased on an ‘enhanced’ CD I have no idea.
OH–Denis Loubet will be stopping by to look at his old work–he happened to be on Facebook earlier, and I sent him a link to the page.
He said he would look later for any other videos that get posted–
Incredibly cool!
Yeah, to say the very least! Hope he drops a comment.
Whoa that’d be really cool to have Denis Loubet visiting the site 😀
Thanks for the info about Lost Vale. This actually makes *perfect* from a business standpoint, and as I suspected this was not related to the sales of Ultima VIII. I’m not so surprised the addons disk of U7 and SI didn’t work that much… the “add-in” aspect of these probably make them uninteresting for many people since it just added a bit of content to the game all in all – not like the Wing Commander, Privateer and Strike Commander addon which where all basically sequels to the main campain.
Regarding the Enhanced CD version. Yeah there was a CD version but all it did was adding the speech pack and other language versions on a single CD. AFAIK the plan was for the enhanced CD version to be released roughly at the same time as the Lost Vale or some time after – much like the enhanced CD version of Privateer or Strike Commander, it would have included the addon and offered full speech for the whole game (Indeed I think this is part of the reason they stick with modern english for Ultima VIII). It seems the voice acting for this version has been recorded as well, because ten years ago or so we found the profile of an actress which included “Shaana – Ultima VIII.” She of course has no speech in the game as it is.
I assume they cancelled it for the same reason as the Lost Vale.
I’m transferring more files to my brother now for processing. Keep in mind that some of the files may be corrupt–when we were transferring the data, there wasn’t a lot of time to test the disk integrity (we did well over 700 disks, plus over 150 floppies, about 75 VHS videos, and other various transfers.)
Sergorn-can you tell me the story of where you came across that ‘Shaana’ file? Do you still have any of the data?
There’s not much else I can tell you. It came up on the RGCUD newsgroup as I recall and was discussed a bit there, and actress posted her resume online and it included voicework for Shaana.
As I said it was a decade ago, so I couldn’t even tell you what the actress’ name was and I’d assume the site must be gone by now. Perhaps something can be found in the groups archives…
Speaking of unused voicework, I wonder if the voicework for the original U9 version exists somewhere. We’ve known for a fact that Michael Dorn DID record his line for the Guardian, so it’s possible Richard Garriot’s Lord British and Maurice LaMarche’s Shamino might still have been done too. I believe this version of U9 was not meant to have full speech and only for specific events/cutscenes…
I often wondered if they also had music being done on this version before George Oldziey was hired to do the soundtrack for the final version of the game.
Here’s the IMDB page for Ultima 8: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0222468/fullcredits?mode=desktop
Fair bit of voice talent…I wonder if our mystery actress might be listed?
I doubt it, these are the voice cast for the Titans and the Zaelands Gods. Whoever did work for the unreleaed enhanced CD version is likely not credited anywhere
Hey Joe, I was wondering if there had been any update with those U9 videos since your last update on this ?
Thanks 🙂
Sergorn-Very sorry, but the answer is ‘no’–most of them are corrupt, and my brother was unable to get them to run.
All is not lost, however–another friend said he would take a look at them.