I don’t remember if this was ever reported upon, but Iceblade began publishing a series of commentaries on Ultima 9 on the Forgotten World website a while back. The main page of the commentary section also serves as the first post therein, and serves to introduce Iceblade’s own history with the game, as well as some of its issues…and some of its strengths:

Assuming a successful installation and start up, players were greeted at the outset by what many view as one of the largest inconsistencies in the game. The Avatar started on Earth, which was a decision made purely to avoid turning off new players. While not a terrible decision, it certainly gave worried fans major concerns about the game before they could even take control of the Avatar, which gave players another disturbing revelation. Their character was essentially an unrelatable, blue-eyed, blond-haired white male who was seemed to be written a bit like a dumb jock. First impressions were ruined very quickly, and I’m left wondering how many Ultima fans quit the game before even leaving Earth.

What this shows is that it is very understandable why so many would be rapidly turned off by Ultima IX.

For Ultima fans who stuck with the game, they encountered numerous fallacies just within the first city, which the Museum contributed to significantly. After cleansing the first shrine, I’m sure almost everybody realized that they would be repeating the same basic quest another seven times. The next straw came when they saw how so many in Britain became good and virtuous again seemingly at a flip of a switch. At this point, it is easy to conclude that most of the people of Britannia in Ultima IX were basically tied to the Shrine, but this was not the intention of the developers. As later quests will demonstrate, the citizens of the towns actually come to their senses through your example, your persuasion and conversations in general. For instance, the people of Trinsic had realized their error (through your actions and words) before you ever cleansed the shrine. The cleansing itself was meant to turn the Glyphs back into Runes, restore the Shrines, and basically break all power the columns had over Britannians.

As I mentioned, however, it was these later quests that clearly demonstrated this. Overall, as you progress through the games, the implementation of the plot improves. This trend makes me wonder if the later portions of the game were completed later where the developers themselves had a much clearer idea of how best to implement the main quests or if different writers had different ideas about the sigils, runes, and shrines or perhaps one or two of the writers were absent on the wrong day. Really, the best implementations of the plot are Honor, Valor, and (yes) Sacrifice. Terrible World Building and inconsistencies with prior Ultimas aside, Minoc’s plot was well constructed and demonstrated the true Sacrifice.

The first actual commentary post, meanwhile, looks at the first segment on the game (the introduction on Earth). He hasn’t continued posting articles, although I for one hope he will; as thorough dissections of the game go, Iceblade’s writings would, when finished, be difficult to top.