The Digital Lycaeum: Reconciling the Past
Browncoat Jayson has posted a pair of articles, the first in what I gather will be a short series, to The Digital Lycaeum. The first entry in this “Reconciling the Past” series examines the idea of canon, why we care about it…and why we shouldn’t. The second entry examines the act of interpretation, arguing that every entry in a series — especially in the Ultima series, according to its own axioms — is true to that series in some way. (The third entry in the series, not yet published, will evidently expand on this idea of everything being true further.)
It’s a controversial position to take, sure to incite some ire from fans of the series who have narrowly-defined ideas of what does and does not constitute a valid Ultima. But that’s good; controversy leads to conversation, and we can always do with a bit more of that around here.
BETRAYAAAAAAAAAAAL
Seriously, the whole “canon” controversy in Ultima isn’t really about canon per se. It’s about the fans’ yearning for a setting that is rich and coherent (coherent doesn’t necessarily mean 100% consistent), a setting that takes itself seriously rather than being a paper-thin background.
Let’s look at the Elder Scrolls games. Morrowind retconned a bunch of things from Arena and Daggerfall, to the consternation of a few people. But it added so much to the richness, detail and verisimilitude of the Tamriel setting that the fans are still talking about its lore more than a decade later.
It’s pretty simple. Fans want to be pandered to with lots of details to uncover and lore to decipher. Don’t hide things from us, don’t simplify. Consistency with previous games is more of a source of inspiration than a hard rule.
Hah, what a coincidence. Tasteful Understated Nerdrage just released a video about this very topic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvwlt4FqmS0
I just posted the third entry in the series.
This week, I’m going to try to get my notes together for which individual games to tackle first. I’m leaning toward the Age of Enlightenment trilogy, since fewer people seem to have issue with them as canon, and then branching out from there.
I actually don’t see why people ignore things saying they are not canon.
Sometimes they do conflict directly, like Ultima 7 for PC and Ultima 7 for SNES. Then I think the best option is of course the PC one. But for other materials there is no need to ignore them.
People ignore the first 3 ultima for several things: time travel, futuristic equipment, races…
I don’t see the problem there. A lot of that can be explained easily. The time travel machine and futuristic equipment could come from the aliens Mondain contacted. The elves, have their origin explained in Ultima X fiction (as well as in Ultima Online). The dwarves appear later in underworld, the fuzzies could very well be the emps, the bobbits died out by an illness inflicted by mondain (explained in uo fiction). Ultima II just happens in Earth. Minax attacks the homeworld of British and the Stranger. That doesn’t mean he didn’t also attack Sosaria. So I don’t see problems with that.
Runes of Virtue has some problems, but still no need to just ignore it. Dungeon locations, and layouts have changed throught the series. And most of the errors in the game could be just because of the translation.
Ultima saga doesn’t have many problems at all. It’s just a long prologue to Ultima V. After the second book you can just consider that jordan helped bring the Avatar back.
Ultima Online I just take in consideration what is said to happen before the gem is destroyed. Everything afterwards is canon to UO alone, unless they are things that expand on Ultima prime, like the expanded world of the gargoyles for instance.
Ultima Online 2 I ignore for the most part, because it’s a continuation of uo that doesn’t seem to be happening anytime soon (I suppose it could be canon to some of the uo shards). Though the meer storyline is interesting because happens before the gem’s destruction.
Finally, Ultima IX is just the canon ending, even if it has so many problems. Some of the problems were addressed in the Ultima X fiction, so I consider both of them canon.
All the games have problems. They retcon things constantly. The magic system changes (which I just consider the evolution of the magic in Sosaria/Britannia). Even beloved games like Ultima VI and VII have a lot of inconsistencies.
Dude, it’s like you’re in my head. I’ve had this idea of using UO’s setup as a deus ex machina of ahem-infinite proportions.
Well done. Retcon-shaming be damned. Makes for a more robust setting.