Sir John has announced that, in addition to continuing to work on his German translation of Ultima 6, he has begun work on an English-language “Nitpickers Delight” Patch for the game:

While translating Ultima VI into German, I started to address the few – some may say: many – story inaccurancies, whereever that made sense and was possible without causing any more confusion 😉

Alas, I see no reason why not to do the same for the original English version of the game. While English is by no means my mother’s tongue, I like to think my command of the language is good enough, to create some suitable (and error-free) English sentences, even if these need to be in middle-English’s “Britannia” style.

The major part of Nitpicks I chose to address are taken from an old Ultima Nitpick Site from Hacki Dragon – still a splendid resources for these kind of things (Thanks, Hacki!).

In order not to spoil the fun for those, who decide to install my patch and give it a try I will only list the inaccurancies I addressed on this page. A page listing the changes I did in detail is linked at the end of the post.

Some of the nitpicks he is addressing, using Hacki’s page as a rough guide, include:

• Julia acts as if you had never met her before.
• Mariah acts like a total stranger as well.
• Gideon refers to Marney’s Mum as “Elisabeth”. Yet Quenton calls her “Gwen” in Ultima VII. Quenton should know – he married the girl 😉
• Terri indicates that a celebration took place after the Quest of the Avatar had been solved. She implies that the Avatar himself participated, which contradicts the events at the end of Ultima IV.
• The Book of Prophecies reads: “And the false prophet will cause the underworld to collapse.” -> The Gargoyles consider Britannia to be the underworld!
• Lazeena refers to her husband as “Artagel”
• The book “The First Age of Darkness” mentions “Britannia”. Yet… there was no Britannia back then
• Lord British doesn’t bother to mentioned the moonstones being lost
• The Orb of the Moon’s appearance doesn’t match the description from Ultima V as “a small, RED sphere”
• Daver, the bellringer in Britain describes the runes bearing a symbol on one side and a letter on the other. And that the runes probably spell something out if put on a necklace. But why would the Avatar had to consult the Shrines in Ultima IV to get the letters if they were written clearly on the runes themselves?
• When you buy a magic shield in Ultima V, the merchant claims that each of them requires a 100 year ritual to be created (slight hyperbole?), yet in Ultima VI, the armourer Gherick makes you one in the blink of one’s eye.

You can see a complete list of all the changes Sir John has made to date here; it’s password-protected so that those who don’t want the spoilers don’t have to see them. But if that’s not you, the password (as Sir John explains here) is “showme”.

It should also be noted: The German translation patch will incorporate the nitpick fixes as a matter of course.