Andrew Owen also released the updated map of Minoc as it will appear in U3.5: Pax Britannia yesterday, and as you can see above it quite resembles the town as it appears in Ultima 4. Notably absent is the Poor House, however.

Additionally, Andrew had one more piece of news to report:

In other news, the NPC roster of 256 characters is complete, although the dialog isn’t quite finished yet.

Andrew let me have a peek at the NPC list earlier today, and it’s…let’s just say that there’s a lot in there that Ultima fans will find familiar, a lot of loose ends from Ultima history that are in some way addressed. (If you ever wondered what happened to all those princesses in Ultima 1…)

And he didn’t just limit things to Ultima; there are a few other franchises that get referenced quite directly.

What’s even better is that Andrew was able to accommodate everyone who put in an NPC request earlier this year, including NPCs based on certain Ultima Dragons. Characters from various other Ultima games can also be expected to turn up; you’ll certainly meet some of the beggars in later games, before they fell on hard times, for example.

As to the development status of the game…with the town maps largely finalized and the NPC list complete, Andrew’s workload now involves finishing dialogue trees and converting the game’s score for the AY chipset. After that, he’ll be working on the game logic.

Which will, granted, be a fair bit of work. Pax Britannia is still a way out from its release…but when it is released, there will be lots of little treasures and delightful easter eggs in there for Ultima fans to find.