Brad Hannah posted an update on his recent development work on Ultima V Redux on the Ultima Dragons Facebook group the other day, in which he announced that work on implementing the game’s shrines was complete:

I have been quietly working on the scripting engine for cutscenes and places like Shrines and the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom!

The shrines are done as far as I can tell – just polishing Codex! Then comes.. gulp… Blackthorn’s

I have had to create my own little syntax to script these scenes. I wish I could read the original code they did all these cool effects with in the OG Ultima V.

Whilst poking around in Ultima 5 as part of his efforts to build a 3D engine for it, Brad also discovered an amusing bit of conditional dialogue in the original game:

Found something fun when I was doing some tests on original U5. If you access the Codex before you are supposed to it will say “HOW DID YOU GET HERE?”

This will happen if you have no shrine quests! There is literally no end to the fine details of this game!

Because these two stone guardians are supposed to block you!

I’ve never tried to reach the Codex in Ultima 6 by way of bypassing the same guardians, but I wonder if the book has a similar conditional check in that game?