Ophidian Dragon blogs his way through the entire Ultima series, from beginning to end.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Serpent Isle, Day 2

This blog covers my second day of adventuring on Saturday. Of course, the phrase "adventuring" is somewhat dubious. The short story is I walked to fawn, wandered around awhile, and Dupre got thrown in jail. This part of the game is pretty amusing, but it's also a bit dull because you don't really DO much; instead, other characters sort of lead you by the nose.






I did experience some humor, though, because I decided to wander into Fawn late at night, but all of the normal plot events still took place--there was a teleport storm, the locals get scared, a drunkard asks Iolo to play a tune, etc. Eventually the local captain of the guard chases me down and I meet Lady Yelinda, the most beautiful person in all of Fawn, although to my eyes she looks a bit too much like Dolly Parton. Anyway, in this brief exchange, a series of toasts, Dupre says just about the most foolish thing anyone says in any of the games, save for everything said by the Avatar in Ultima IX. The screenshot speaks for itself.

So Dupre is tossed in prison for blasphemy--incidentally, Iolo or Shamino say it if Dupre is dead--and I have to attend a sham trial, a concept that will repeat itself in Moonshade soon enough. Much of the testimony is funny, and I posted some highlights. It is true, I did spend much time in Fawn wandering around and looking in houses, eating other people's food since stealing is a-OK in this game. I also tried to construct a stairway up to a crate on the top shelf in the docks, but to no avail. :-(

Serpent Isle is somewhat more linear than Ultima VII, but the Fawn quest is unusual in the degree to which you don't really do much of anything. A pirate tries to kill you, but he shows up wherever you are. As long as you talk to people, you don't need to find anything or flip any switches or kill any monsters. Giving away part of the the next blog--if you choose to just sleep from one part of the trial to the next, the quest you are supposed to finish in between gets solved even though you quite literally did nothing!

So I ended Saturday's gaming just before the beginning of the second half of the trial. This new style of blogging is convenient, since I now have several days of material to write about, but it does not inspire me to post often. Hmm.

As a side note, "teleport" is not in Google's spell checking dictionary.

21 comments:

Natreg said...

well... you have to uncover the traitors at the trial, haven't you?

It's weird you did not mention that part in the blog, the one you go down the jail and up to the room where all the switches that control the Oracle.

Anonymous said...

Actually he does - it's the bit he mentions you can skip by sleeping through the whole day between trial sessions. If you don't go deal with the Oracle, the bad guys still get caught out in the second part of the trial.

Natreg said...

O_o they do?

I never tried to skip that part of the game....

So, does that means you can capture that captain in the oracle room alive?

Adamantyr said...

That doesn't surprise me. A lot of the U7 engine wasn't designed for cause/effect style events, and there's more than a few holes in SI.

For example, later in the game, you can just "leave" your three companions just outside the Wall of Lights room, and the whole "possession" STILL happens, and yet you can find them outside again and have them join up! I haven't tried to play further, though, and see if something happens when you have two Iolo's, Dupre's, or Shamino's about...

Anonymous said...

There's a different bit of script if you do fail to free the Oracle, and if Voldin is still alive after the trial (you can leave him alive while freeing the Oracle too, though it's a lot easier to do using cheats and hackmover), he and Kylista both end up in the dungeons. Which isn't very good for her, as he's a bit of a sick puppy.

Anonymous said...

Wall of Lights - there is a failsafe where Thoxa shows up and brings in the three companions if you enter the room without them. But I don't think I tried getting them back out of the party after that's been triggered. I definitely learned to keep Boyden out of the party for that scene, as he blows up permanently.
Having two of each party member sounds like a crash coming once you resurrect them.

Natreg said...

I remember I could use the hourglass after the possession at the entrance to the wall of lights and Thoxa would bring the 3 companions. I did try that in my spanish version (without the silver seed), not sure if it works in the final version

dancingcrab said...

This is a fun blog... I'm sorry to see you've come to a (temporary) halt. I'm really interested to hear more about SI - I almost completed it once upon a time but then hit some bug that I can't remember in the Castle of the White Dragon, and everything went kaput, irreparable.

And although you've both lamented and lauded the upcoming eighth and ninth installments (on different occasions), I am really quite exited to read your thoughts on them. Bring it on!

Anonymous said...

I also think that 8 and 9 have a lot of potential for good blogs posts. They might not be great games, but yet you can do a lot of stuff, and screw up a lot of things. Also, at least the story in Pagan is nice enough.

Anonymous said...

The best part of the Wall of Lights sequence was, I think, how you could really get some good laughs if you managed to kill Batlin before the main dialogue sequence began.

There was also a way to get the companions to avoid being possessed, but it involves asking them to leave the party AFTER you bring them through the big doors to the room with the Wall of Lights.

DOUG the Eagle Dragon has the details.

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