Exult Forum

After doing some research, and contacting some very reliable sources, I have finally, come to some understanding of what the original plot of Serpent Isle was like. It wasn’t that much different from what has been guessed. Although, yes, the game would have been longer. That being said, I was intrigued about what I did find. Unfortunately, I have yet to find anyone with a full copy of the plot.

Firstly, there was of course Claw Isle….

There are two conflicting accounts, which may reflect how the story evolved into the one in the Silver Seed. One source stated, “There was supposed to be a Kilrathi (from Wing Commander) stranded there (Claw Isle). Since he was so advanced he was considered a god to any primitive people there. I'm not sure if there was any technology or advanced weapons to be found there.”

Another source stated, “The cat statues represented an almost extinct tribe of cat-like beings, and I believe the chief, Yearl, was in the game.” (Yearl’s art was used as the cat-creature in the Silver Seed.) “He was going to be an ally of the Avatar for a brief time, and he was supposed to be a tragic character who saw that the end of his people was near. We had no plan for the Avatar to be able to save his people, we wanted to darken the mood a bit and add some dramatic conversations with the last survivor about the dying race.”

There weren’t really any plans for the Naga, in spite of the “Naga Temple” that could be found as a very blank, gray, step-like building with bars in the game. “The Naga were supposed to represent wild/barbaric offspring of the Ophidians. The Ophidians were such an advanced and wise culture, and the Naga were either servants or creations of the proud race. The Naga eventually turned on their masters and may have aided in the destruction of the Ophidian culture. Now Naga exist in barbaric tribes scattered throughout the world.”

There were no special plans for the Ratmen either. (Granted there was a rumor floating around of a Ratman portrait that wasn’t included in the game.) One source stated, “I don’t even remember the ratmen, I don’t think there was any significant fiction surrounding them.”

As far as city design, Moonshade (and Fawn) was supposed to have 2 layers….

“Moonshade was a two layered city till just before we shipped the game. We had to take out the second level because the technology could not handle the high object count, and this makes me very sad. It had cool overhead walkways, elevated decks and every building had multiple floors.” However, “there would have been no changes to the plot at all” from this.

Of course the major part of the cut plot came from shortening the story of the 3 Banes….

“The major plot element involved the Banes ruling the three towns, each Bane twisting each town into their own likeness.” “…. causing changes in all of the characters. However, the changes were mostly in conversations.” “It really would have been cool, but we were such a green team we had no clue how much work we were getting ourselves into when we started the project. Most of the townspeople were supposed to be left alive, but twisted or transformed to something inhuman and appropriately psychotic. It was supposed to explore what each Bane represented, taken to an extreme. Cutting this saved about 1/3 of our development time, so this was a huge cut. No one was happy about it, but after months and months of 70-hour weeks, we all realized that it was necessary.” “If I remember right, you were supposed to go to each town and defeat each Bane in their own territory. I don’t remember the details though.”

This checks out with the little bit found in the usecode as one of the characters stated that he saw his reflection in a puddle of water as a wolf. I believe it was one of the Monitor residents.

Also, originally, if it was forseen that the team was going to run out of time…. “we had a "fallback" scheme where if we ran out of time, we would ship the first half of the game - up to Batlin's death, basically. The second half could then have come out as an expansion pack of sorts. Unfortunately, when we ran out of time, management had other ideas. The first things that were cut were areas that didn't have a lot to do with the main plot. (The deserted cat island, for instance.) We had already created the art and built those areas, but didn't have the resources to
complete the scriptcoding (which turned out to be much more time-consuming than anticipated). Then came the idea of "killing everyone off" after the Banes were released. In the original plot, you could revisit Monitor, Fawn and Moonshade and see the effects of the Banes there. Cutting these areas saved us the work of scriptcoding.” “I didn't want to do it (kill everyone off) as I didn't think it would save that much time. (The post-Banes cities didn't require much scriptcode, which was our critical area; the conversations, on the other hand, had already mostly been written.)"
It has also been noted on the Exult board that the Silver Seed characters were not true NPC’s, but “Monsters” as were some of the characters in the original game. “It was just a way to add characters after we'd used up all of the "character slots" in the game system. Technically, the main difference I recall is that "monsters" don't have schedules (though the same result could have been created in scriptcode).”

I would hazard the guess that both cat isle plot ideas are right - as I recall, the Kilrathi were getting obliterated at around that time in the Wing Commander series.

Given the book that you find on the subject in the game, and the above comments, the most likely scenario is that the survivor of the crash (thought a god) created the cat-being race, and subsequently (presumably thanks to the imbalance, etc) they get wiped out. (Similar to the afflictions that the gargoyles, emps, etc, are suffering at the same time?)

Alternately, they may have been actual Kilrathi descendants, and thus the 'end of the race' would be more tied in to the WC games at the time.

As far as the conversations that can be read after you delete the "kill" eggs. One source had this to say....

"And I wouldn't guarantee that those "revealed" conversations are 100%
right - since we knew they wouldn't be used in the game, we never did any of the extensive "final polishing" that we did on the other conversations in the game. (So they're pretty rough and ready, more like first drafts.)"

But it couldn't hurt to see what further investigations may reveal in the game conversations.

Here are some elements that are open to conjecture. My sources did NOT say these things, but they may have been implied by the cut plot...

1. As far as Yearl being in the Silver Seed maze. It just seems to make more and more sence that a Ratman was intended to be at the maze's center instead of Yearl (the cat creature), because:

a. He asks for cheese.
b. Yearl is trapped at the center, "like a rat in a maze."
c. Shortly after the time of the game shipping, there was a rumor about an unused ratman portrait that never made it into the game.

I believe the developers wanted to put a Kilrathi link in, but the Claw Isle plot didn't get finished, so they shoved the cat creature in the maze, thus replacing the Ratman with Yearl, since they weren't able to do the Claw Isle plot.

2. Cantra was supposed to be cured,.... and possibly join your party to return to her mother in Monitor. This could have proved interesting with Dupre the Bane in charge there.

3. Also, I believe Frelli was supposed to join your party, and visit his father in Fawn. This also could be interesting if Mad Iolo were in charge. I believe Frelli's paper doll art is in the files somewhere. Am I wrong?

4. Let's also not forget that Gwenno would probably want to join your party to try to bring Mad Iolo back. It would be an interesting plot twist to have Gwenno want to save Iolo, when Iolo came to save her in the first place. After Iolo is restored, Lady Yelinda could give Gwenno a hit from the Comb of Beauty. The trip back to Britannia could possibly make the effect on Gwenno permanent. That could be why she appears so young in Ultima 9.... (yes, I know that's stretching it).

Much of the "cut" dialogue existed at one point - that is, it had been written in first draft, but never went through the full editing and
polishing pass that the rest of the game did. However, I imagine that was
lost when Origin lost the archive of the game. So it would need to be
recreated.

Also: It would be difficult to do a good job of recreating the dialogue
without having a design document to refer to. Which means that, if you
haven't already created replacement design documents for the "missing" game periods, you should do that first. And, of course, restoring the original endgame would mean lots of new usecode, new schedules for the NPCs, etc.

Also, in this engine, I personally find it very difficult to write dialogue
without writing the usecode for the conversation as well. (Others that worked on SI may have different opinions.) There's a bit of an art to deciding how many keywords to leave on screen, how to layer the conversation, etc. Also, there has to be some agreement as to what flags are available (global flags), which gets back to the design document.