"Dost thou not recognize [sic] thine old friend?"

This weird mix of Early Modern English and American spelling made me smile all the way through Ultima V, VI and VII.

Oh, so many memorable lines! I really think it contributed to that original feeling and made Ultima games stand out even more.

I was kind of hoping to see that in SotA too.
So I now wonder what happened to it? Does it not fit the "new" lore?

 

As someone contributing writing, I've tried to match what is in game currently. The grammar of NPCs is not perfect and the level of that should vary with the education/intelligence of that particular NPC. When I'm writing a submission for SotA, I use some transposed sentences and passive voice since it seems a little fitting for the setting, but the really formal dialogue seems out of place.

Ultima gave us a formal feudal system where one king ruled the whole land. Moongates made travel easy and there was plenty of communication between the cities.

In Blade of the Avatar, people on one side of Novia literally hadn't explored the other side of Novia. And this is just one continent of a larger world. It seems the lunar rifts weren't active then. Novia was very divided into kingdoms and city states. Formal education didn't seem as big. There wasn't one unifying king or culture. Cities were regularly sacked and burned.

It makes sense to me that SotA's dialogue is less formal. "Thou" and "thee" might pop up in a particular city if it makes sense for that city (Brittany perhaps).

 

Adding to this, not only do I try to have a bit of a different voice for each NPC when I'm writing, I'm trying to give each city a bit of a different voice.

I'm spending A LOT more time writing dialogue for Ardoris than I did for Owl's Head. I almost wish I could take my Owl's Head submissions back and start over. I wrote responses to a bunch of topics that people probably won't even discover because I didn't plan it well to flow into a conversation.

With Ardoris, I really love the setting and concept of the city. Not only am I writing for tons more NPCs, I'm writing more dialogue per NPC. I've got a merchant with over 40 topics they respond to. I'm planning it better for one topic to expose other topics. And I'm trying to make the dialogue in Ardoris fit the setting with depth.

Lum quite astutely encouraged me to avoid pidgin speak with the Asian influence because I don't want to hit on stereotypes and offend people. But I'm writing some of the NPCs in Ardoris to be more philosophical than Owl's Head. They've lived with a Titan in their midst and it has affected their culture greatly.

I don't want to spoil what I'm submitting (I haven't even submitted it let alone had it accepted yet) but here is an example of what I'm talking about:

"What is beauty if not incestuously familiar with disgust? Evoking a strong reaction is an act of power. Beauty is how we choose to perceive that power."

 

enderandrew, I too appreciate the diversity of speech between different municipalities (and even cultural/social statuses within the same area). Which is why I also wanted to express my concern about the lack of said diversity so far.
I do not expect Lord Enmar to speak like a Lord Byron, but at the moment everyone "sounds" exactly the same.

And I was really fond of that "anglo-american old speech" seen in the Ultimas - including Underworld!


By the way, I appreciate all the work you are doing submitting NPC dialogue, and making it fit within the local lore and setting. I wish I could contribute the same way.

 

I do not know anything more about lore or upcoming plans than anyone else, but I half expect to see some of that in Brittany.