Lord British Will, Apparently, Be In Ultima Forever (Sort Of)

One of the more…controversial aspects of Ultima Forever is that Lord British will not play a role in the game. Set 21 years after the events of Ultima 4, Quest for the Avatar instead features the good king’s daughter, known now as Lady British, who rules in his stead as the good king roams the stars.

Well, as it turns out, things have changed slightly. As Ben “Bandit LOAF” Lesnick revealed in his liveblog of the Ultima Forever post-mortem held this afternoon at GDC Online:

[Alpha testers] [w]anted to have the player see LB in telescope when you visited [the] Lyc[a]eum

Sadly:

Legal said no.

But:

Richard [Garriott] has now approved, [Lord British] will be in the game.

As yet, it’s not been disclosed exactly how Lord British will appear in the game, although the mention of a cameo appearance in the Lycaeum certainly suggests one possibility. And it would be an interesting move, a keen inversion of a planned ending for Ultima 9 which would have zoomed out from the island of Skara Brae on its journey through space and time, through a telescope and into Richard Garriott’s observatory at his home in Austin, Britannia Manor.

One wonders if Garriott’s approval happened over lunch?

The First Age of Update: As Ben notes in the comments, Lord British will indeed appear in the Lycaeum’s telescope.