Ultima Forever's Kilrathi Island is Real! (August 17, 2014)

I never got a chance to try this game out... It's an online thing yes? That's my fear with the next generation of Wing Commander games (when they happen) too, that we'll get to a point where there will literally be no way of actually playing the game at some point in time.
 
Chaosbringer said:
Looks like a Sartha?
Click to expand...

I think the general go-to plan is almost always to use the well-known Dralthi when picking a symbolic Kilrathi ship. With that being said, Ultima VII featured a Bloodfang and Ultima Online's WC cameo was the Salthi/Shok'lar.

This one is interesting because it has the fairly distinctive "roll bar"/missile rack of the Drakhri: https://www.wcnews.com/ships/wc2drakhri.shtml The aft part of the "wings" are also very curvy and similar to the Arena Dralthi variants.
 
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ChrisReid said:
I think the general go-to plan is almost always to use the well-known Dralthi when picking a symbolic Kilrathi ship. With that being said, Ultima VII featured a Bloodfang and Ultima Online's WC cameo was the Salthi/Shok'lar.

This one is interesting because it has the fairly distinctive "roll bar"/missile rack of the Drakhri: https://www.wcnews.com/ships/wc2drakhri.shtml The aft part of the "wings" are also very curvy and similar to the Arena Dralthi variants.
Click to expand...

You're right, it looks more like a Drakhri.
 
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Very nice to see that WC reference in Ultima Forever! I played a bit of UF for a couple of days I think, but was never able to put that much time into it beyond that.

Too bad it's shutting down, though... But who knows, maybe the Ultima community will be able to keep it running a bit longer with some kind of hack.
 
I think you're right; assuming it's one of the Dralthi line, the VII is the only one possible - the I and II both lack the roll bar, the III, IV and IX aren't symmetrical, and the original KF-100 is pointier. The VII is the only one left; it has the roll bar like the Drakhri but a Drakhri has two distinct engine nacelles in the back, whereas the VII only has one:

drakhri-dralthi7-compare.png


Not exactly the best set of shots - mainly just putting them up for a quick and dirty comparison. You can kinda see what I mean about the nacelles, though.
 
I'm divided over intent. On one hand, a Dralthi makes sense because that's Wing Commadner's symbolic alien ship... on the other hand a Drakhri fits, too: the project's lead Paul Barnett was quite fond of Wing Commander II (and hoped to reboot it as a social game, whatever that means.) I don't think it's possible to say by looks one way or the other; the way the wings taper at the rear doesn't exactly match up with either design. Another possibility is the 'longer' Dralthiesque ship (Grakha?) on the End Run cover.

Of course, if we accept that Sosaria is a planet in the Wing Commander universe (rather than that they fell through a space hole, or a moongate), then the answer becomes a little bit more clear: Ultima Forever is set almost three centuries before Ultima VII... so this is some older Kilrathi ship we haven't seen before. (WTF Dragon also tells me that Ultima V defines one Earth year as a Brittanian decade... so if a Kilrathi ship does travel through a moongate to get into the game, it's still ~28 years before the Bloodfang we see later. In that case, possibly an early war design!)
 
Yeah, the tapered wings make it not quite a Drakhri or Dralthi VII. They do have have a similar style to them as the Arena Dralthi:

render_dralthi_shank.jpg
 
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No roll bar. And the island ship looks symmetrical.

I'ma gonna go through my silhouettes just to make sure there aren't any possibilities we've missed.
 
Went back through the silhouettes; the Dralthi-VII is still the best fit. Took a look at the End Run cover too for good measure - like the Drakhri, the craft on the cover has distinct twin engine nacelles aft. On the other hand, I can't tell if that particular craft has a roll bar or not.

I don't know. I think it's anybody's guess...
 
Yeah, it's certainly just an artist that looked at a few WC ships and then made something close - there won't be a perfect match. I wouldn't say it's a Dralthi Shank, just that the wing curvature was a good fit. I think it's closest to the Dralthi VII, and it would make sense that, were it to get an official identification, it was a Dralthi because it's the series' most iconic ship.
 
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