Post by aguyinarpg on May 24, 2018 21:19:05 GMT
Greetings everybody!
So this tale requires a little bit of context. The long and short of it is that there was a documentary from probably the early 80s which talked about a period in which the Hindu yogis wrote about Christ visiting India. This documentary inspired the creator of the Ultima series, Richard Garriott, to use the concept of the Hindu Avatar in his moralistic Ultima IV. All the information I have on this documentary can be found in The Official Book of Ultima pages 43-44 and on page 254 of the Prima Official Guide for Ultima IV Ascension.
I feel that this documentary would be important to find because of the continued misattribution that Garriott has placed on the origin of the virtues of Ultima IV. In recent years he has been adamant that the concept came about due to religious people condemning his game for teaching Satanic ideals, therefore turning towards creating a moralistic game. This view would suppose that he created the eight virtues of the Ultima universe from whole cloth as well as feed into his notion that the "avatar" was based on linguistic traditional, not a religious one. Both these assertions are false and I would really love to be able to show him this documentary (he's on Twitter) to get that notion out of his head. Plus, it could just be an interesting documentary.
Here are some facts that I have been able to gather so far:
I hope this is a fair enough view if anybody would like to help me do some digging on the subject. We've searched a few TV Guides to no avail so I would love some help in searching for this piece of lost media. Thanks all!
So this tale requires a little bit of context. The long and short of it is that there was a documentary from probably the early 80s which talked about a period in which the Hindu yogis wrote about Christ visiting India. This documentary inspired the creator of the Ultima series, Richard Garriott, to use the concept of the Hindu Avatar in his moralistic Ultima IV. All the information I have on this documentary can be found in The Official Book of Ultima pages 43-44 and on page 254 of the Prima Official Guide for Ultima IV Ascension.
I feel that this documentary would be important to find because of the continued misattribution that Garriott has placed on the origin of the virtues of Ultima IV. In recent years he has been adamant that the concept came about due to religious people condemning his game for teaching Satanic ideals, therefore turning towards creating a moralistic game. This view would suppose that he created the eight virtues of the Ultima universe from whole cloth as well as feed into his notion that the "avatar" was based on linguistic traditional, not a religious one. Both these assertions are false and I would really love to be able to show him this documentary (he's on Twitter) to get that notion out of his head. Plus, it could just be an interesting documentary.
Here are some facts that I have been able to gather so far:
- This documentary is not the "In Search Of..." look at the Dead Sea Scrolls which aired in 1979, narrated by Leonard Nimoy. I have viewed it and there is no discussion of Hindu ideology at all.
- The documentary would have aired on or before early 1984. In the Winter of 1983/1984, Richard Garriott moved the entire company of Origin up to New Hampshire at the instigation of his brother (long story). given that Ultima IV was already in the planning stages by mid-1984, it's unlikely that this event occurred after moving up North. It really could have been any time in the early 80s or late 70s, merely going by the circumstances. Likely this documentary then was aired in Houston, since that's where Garriott lived most of his life.
- Richard claims to have seen this documentary late at night, "real late night" as he says. That probably would mean breaching into the morning, but anywhere from 10pm-3am would be a likely slot.
- The section on the Hindu view of Christ is a "digression" from the main Dead Sea Scrolls portion of the documentary.
- Some of the claims spoken about in this documentary include Christ studying to become a Hindu avatar, the Hindu yogis saying that Christ never claimed to be the son of god, and sixteen methods of spiritual purification.
I hope this is a fair enough view if anybody would like to help me do some digging on the subject. We've searched a few TV Guides to no avail so I would love some help in searching for this piece of lost media. Thanks all!
