The castle in GI

[DrPaul]

I recently finished playing Grand Inquisitor for the Nth time, and every time I play there is one thing that always makes me wonder.  

Whenever you go in the castle, you can look up to see the beating heart or you can look down and zoom on an ornate plate on the floor with a nice Zorkian "Z" in the middle of it.  Well, it just seems like that Z-plate ought to be good for something - clickable, that is.  I'm wondering if anyone has ever found some use for it, like an associated Easter Egg or something.  Or if someone's heard any stories indicating that there was going to be a use for it but was scrapped before the game was released?

Anyone know about this or does anyone else out there also think it should be clickable?

[DataAngel]

I had thought that originally too. Since one can get a close up of it, I thought it was hiding something under neath it. Sadly there wasnt. I personally think it was just a nice way to let you see a high quality granduer looking Z logo, nothing more. Naturally I have a screenshot of it.

[Siriusstar]

I spent quite a lot of time attempting to fuss with it, but I never found anything that could be done with it.

The castle always struck me as a bit TOO odd. lol.

[lordskylark]

The Castle was originally suppose to have a teleportation station and thus appear on the teleportation map. I'm not sure if that has anything to do with that. But regardless, there was lots and lots of stuff deleted from the game.

[DataAngel]

Well that is intesting to know! It did seem odd that the castle was just there, it almost seemed totally out of place from the game. Oh well. Deleted stuff? Now why on earth would they do that, make the game longer, oh darn!

[lordskylark]

There was quite a bit of stuff removed, there is probably quite a bit more than this... But these are just some of what I know.

There was suppose to be an Old Inquisition Guard that was suppose to be a salesman for those GI dolls (this short clip did appear on the official website at one time). His voice remains in the house nearby, but it was video.
There was something about a water grue in the Dragon Archipelago.
The leaflet from Zork 1 was suppose to be in the White House mailbox.
There was something more about the Barrow in the White House Area.
There were shears in the Dragon master's garden -- if used on the snapdragon they would not work, if used on Harry the house, he would talk about that he needed a good trim. They were most likely used to cut down a plant called a Mucilage Rose that drips glue (these are red plants that are seen around the DM's house). I'm thinking this probably was suppose to be used to glue both halves of the Snavig scroll together.
There was original a spell that would work as follows: "target spell has reverse effect", but this was later replaced by one that completely reversed the entire spellbook.
A cutscene with the goatfish being executed.
On the soundtrack, there is a track called "GUE Tech Fight Song" which is not found in the game.
Charon's timeclock was an actual inventory item
The icecream sandwich was an actual inventory item
The subway token had a hole in it that was suppose to be attached to a string so that it could keep being reused each time you want to get on the subway (the final game makes no sense with it only being used once... then from there on all subways are automatically accessible)
There was an item in GUE Tech, some trophy that could be taken from one of the cases.
The teleportation machines looked different originally

I probably missed more that I know... and there's probably lots more that I don't know.

[DataAngel]

Wow... quite a lot of stuff cut, what a bummer. May I ask how you came across this information? Obviously there are always things that get cut from a game, but it is very interesting to hear about what didnt make it in.