KickStarter Underworld Ascendant is a disaster

[Glic2000]

From their (lack of) communication in the steam forums, I think they're going to let this die an early death.

They were just talking about there being DLC coming after launch. It's legit offensive that they could develop such an abomination and still be thinking about DLCs, but we'll see how things go.

Pretty sure the publisher is going to see the reviews and say FUCK NO to any DLC plans. Unless OSE is willing to personally fund them (LOL).

But who would pay for DLC for this game? The KS backers, who got a tiny fraction of the game they were promised? Any non-backers who bought on Steam probably already got a refund.

 

[Atlantico]

It didn't become what it tried to be so it had to be something else and it ended up being nothing.

This is so tragic I don't even have the stomach to make fun of this. This forum lashes out on perfectly fine games like Deadfire and Andromeda, calls them dumpsterfire and retarded... but then when faced with something objectively a retarded dumpsterfire, it's not funny anymore.

It's not even possible to get any schadenfreude from this, because they're holding System Shock 3 as a hostage, threatening to release it.

I don't even

 

[PhantasmaNL]

i assume the only reason this was released is KS commitments.

Otherwise your company is much better of just dumping it into eternal early access , taking some flak and moving along. Now you lost all credibility and investor appeal, and basically ended your studio.

 

[Curratum]

Now you lost all credibility and investor appeal, and basically ended your studio.

After seeing the real extent of the horror with the game's systems, visuals and overall state over 5-6 hours of streams in various stages of the game, I am tempted to think Paul Neurath just needed to pay back a loan and used the KS money to do that, then let 3 or 4 interns work on the game for six months and released what they gave him.

 

[Viata]

as a hostage, threatening to release it.

 

[Hines]

Or maybe realizing they were never going to be able to make good on their pitch, Otherside signed with 505, scaled down Underworld to a barely there game, shifted the project over to new hires while outsourcing the remainder to Fullbright so they could keep the lights on while they geared up on Thick as Thieves?

 

[Infinitron]

Pretty sure the publisher is going to see the reviews and say FUCK NO to any DLC plans. Unless OSE is willing to personally fund them (LOL).

Post-release DLC (the type that's based on work that was already mostly done before the game came out and is thus a sunk cost) is part of the publishing contract and rarely cancelled even if a game totally flops. They might as well try to extract a bit more money out of the few people who are playing.

The game is also supposed to come out on console at some point, so in theory they would continue working on the game until that point.

 

[The Bishop]

So I got out of my fish collecting situation. Here's the thing:

If you die, it resets your progress on the mission and closes the portals if they were open. So you cant return to Marcaul even if you technically finished the mission.
But you still got the fish in your inventory.
I had two stacks. One with one fish and one with five.

So I drop both stacks out of the inventory and collect them again and well.... the progress says I collected 2 out of 6 fishes (the fiver stack came out as one fish as well, however it was five in the inventory). Logical! Of course!
So I split the item stacks and collect them individually. Nothing. I reload. Nothing. But the progress is still there. Somewhen I lost one of the two stacks. It was just gone. So that's another bug I encountered.
Then I died, dropped/recollected the remaining stack again and it said 3 out of 6 fishes.
I did this another two times and it said 5 out of 6. Then the stack I kept recollecting also disappeared.
So I just looked for another fish and the portals opened again.

At all times I had more fish in my inventory than my progress said I had.
This was a simple collect quest. And even that is broken as fuck, because BOTH the inventory AND the quest system isn't working properly.

I then did a kill quest (lizards in underswamp). I died on it once. The enemies were reset on their original position. Even the dead ones. And the fun part is: Their status is set to "alive", but they are still corpses! So they glitch after you floating over the floor, hissing. It's hilarious and terrifying at the same time!
You gotta whack them once so the kill counts cause... yep.... the progress is set back when you die. One was invisible and i couldnt hit him, so i lured the guy (actually the hissing sound) to a reaper who just hits everything and also that invisible guy who suddenly appeared and died (again?).
The last lizard was behind a metal door and I couldnt be bothered to find the key, so I just attacked the door and hit the lizardman behind it so hard it glitched through. Killed it and got the fuck out of there.

This game is secretly a David Lynchyan phantasmagoria. Loading saves not actually restoring the game state is a brilliant subversion of expectation. The feeling of primal terror as you realize that none of the progress you've made so far is safe... Devs really are pushing the medium here.

 

[thesheeep]

So I got out of my fish collecting situation.

I bet you did not expect that to be a sentence you would ever say.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.ign.com/articles/2018/1...hool-says-bioshock-developer-a-ign-unfiltered

LOOKING GLASS WAS 'GAME DEVELOPMENT GRAD SCHOOL' SAYS BIOSHOCK DEVELOPER – IGN UNFILTERED

Looking Glass Studios is responsible for some of gaming’s most influential series ever, including System Shock, Thief, and Ultima Underworld. Since its heyday, many of its former employees have gone on to create even more classic games that draw clear inspiration from those groundbreaking worlds, like Dishonored and BioShock. For Joe Fielder, it was practically like going to grad school for the rest of his career.

“Looking Glass, you know a lot of those folks were former MIT,” Fielder said on this month’s episode of IGN Unfiltered. “They brought a lot of intellect and logic to making immersive sims. It ends up that making games based on logical simulations, having a strong logic background really helps. For all those folks, and working with [Ken Levine], just the approach of 'hey, what are we trying to solve? What's the most logical way of clearly getting these things across? How do we really make the best game possible?' Looking Glass, when people talk about those days, it seems like video game grad school."

In this month’s episode of IGN Unfiltered, host Ryan McCaffrey sat down to chat with Underworld Ascendant creative director and BioShock Infinite designer Joe Fielder. The two spoke about his days as a games journalist-turned-developer, working alongside Steven Spielberg on Boom Blox, and more. You’ll learn how games like Dishonored and BioShock took great amounts of inspiration from those early adventure games, plus what makes the new Underworld Ascendant the closest thing to Dishonored this year.

You can find the full episode above, along with in-depth interviews with some of the industry’s biggest names, like Insomniac Games’ Ted Price and 3D Realms founder Scott Miller.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

You can only throw "Bioshock" and "Dishonored" around for so many times before everyone can smell the stench of your failed turd.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Reading the comments it actually start to be interesting... if you are interested in surrealism. It is the first immersive surrealism sim.
Maybe I will get it on Steam. There is a possibility that it will be removed and I don't want miss this uniqueness.

 

[Zep Zepo]

Maybe I will get it on Steam. There is a possibility that it will be removed and I don't want miss this uniqueness.

Don't worry about that, there is no DRM and it can already be found on the high seas if you look hard enough.

Zep--

 

[Eggs is eggs]

So what happened to this game? I thought it had the original UU devs, Warren Spector, a successful kickstarter, etc.? The usual over-promise and under-deliver?

 

[Tacgnol]

So what happened to this game? I thought it had the original UU devs, Warren Spector, a successful kickstarter, etc.? The usual over-promise and under-deliver?

Feature creep and confusion over what people actually wanted.

Most people just wanted a decent RPG, the devs were over focused on creating a dungeon based immersive sim.

 

[Zep Zepo]

Quit equating Warren Spector to UUW 1 or 2 and System Shock.

He was nothing but an enforcer for EA at the time.

Zep--

 

[thesheeep]

I have the feeling that a lot of this is down to the decision to go with "fancy" graphics.
If they had settled for lesser details, more abstraction, etc - a style more similar to earlier 3D games - they would have been able to get a lot more done.

We really need more games that use simpler graphics, to have more free resources for actually important content.
After all, that's how game devs did it before.
Oh, well...

 

[Glic2000]

So what happened to this game? I thought it had the original UU devs, Warren Spector, a successful kickstarter, etc.? The usual over-promise and under-deliver?

I guess go back and look at the original KS and ask yourself if that all sounds realistic (especially the release date; Nov 2016).

The real question is, why did I back something that was basically a bunch of crazy promises? I guess I just really wanted a new Underworld game.

 

[Glic2000]

I have the feeling that a lot of this is down to the decision to go with "fancy" graphics.
If they had settled for lesser details, more abstraction, etc - a style more similar to earlier 3D games - they would have been able to get a lot more done.

We really need more games that use simpler graphics, to have more free resources for actually important content.
After all, that's how game devs did it before.
Oh, well...

If I had to pinpoint the one big mistake they made with UA, I think it was the decision to try and make everything physics-based. That's why the game feels so clunky and janky and it seemed to take up most of their development time early on.

For example, they had these bulbs you could throw and they acted like an adhesive to stick objects together. The devs were VERY proud of those stupid sticky bulbs, and I don't think they even made it into the final game. Probably because they were pretty useless and just caused a bunch of technical issues.

 

[Child of Malkav]

I just bought a 600 coin amulet and it just vanished in the Stygian Abyss where this concept of a game should have stayed. 2nd time something that I buy just doesn't appear in inventory or character slots.
This.................thing.

 

[Gord]

I have the feeling that a lot of this is down to the decision to go with "fancy" graphics.
If they had settled for lesser details, more abstraction, etc - a style more similar to earlier 3D games - they would have been able to get a lot more done.

We really need more games that use simpler graphics, to have more free resources for actually important content.
After all, that's how game devs did it before.
Oh, well...

I'm not so sure, honestly. According to their own words, they spend a lot of time on the "environmental interactivity" and physics systems.

Besides, graphics aren't exactly that fancyful and that "early 3D" look would have anyway only created this reaction:

 

[Big Wrangle]

I have the feeling that a lot of this is down to the decision to go with "fancy" graphics.
If they had settled for lesser details, more abstraction, etc - a style more similar to earlier 3D games - they would have been able to get a lot more done.

Now I'm imagining Ultima Underworld with some low res Silent Hill-esque PS1 textures. Though they might have screwed that up too based on the inconsistent direction here.

 

[Eggs is eggs]

Did the game end up having any connection to the original UU? From briefly watching a video on youtube, it looks like Cabirus is in it, you use runes for spells and I guess you're supposed to be in the same dungeon as the original?

 

[Curratum]

There are ZDoom RPG mods that are more involved than this thing.

I think a dev or involved person literally made an account to defend the game on the Steam hub.

Private profile, zero previous posts.

 

[SlamDunk]

Summary of my streaming session in one clip:

Reminds me of this legendary Minecraft clip: