Interview Ultima Underworld retrospective with commentary from Paul Neurath at PC Gamer

[Infinitron]

Tags: Looking Glass Studios; Paul Neurath; Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss

PC Gamer has a new feature called "PC Classic Commentary", in which one of their staff members plays a classic PC game for an hour together with one of its developers. They're off to a promising start, with the very first game featured being the Looking Glass Studios classic Ultima Underworld, with commentary from Paul Neurath, who I imagine is looking to drum up publicity for his new venture.

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I haven't watched it yet, but I don't believe the game has ever been examined in this way before, so there's bound to be some interesting new information here.

 

[Excidium]

My doctor told me to avoid mainstream media coverage of games I enjoy

 

[jdinatale]

I haven't subscribed to PC Gamer since around 2006 or so. Honestly all of the good writers and editors left, it use to be really good.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

...drop the equipment onto the paper doll you fucking fool. This dude never played this game and yet he is the one doing the retrospective with Paul.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

My doctor told me to avoid mainstream media coverage of games I enjoy

Actually Excidium, Paul has a lot of interesting things to say about design that I am sure you would appreciate. Design talk starts after 20 minutes.. before that the interviewer is focused on tech.

 

[Roguey]

I could only stand 10 minutes because of the really awful playing, and Neurath's commentary was shallow and insipid enough for me to draw the conclusion that he's No Josh even if he now acknowledges how cargo cult his decisions were.

It was one of my most formative PC gaming experience, exploring the Stygian Abyss and discovering the civilizations that live in the pit.

Yeah, I don't believe you Cory Banks.

Also not surprised to see Crosmando grogging it up in the comments.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

He's answering the questions, and nobody is a Josh to you sweetheart.

 

[felipepepe]

I don't think is Neurath playing...the audio clearly is out of sync with the game (like when he says "here I turned off the torch" - and random stuff showing up). My guess is that they were doing this via some sjype kind of thing and the footage went bad, so they swapped it and thought no one would notice...

I really refuse to believe that the guy behind UU, currently working on a spiritual successor, don't know how to equip things in his own game...

 

[LESS T_T]

I really refuse to believe that the guy behind UU, currently working on a spiritual successor, don't know how to equip things in his own game...

Urgh...

Nice video of Paul playing Underworld I while being interviewed by PC Gamer. Check out this interview

http://othersideentertainment.com/

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

Paul wasn't playing. He mentioned some of the more esoteric capabilities like spiking doors to escape pursuit, etc. OK to listen to put horrible to watch. Whoever that was just kept circling the same area of level 1.

 

[Delterius]

At one point the interviewer says hes taking control of the gameplay. Thats after the player seemingly forgets the wooden shield exists.

 

[Decado]

Nobody should be surprised that a video game journalist is fucking terrible at video games.

 

[felipepepe]

Nobody should be surprised that a video game journalist is fucking terrible at video games.

Yeah, but this is what we were debating with sea about journalists not studying their trade... the guy was interviewing the creator of Ultima Underwolrd, then showing an hour of gameplay footage, yet couldn't even bother to LEARN the fucking game before doing that... I'm not saying beating it, I'm talking about knowing how to fucking equip an item in an Ultima game, playing like 5 minutes before turning on the camera.

 

[Roguey]

Otherside Entertainment's web site says Paul was playing and I'm going to believe them.

We got ourselves another Chris Avellone here. Except it's a game he made himself lol

 

[Excidium]

Wouldn't surprise me

 

[WarHamster]

Now that was a pain to watch. The guy playing was an embarrassment, to say the least. In addition to the inventory shenanigans (how hard can it be?!), he repeatedly used the wrong commands for everything, like trying to pick up a door or trying to use a weapon instead of wielding it (the command even has a sword icon FFS!). Great job showing the game and making it look bad, idiot!

When asked about regrets wrt how UU turned out, Paul said something akin to he would have wanted to drop the RPG side from the game altogether. Pretty disappointed to hear that. This does not bode well for the new Underworld game. Even if the RPG system wasn't the best thing ever in UU (e.g. many of its skills being completely worthless), it certainly wasn't all bad either. With some pruning of excess skills and harsher penalties/meatier interaction for the remaining skills it would have made all the necessary fixes for me (like for instance, without the Swim skill you would not be able swim at all, would take damage immediately; or Search actually being crucial to finding secret doors, not just mildly helpful, etc). As for the levelling up, at least I loved the mantras for skill gain, but would have dropped the randomization for static gains per mantra (just encourages save-scumming otherwise). Skill trainers in UU2 were a better idea, however. All in all, UU without the RPG side would have been a much lesser game for me.

 

[Infinitron]

It's interesting that Looking Glass felt that they needed to make a complex skill-based character system for Ultima Underworld "because it was an RPG", when the mainline Ultima series had a much, much simpler attribute-based system, that ironically may have been more appropriate for Ultima Underworld and vice versa.

 

[Excidium]

Probably because when they began development it wasn't an Ultima game

 

[CyberP]

that ironically may have been more appropriate for Ultima Underworld.

What is your reasoning here?

 

[Metro]

Infinitron Be sure to update the OP when he does his interview with TotalBiscuit.