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AFAIK yes, but it depends on how naive and starstruck Nightdive was when they were drafting their contract for SS3's development with Otherside. Stephen Kick does seem to be a very big System Shock fan after all.
Holy shitshow, you're both right. OSE really are trying to outdo the tangled rights mess of System Shock 2. I wonder how stupid OSE were with that contract with Tencent, sine they apparently didn't realize until much later that they didn't actually have the rights to UU they claimed to have in the Kickstarter for this game.
It always gave me an impression that NDS licensed the sequel(s) to OSE on pretty generous (maybe naive) terms, fewer obligations and restrictions on OSE's side. I'd imagine they were pretty excited about the idea of a sequel made by ex-LGS guys.
When it was with Otherside, it was essentially with the original creators. So we were more or less leaving that up to them. We were supposed to get builds and marketing materials before they went out in the public but they never really got that far. So we never really got to review anything. But it was my belief that if development had continued we would have. But in terms of us getting to actually dictate what was in that game, again it was like, well the original developers are are working on it so we should let them do what they do best.
Speaking of that bunch, they're supposed to be working on an immersive sim. I'm not convinced that it will ever turn out to be one, since the video game M. Night Shyamallamadingdong's grand design kept pushing BioSchlock more linear until it turned into a literal rail shooter openly sneering at the concepts of player agency, emergent gameplay, and choice and consequences. Okay, I'll admit that I stopped before Infinite's DLC because the storytelling was getting as contrived as OSE's excuses - but it was cool learning that the wrench from the first game was previously used to club Elizabeth to death, so there was some small redemption.
I know this is a long thread. I know this game is viewed by many as being a complete joke.
And in many ways, it is. Or was.
But guess what? It's actually not that bad. Or at least now it isn't, after what I'm guessing are patches that I never knew about because I was never even remotely interested in this game until a few days ago when I was so desperate for anything new to sate my RPG hunger that I resorted to buying a key for $6.90 for Underworld Ascendant. I never do that (it's legal, but I just get bad juju vibes from buying grey market keys for games).
No, really. This game isn't bad at all. In fact, it's... good. Yes, it's weird and... janky as all fuck. Still has bugs and oddities to it. But it's... engaging. Even exciting at times. And it's huge. The exploration in this game is fantastic! If you can look past its shortcomings like a p. flimsy storyline, somewhat questionable presentation aspects and the God-awful Unity engine, there's a real hidden gem in here.
Full disclosure: I'm currently only about six hours in so far. I've gotten past the tutorial portion and into some of the real meat of the game. I was able to make my way to the first settlement and I'm taking on missions in order to increase my wealth and status with the various factions. I honestly have no idea how large or small this game really is, but I get the sense that this is much more than what some people have described as being nothing more than a tech demo put out by a team of developers who were just into scamming people out of their backer money.
Put all that aside for a minute. Do you like dungeon crawling, with real verticality and all hand-crafted areas? Do you like sandbox-type RPGs where the developer places no restrictions or limits on what you can or can't do but also has no part in holding your hand? Do you like a p. deep skill tree among three different and unique paths that can all curiously work with one another with 100% freedom to find good synergy or completely make the wrong decisions? Again, if you can look beyond this game's extremely checkered past and give it a fair shot, you might be very pleasantly surprised.
Inventory isn't great. The weapons, as far as I can tell, all do the same amount of damage. Your success in this game is highly timing- and sort of twitch-based. But it's not difficult. I haven't encountered anything yet that my feeble, withered video game skills couldn't handle. And the spellcasting is easy (and, dare I say, rather satisfying?). Stealth makes sense. Archery isn't too bad. There are many different ways to defeat enemies and get past challenges, sometimes only your imagination or trial-and-error to guide your way, and I love that.
There are, as I hinted, still problems. The game's engine is quirky as fuck, and if you run beyond 60 frames-per-second in it, you can encounter this sliding issue like you're on ice (a bug, of course) and some p. bad microstutter. But, I found a nice compromise to it that has eliminated that from being a deal-killer for me.
As I posted on the game's Steam page:
First of all, as anyone here who's taken the time not to completely give up on this game out of sheer frustration already knows, this is an odd game. It's got some serious quirks.
But, as some of you also know, if those quirks can be overlooked, it can be a very interesting game, one worth sticking with. No pun intended since this topic is about not sticking to the ground: the weird "sliding" issue.
As a Unity game, the engine is definitely glitchy. Jumping around, vaulting on top of things, for some users, results in your character sliding on that surface, uncontrollably, until it somehow catches on something and stops sliding. Very frustrating, especially if you're trying to reach some ledge higher up.
What I've found is that this sliding is directly related to the game engine's current framerate.
To make it very simple, if you want the sliding to -- I think -- completely stop, then run the game at 60fps. You can limit the game's framerate by using something like RivaTuner, or even imposing a framerate limit in your graphics card's control panel.
Obviously, if you're running a PC that is incapable of running this game much past 60fps, there's no point in reading any further. At 60fps, you're probably not seeing the sliding problem much if at all.
However, if you're like me, and can't stand anything less than 90fps, that's not acceptable. The problem is, apparently, once you exceed that 60fps limit, you introduce the sliding phenomenon. Almost as equally annoying is the microstutter that's introduced at higher frames whenever moving forward/backward and left/right.
The odd thing is that it seems not only is the sliding related to the framerate, but so is the microstutter, and it seems to be in multiples of 60. So at 120fps, you'll still get the sliding, but the microstutter is minimized. But at 130, or 144fps, whatever, the sliding is in full force and so is the microstutter. Very frustrating.
BUT, I've found, and I need to continue playing to confirm, that exactly 121fps seems to keep the microstuttering to a minimum, and the sliding as well. The sliding problem still shows up a little, but you seem to "catch" on the ground a lot quicker, which is acceptable. You'll only slide about a foot or so, which I suppose could be imagined to sort of represent you slightly slipping after a jump or climbing on to something.
Again, use RivaTuner or similar software to cap the game's framerate to 121fps. It's much smoother that way (compared to 60fps) but no blatant movement bugs.
I hope this helps someone.
The game's dark atmosphere and lighting are excellent. The game truly captures that underground, Underdark-type, and again -- do I dare say it? -- Underworld flavor. Yes, I realize it's nowhere near what Ultima Underworld gave us. No game will ever match that. It's a classic for a reason. But this one, now that all its dust has settled, now that the guys who made it cleaned enough of it up and made it truly playable, stands on its own.
RPG of the Year it ain't (three years later). No it'll never even be one of my favorites, unless it somehow manages to blow my socks off the more I play it. But it sure was a nice, welcome little surprise. A thinking man's fp, action-based RPG? Almost? Is it quite charming in its own way? Hell yes.
Give it a consideration. It's certainly worth $6.90.
I'll post more if anyone's interested and if my playthrough warrants it.
Like I said above, I'm about six hours in. The area I'm in is called Upper Erebus which is quite large. My next mission, the second one I've been given, is to go after a lich-like creature and to steal its animus which is supposedly going to allow me to power up a device that's going to lower the water level in the area revealing what I'm hoping to be something valuable.
But there are so many secret areas to try to work my way into it's hard to gauge the true size of the game.
If repetitiveness sets in, so be it. Overused assets are something I'm going to expect from this kind of game, but from what I've seen so far they're all being used creatively enough as to keep things visually interesting. The challenges themselves, however, are what I'm enjoying.
Full disclosure: I'm currently only about six hours in so far. I've gotten past the tutorial portion and into some of the real meat of the game. I was able to make my way to the first settlement and I'm taking on missions in order to increase my wealth and status with the various factions.
It'll be interesting to see what you think at 20 - 25 hours in. You sound like you're in the honeymoon phase of the game, something we can all relate to.
There are, as I hinted, still problems. The game's engine is quirky as fuck, and if you run beyond 60 frames-per-second in it, you can encounter this sliding issue like you're on ice (a bug, of course) and some p. bad microstutter. But, I found a nice compromise to it that has eliminated that from being a deal-killer for me.
Stuttering and frame rate related bugs annoy me a lot, to the point that i prefer to play in lower but steady frames per second, even 30 fps, if it is necessary. Is it possible to cap the fps in this game to avoid these bugs?
I will trust you, Skeleton Janitor, and add this to my wishlist.
Complete trainwrecks becoming surprisingly good deals, due to high discounts and lots of patches, happens quite often. Disciples III for example was another complete shitshow and now it makes an adequate timewaster in its finished Reincarnation version (rereleased 3 times to clear the bad Steam reviews and still at 68% lol).
I know nothing about this game apart from its trainwreck reputation, how is the customisation?
Do you like a p. deep skill tree among three different and unique paths that can all curiously work with one another with 100% freedom to find good synergy or completely make the wrong decisions?
The graphics are fine. Even more than fine in many areas. They are all a bit "samey" after some time, but this is basically an indy title
One aspect that I remembered that might turn some people off: in order to gain any skill points in this game, which are then in-turn used to 'buy' improvements to your skills (better combat moves, better spells, etc.) you have to complete 'feats'. This includes things as simple as finding certain key items or as obscure as "kill a spirit using nothing more than a flaming crate" which seems unfair. It starts dictating how you play the game rather than why you're playing it. We'll see if this affects my opinion of the game as I continue playing and find myself needing to be more and more powerful to advance.
Excuse me for going over these types of things so late in the thread.
The graphics are fine. Even more than fine in many areas. They are all a bit "samey" after some time, but this is basically an indy title
One aspect that I remembered that might turn some people off: in order to gain any skill points in this game, which are then in-turn used to 'buy' improvements to your skills (better combat moves, better spells, etc.) you have to complete 'feats'. This includes things as simple as finding certain key items or as obscure as "kill a spirit using nothing more than a flaming crate" which seems unfair. It starts dictating how you play the game rather than why you're playing it. We'll see if this affects my opinion of the game as I continue playing and find myself needing to be more and more powerful to advance.
Excuse me for going over these types of things so late in the thread.
Sounds like Civ VI inspirations/eurekas. Those were a nice way to improve replayability/shake things up so sounds like it could be interesting if they're not too obscure.
I do find myself planning, when not playing the game, ahead of time, how I might go about achieving my next goal. I can easily set a crate on fire, for example, and heave it at a weak enemy. Eventually the weak enemies respawn, so it's not like it's a one-time deal. Other feats are more straightforward but on the surface intimidating: "Deal 10,000 damage with missile weapons" is another one of them. WTF? How much damage am I doing?
It certainly throws a curveball at the conventional way we think about leveling up characters in an RPG.
The best parts of UA are purely unintentional. Let me recall a few of my faves, some of which are still in the game.
Power fantasy for everyone via Strong Dong / Amazonian Snail Trail hands-free mantling up ledges and swinging on chains
Physics so janky that a hit enemy ragdolls up into the ceiling, down the wall, then if it dies it spins around the floor. Skeleton golf is a thing.
Stealth so amazing, you don't need to use stealth to violate the personal space of an enemy that still doesn't see you. This is great for skeleton golf.
The sheer awesomeness of powering up by Chuck E. Cheese lizard puppet
Followed up in the next area by Blarney the Green Drunken Irish Dinosaur charging like a loon down the hall to get whacked - "Do not attack your ally!" - Achievement Earned: Silent Assassin, Flawless Victory. Welp, it was his destiny.
Z-fighting is the most fully-developed combat system in the game...
...except for being able to Vulcan "Live Long and Prosper!" a mofo off a ledge.
Unable to walk up stairs in the water, reloading, then failing a hidden Climbing skill-check and dying to the unsubmerged part of the same set of stairs.
Hearing the spirit of Ultima Underworld guide you through his own personal graveyard of dying more deaths than The Nameless One
Watching the regression of emergent gameplay in real-time as the game coaxes you into playing your way and then punishes you for trying to play your way. Want to build your character a certain way? First you're going to have to build your character in another way so you can get enough skill points through feat/achievements to do that.
Accidental suicide by poisoning myself with a healing spell
Summoning an ally who soon dies from a lit crate. Achievement Earned: Meteoric Demise, Fire Kill. The things you'll do for skill points...
Dying from full health by that crate's splinter physics
Dying from full health by any crate's splinter physics if it has a dinner plate or anything larger randomly spawned when it burns apart
Becoming an insatiable hungry ghost upon death. "You feel hungry...."
Admiring the perfect stenciling on hewn rock surfaces and feeling sympathy for the soul-crushing self-hatred it must have caused the artists to make/see that
Seeing red afterimage from all the cyan burning through your retinas, so fuck the artists
Breaking an "immsim" by backtracking in a level looking for a bow to go with all the arrows, only to find that said bow magically appears when you equip an arrow - like the inverse of Hank's Energy Bow from the D&D cartoon
Clicking DLC on the main menu - "Come back later for any updates". Any day now...
OSE should just turn UA into a parody of the genre, as it's been most of the way there already. Most of its quirks would work as "features".
I know this is a long thread. I know this game is viewed by many as being a complete joke.
And in many ways, it is. Or was.
But guess what? It's actually not that bad. Or at least now it isn't, after what I'm guessing are patches that I never knew about because I was never even remotely interested in this game until a few days ago when I was so desperate for anything new to sate my RPG hunger that I resorted to buying a key for $6.90 for Underworld Ascendant. I never do that (it's legal, but I just get bad juju vibes from buying grey market keys for games).
No, really. This game isn't bad at all. In fact, it's... good. Yes, it's weird and... janky as all fuck. Still has bugs and oddities to it. But it's... engaging. Even exciting at times. And it's huge. The exploration in this game is fantastic! If you can look past its shortcomings like a p. flimsy storyline, somewhat questionable presentation aspects and the God-awful Unity engine, there's a real hidden gem in here.
Full disclosure: I'm currently only about six hours in so far. I've gotten past the tutorial portion and into some of the real meat of the game. I was able to make my way to the first settlement and I'm taking on missions in order to increase my wealth and status with the various factions. I honestly have no idea how large or small this game really is, but I get the sense that this is much more than what some people have described as being nothing more than a tech demo put out by a team of developers who were just into scamming people out of their backer money.
Put all that aside for a minute. Do you like dungeon crawling, with real verticality and all hand-crafted areas? Do you like sandbox-type RPGs where the developer places no restrictions or limits on what you can or can't do but also has no part in holding your hand? Do you like a p. deep skill tree among three different and unique paths that can all curiously work with one another with 100% freedom to find good synergy or completely make the wrong decisions? Again, if you can look beyond this game's extremely checkered past and give it a fair shot, you might be very pleasantly surprised.
Inventory isn't great. The weapons, as far as I can tell, all do the same amount of damage. Your success in this game is highly timing- and sort of twitch-based. But it's not difficult. I haven't encountered anything yet that my feeble, withered video game skills couldn't handle. And the spellcasting is easy (and, dare I say, rather satisfying?). Stealth makes sense. Archery isn't too bad. There are many different ways to defeat enemies and get past challenges, sometimes only your imagination or trial-and-error to guide your way, and I love that.
There are, as I hinted, still problems. The game's engine is quirky as fuck, and if you run beyond 60 frames-per-second in it, you can encounter this sliding issue like you're on ice (a bug, of course) and some p. bad microstutter. But, I found a nice compromise to it that has eliminated that from being a deal-killer for me.
As I posted on the game's Steam page:
First of all, as anyone here who's taken the time not to completely give up on this game out of sheer frustration already knows, this is an odd game. It's got some serious quirks.
But, as some of you also know, if those quirks can be overlooked, it can be a very interesting game, one worth sticking with. No pun intended since this topic is about not sticking to the ground: the weird "sliding" issue.
As a Unity game, the engine is definitely glitchy. Jumping around, vaulting on top of things, for some users, results in your character sliding on that surface, uncontrollably, until it somehow catches on something and stops sliding. Very frustrating, especially if you're trying to reach some ledge higher up.
What I've found is that this sliding is directly related to the game engine's current framerate.
To make it very simple, if you want the sliding to -- I think -- completely stop, then run the game at 60fps. You can limit the game's framerate by using something like RivaTuner, or even imposing a framerate limit in your graphics card's control panel.
Obviously, if you're running a PC that is incapable of running this game much past 60fps, there's no point in reading any further. At 60fps, you're probably not seeing the sliding problem much if at all.
However, if you're like me, and can't stand anything less than 90fps, that's not acceptable. The problem is, apparently, once you exceed that 60fps limit, you introduce the sliding phenomenon. Almost as equally annoying is the microstutter that's introduced at higher frames whenever moving forward/backward and left/right.
The odd thing is that it seems not only is the sliding related to the framerate, but so is the microstutter, and it seems to be in multiples of 60. So at 120fps, you'll still get the sliding, but the microstutter is minimized. But at 130, or 144fps, whatever, the sliding is in full force and so is the microstutter. Very frustrating.
BUT, I've found, and I need to continue playing to confirm, that exactly 121fps seems to keep the microstuttering to a minimum, and the sliding as well. The sliding problem still shows up a little, but you seem to "catch" on the ground a lot quicker, which is acceptable. You'll only slide about a foot or so, which I suppose could be imagined to sort of represent you slightly slipping after a jump or climbing on to something.
Again, use RivaTuner or similar software to cap the game's framerate to 121fps. It's much smoother that way (compared to 60fps) but no blatant movement bugs.
I hope this helps someone.
The game's dark atmosphere and lighting are excellent. The game truly captures that underground, Underdark-type, and again -- do I dare say it? -- Underworld flavor. Yes, I realize it's nowhere near what Ultima Underworld gave us. No game will ever match that. It's a classic for a reason. But this one, now that all its dust has settled, now that the guys who made it cleaned enough of it up and made it truly playable, stands on its own.
RPG of the Year it ain't (three years later). No it'll never even be one of my favorites, unless it somehow manages to blow my socks off the more I play it. But it sure was a nice, welcome little surprise. A thinking man's fp, action-based RPG? Almost? Is it quite charming in its own way? Hell yes.
Give it a consideration. It's certainly worth $6.90.
I'll post more if anyone's interested and if my playthrough warrants it.
Hey, it's great that you like the game as it currently is. Who are we to judge what somebody else finds fun..
But you need to keep in mind what was promised, in fact until the last minute when the game was released. You literally have no idea how most of the basic things in the game that you can play as of right now, were not even present when the game released. Two examples: in the current version of the game you have a save system. Well, there wasn't one when the game released, or more exactly it only saved your progress once in a while from the hub, not progress during dunguneering. Second example: the levels were disjointed (disconnected). You noticed how right now in game, the levels are connected by a staircase ? There wasn't one before, you were simply going through a teleporter and all the levels were their own independent thing with no sense of being in a full dungeon.
And of course, you've paid $6, but I wonder how you'd feel if you had paid $50 instead.
Also a word of warning: the honeymoon phase is probably soon over. Looking at your post, I think you'll definitely like the level design in the next levels - that's IMO the strength of the game. As for the rest, well, you've pretty much already seen all the items, traps or monsters it has to offer (except 1 or 2). Same for the quests: there's no proper story in that game, just some lore stuff that gives you hints about the background. If you're expecting the missions to become more full-fledged and interesting, you're gonna get seriously disapointed. I think that game barely qualifies as an RPG. Note: I finished it after about 15 hours.
• 10+ years animation game development experience
• High quality key frame animation
• Motion capture animation direction, manipulation and integration
• Maintaining motion capture shotlists, asset tracking and logistics
• Animation pipeline systems for gameplay and cinematics
• Training and mentor-ship of peers and on a collegiate level
• Directing outsource animation studios
• Establishing and maintaining animations look and feel throughout a project
• SCRUM development
Games Developed For (in order of release date):
• Fuser
• Dance Central VR
• Middle Earth: Shadow of War
• Injustice 2
• Rockband VR
• Mortal Kombat X
• Fantasia: Music Evolved
• Chroma (Beta)
• Dance Central 3
• Dance Central 2
• Dance Central
• World of Zoo
• Zoo Tycoon 2: Expansions
