KickStarter Underworld Ascendant Pre-Release Thread

[Infinitron]

https://www.pcgamesn.com/underworld-ascendant/underworld-ascendant-immersive-sim

Underworld Ascendant's freewheeling ethos makes it a more immersive sim than Deus Ex

Underworld Ascendant game director Joe Fielder is stacking crates. He is a wizard so he doesn’t have to get his hands dirty - instead, he is using a magic wand to pick up and bind the boxes telekinetically. Even so, it is clumsy work. On his first couple of goes, the crate tower he has created gets caught on the ramparts of the underground fort we are infiltrating. He waves his arms to herd the boxes back together with a crackle of energy, as if they were electric sheep.

Eventually, Fielder succeeds in gingerly lifting the crates up to a wall sconce, where, with a little persuasion, he is able to set them on fire. Then, for the finale, he sweeps the flaming tower through the air and into the fort. As hooded undead rally to defend against the attack, he mashes the tower repeatedly into their heads from above until they succumb to fire damage.

If only he were triumphant enough for the story to end there. As it is, Fielder kills maybe one or two before a skeletal soldier runs him through with a sword.

“They may be suboptimal,” Otherside Entertainment founder Paul Neurath says of the solutions Underworld encourages. “But they’re unique.”

The same approach to design was evident in the games made under Neurath at Looking Glass in the ‘90s. The original Ultima Underworld games, as well as Thief and System Shock, combined first-person immersion with dynamic worlds and thrived on the unexpected consequences of throwing you into them.

“We didn’t quite know what we were building,” Neurath tells us. “But it ended up working.”

Looking Glass never expected their games to be remembered - “in that era, games tended to come and go pretty fast” - but their influence birthed the immersive sim genre. Using Looking Glass’s blueprint, other developers eventually found the blockbuster audience that had eluded the genre for so long. If you have played BioShock, Dishonored, Fallout 3, or Deus Ex: Human Revolution, you know the allure of the Underworld formula.

“The important legacy is the innovation and that we continue to push forward,” Neurath says. “We think this category of immersive gaming is one where there’s a lot of room to continue to innovate and see what kind of new gameplay we can do. That’s really the goal of the studio.”

To that end, Otherside are doubling down on player-authored solutions. These unplanned, often inelegant moments are at odds with the slick nature of some of Underworld’s contemporary peers. But there is the sense that the studio would rather cancel the game than break from their beloved first-person view for something as orchestrated as a cinematic takedown.

Fielder’s wizard has returned to the Silver Sapling - a sort of bonsai respawn point that can be planted anywhere, encouraging experimentation. Exploiting a wall-run ability to skirt around the cavern wall to the far side of the fort, he plucks a ripper-fruit from beneath the claws of a huge river plant. This vicious flora forms part of an underground, mana-tinged ecosystem brimming with luminous life, ready to be turned to your advantage.

The wizard wafts the fruit in front of a family of deepslugs - peaceful creatures that leave a trail of flammable ooze in their wake. Coaxing them towards the fort, he begins to set the place alight - until his robes are punctured by that same vigilant skeleton. Embarrassing? A little. But this is the emergence Looking Glass once celebrated, undiluted and unedited.

Otherside’s 14-strong team is thick with the blood of former Looking Glass and Irrational staff. Adding to that pedigree are the handful of level designers they have borrowed from Fullbright, the creators of Gone Home and Tacoma, while that team spools up for their next game. And, in 2016, Warren Spector joined as studio director.

“Making games like Deus Ex and Epic Mickey, I remember thinking, ‘Why isn’t everybody making games like this?’,” Spector muses at the end of our presentation.

Now they are - from the explicit immersive sims of Arkane to the emergent puzzle-solving adventures of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which Spector views as “validation.” Today, Otherside’s job is to carve out a space for themselves among the studios Looking Glass inspired.

Ascendant might not be the cool, bionic shades-wearing immersive sim you pull off the shelf to introduce your friends to the genre, but it is the most committed to supporting your bullheaded ideas for working around a problem. Even, or perhaps especially, if they look a bit silly.

 

[unfairlight]

eehmursiv simm
god that term is fucking retarded

 

[vota DC]

Silver saping was in ultima Underworld 1. I wonder if there are white goblins. They are the main reason why goblins are usually mellow.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Silver saping was in ultima Underworld 1. I wonder if there are white goblins. They are the main reason why goblins are usually mellow.

Don't you mean Grey Goblins?

Anyway a small side-note: The latest issue of Retro Gamer (#177) has a retrospective look on Looking Glass Studios, and there are few funny quotes to take from there, like the time he first entered the building that housed Looking Glass Studios:

I walked into that place and it took me five minutes to realize that I was the stupidest person in that room.

Before Looking Glass there was Blue Sky Productions, which used a very advanced texture mapper as the basis to develop Ultima Underworld.

John Carmack saw Ultima Underworld at E3. He basically went "Oh Shit!" and went home and, because he was a genius, within like a month he had duplicated the tech and actually done it better.

Paul also mentions how EA acquired Origin just months before System Shock was due to be released, and they were literally this close to cancelling the game altogether because "they didn't get it".

I remember going down to the [EA] marketing department and getting into a shouting match with them. The short version is me shouting, "What do I have to do get a hit around here!" and the answer was a very quiet, very calm, "Sign Mark Hamill to star in your game". That was the thinking at the time.

EA still got their chance to kill their studio with System Shock 2.

When we came out in 1999, that was months after the high school shooting in Columbine. Larry Probst [EA CEO at the time] reached out and said "We may just want to walk away from doing shooters because there's talk of those shooters causing these kinds of events." We had our meeting where we made our case that System Shock does not reward you for going in there and shooting everything that moves. You will lose if you do that, it's a thinking person's game. I think we halfway convinced them

EA's response was to release the game, but they put it on the budget label for $10 just 45 days after its launch, therefore denying it any chance to make money.

The end days of Looking Glass Studios are just too fucking depressing to mention, so I won't. But if you want more information you know which issue of Retro Gamer to grab.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Underworld Ascendant's freewheeling ethos makes it a more immersive sim than Deus Ex

Or the misunderstanding called Dishonored.

 

[Darth Roxor]

snip

Death to EA!

 

[Ash]

https://www.pcgamesn.com/underworld-ascendant/underworld-ascendant-immersive-sim

What's this, the usual "emergent gameplay and innovation is the be-all-end-all"?

If the most important thing was innovation,, every single modern "immersive sim" inckuding UA would not be highly derivative of the older games: a spiritual or direct sequel. And emergent gameplay has to be the most obscenely overrated concept of all time:

"Hey guys what made Deus Ex great?"

"LAM climbing! LAM climbing! Oh, and this one other thing I did that I don't think the devs intended yet they probably did, who knows!? Usually you can tell for sure if it breaks the game in some way, just like lam climbing did"

emergent gameplay is cool and all when it works without breaking shit but it shouldn't be placed on this pedestal. There's so much monocled design one could focus on elsewhere instead. But hey, this is PR releases I'm arguing with here, and emergent gameplay for some reason is a popular concept blown out of proportion in general and the're probably playing off of that...or they subscribe to that way of thinking themselves and for some reason don't see the GENIUS elsewhere, everywhere, in their own old designs.

 

[vota DC]

Don't you mean Grey Goblins?

Grey Goblins were already in the original Ultima Underworld and despite the fact were labeled as mellow they were quite upset in fact. They attack you when you speak with the king without permission while you can speak any time freely with the Green Goblin king.
Green Goblins are really mellow instead. Their gatekeeper is named DROG. So they should add white goblins as a nod to Mr White that sells drugs I mean potions to Green Goblins!

 

[Infinitron]

Speaking of friendly creatures, looks like they're bringing back Rawstag the troll: https://www.othersideentertainment.com/forum/index.php?topic=1905.0

Hey everyone,

I wanted to pick your brains a bit about the troll Rawstag from UU1 and UU2...

http://ultima.wikia.com/wiki/Rawstag

What do you most recall? What did you most like about him? What do you like to imagine he got up to between UU1 and UU2 and/or after UU2?

I can't tell you why! But I'd appreciate any thoughts you'd like to share.

Thanks!

Best,

Joe

New screenshot: https://www.othersideentertainment.com/forum/index.php?topic=1895.msg25433#msg25433

Here's a somewhat claustrophobic interior (of the things we can show). We realize this isn't an earthy, cave-like interior as requested, but we wanted to show you that there are and will be areas that are not as open as some of the other things you've seen. What do you think?

Yep! You'll see more tunnels and claustrophobic interiors, as time goes by. But to back a minute and explain a bit why you've been seeing shots of larger multi-tiered areas?

One of our main design challenges is to make better first-person combat than you've seen in other games, where it's often been referred to as "chopping wood." (That is, just standing in front of an enemy and boringly trading blows.) As we've said in previous updates, we want combat to be much more movement-based, where you're taking advantage of your environment and objects within it. We also want stealth options available as well, in case the player decides they want to focus their play-style in that direction or just incorporate some stealth skills.

So, we've been tackling those level design challenges first, since they're tougher to overcome, while the other areas are pretty well known quantities.

We've achieved some positive results with those spaces, which are the largest you'll find in the game, and more recently, we've been turning our attention to tighter encounter areas and claustrophobic spaces. (Justin's been finding a nice balance of hitting those goals in smaller, tighter areas.)

Anyway, long story short, you'll see more and more shots along those lines over time.

The level I most want to show you all is scheduled to get a dedicated art pass right after the February newsletter goes out, so I hope to share some shots of it in March. (I've been hinting about it for some time.) But like Walter mentioned, we'll see what other fun stuff we can show in the interim.

Glad you liked the shot above, by the way. It was a screen grab off my computer from the opening of Upper Erebus, the level seen in many of our most recent shots. (It has a lot of dank, dark interiors as well.)

 

[Zep Zepo]

Release..."2018"

It better be December 31 2018...because they are still talking about basic shit that should have been fleshed out YEARS ago.

I, for one, cannot wait to see the reviews for this upcoming disaster.

Zep--

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Good news about Rawstag, he is one of the few constants of the Underworld games.

 

[Sceptic]

John Carmack saw Ultima Underworld at E3. He basically went "Oh Shit!" and went home and, because he was a genius, within like a month he had duplicated the tech and actually done it better.

Bullshit, it took Carmack THREE engines to catch up. Wolf3D's was pathetic compared to UW, yes it ran much faster but he cut corners at every single spot in order to achieve that. Doom's was much better but was still missing a LOT of things, such as slopes, true Z-axis (people forget this with the ports, but back in Doom you not only could not have 2 levels going over each other, but every actor or object extended infinitely along the Z-axis) and some kind of fluid dynamics for swimming. It wasn't until Quake that all these things were implemented and id engine finally caught up and surpassed UW's. It cannot be overstated exactly how revolutionary the engine was. Carmack's coding genius was always in how smart he was in which corners to cut and how tight his coding was, and therefore in how fast his engines ran (compare Quake and Descent; the former ran so much faster it wasn't even funny).

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Rant in E Minor

I'm pretty certain Lerner is referring to the texture mapper alone, which I mentioned just before the quote.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

Don't forget actual physics. If you look at UW carefully, it is astonishing.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/02/05/underworld-ascendant-preview/

Underworld Ascendant wants you to break all the rules

Underworld Ascendant is a game for anyone who has ever tormented a GM during a tabletop RPG session. The maps have been drawn up, the traps have been primed and all of the plans are coming together. You’re deep in a dungeon and the story is about to take a very unpleasant turn. And then…

“You said the spikey pillars are made of the same wood from which the ancient throne of Catharsia was carved? Fine. I’ll set fire to them.”

“You can’t do that…there are another six distinct phases of this particular peril…”

“I’m pretty sure I can. They’re wood. They’ll burn. Let’s get out of here.”

The ‘Ultima’ branding may be gone but Ascendant is as close to being a true Ultima Underworld sequel as we’re ever likely to see. It has the same recipe of Dungeons and Dragons concepts mixed with immersive sim qualities, and sees some Underworld and Looking Glass alumni reunited at OtherSide Entertainment. The studio is also working on a System Shock sequel and before watching a live playthrough of Ascendant, I was keeping my excitement in check.

Original Underworld designer Paul Neurath and Warren Spector are among those veterans working on the game, and I wanted to see evidence that they had new ideas for this dungeon crawl rather than simply a desire to reheat old ones. In the livestream and during a Q&A afterwards, they showed plenty of evidence that Ascendant will be looking forward as well as back, and using modern tech to revitalise some old tricks.

On the surface, it’s tempting to call it Prey: D&D Edition. I’m talking about Arkane’s Prey, a game that already has DNA in common with Ultima Underworld and the Looking Glass family of games. There’s a similar emphasis on players creating solutions to problems using a variety of tools, and the environments that I saw are designed to enable as many approaches as possible.

One interpretation of that might be the addition of ventilation systems to every dungeon, so that you can crawl through spaces unseen rather than taking guards on with your weapons and magic, but Ascendant is more inventive than that. There are various magical plants, from which seeds can be plucked. The most notable is a sort of glue plant that allows you to stick objects to walls or ceilings. It’s a hybrid of Thief’s rope arrows and Prey’s goo gun, and I enjoyed seeing steps and bridges constructed using objects that had previously seemed like background trash.

This is a game in which you can levitate a crate, move it through a fire with your mind, and then lob it over a skeleton’s shoulder-bone so that it crashes into a wooden support behind that skeleton and starts a larger fire that results in collapsing struts, falling boulders, and a dog’s delight of shattered bones to chew on.

It’s also a game in which a tester discovered that spinning blade traps can be rendered inert if you lodge something in the mechanism. That’s because traps are actual physics-driven objects rather than simply being kill-boxes surrounding an animation. It’s also a prime example of what I see as the central appeal of Ascendant: screwing with the creators of the game.

Don’t worry. They want you to break things in interesting ways, so it’s not as if anyone’s going to be offended if you spend your time trying to stack monsters on top of one another and then pushing them into a ditch. All of the experimentation might be directed toward finding solutions to problems, because there are plenty of monsters to kill and quests to undertake, but I got the distinct impression that messing around with the physics and AI will be encouraged for its own sake.

It’s an RPG that’s about play rather than steadily rising numbers. I’m sure there’s a plot but what I’ve seen so far suggests that making my own sub-plots with titles like “Do skeletons burn?” and “The man who was glued to a boulder” will provide plenty of entertainment. The one thing I’d like to see more of is the ecosystem of monsters and factions; everything in the livestream was player-driven to an extent, and I want to know how well the game’s systems intertwine when hostile creatures encounter one another.

Ascendant is very appealing already though. There appear to be some rough edges, particularly relating to stealth which seemed a little too mechanical at times as the player character lingered just outside detection ranges in a way that made the connective tissue and triggers of the world seem just a little too obvious. That might change though, as this isn’t a finished build.

The consequences of actions are at least clear. Even when guards started to swarm across a cavern, ruining what had seemed like a perfect infiltration, the cause was obvious. Create a ruckus and you’re going to get unwanted attention.

Fantasy Prey was my initial take and I stand by it, to an extent. The more I watched, the more Ascendant reminded me of another game though. It has something of Divinity: Original Sin about it and I think that the goals of the design might be closer to Larian’s than I originally thought.

Both are games that are, in different ways, trying to replicate elements of pen and paper roleplaying. They’re doing this by providing players with tools and then using their own systems to react as often and as convincingly as possible to the actions undertaken with those tools. In Underworld that’s in the physics of the world and the AI, and so much will depend on how well the latter works, and how well constructed the various areas of the world are.

As a basis, it’s fascinating though. An RPG that drops you into a space and gives you freedom to explore and engage with the inhabitants with as few restrictions as possible. It’s what I want from an RPG, that sort of freedom. It’s not the freedom of an open world, it’s freedom of approach within a world that has obvious hard limits.

Ascendant has a clear ruleset and it wants you to test how far you can push those rules. I look forward to breaking it.

 

[Ash]

More and more they're making it out to be emergent gameplay: the game.

Meh. Game rules exist for a reason, and it isn't to be broken.

It'll be interesting and commendable if this doesn't end up being a piss easy mess of abusable mechanics, unbalanced gameplay and bugs. It is often rules and developer foresight and control that prevents such things.

That art style has made a pretty huge jump in quality though.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.othersideentertainment.com/forum/index.php?topic=1907.0

Hey everyone!

This week's update is going to be short because we're super busy, so here's the breakdown:

We just started a new sprint, and we're starting our climb to the end of Alpha. The magic and rune system is slowly being eased in, with lots of tweaking along the way, and considerations for the spell construction is being carefully monitored during play sessions. Levels are still being designed at the same time, with a few new designers joining us from Fulbright just to polish up old areas and make sure there's more to the level than just "mechanical fun." (ie adding little touches of narrative and hints of the lived experiences of the Factions).

We're also doing the final passes for the next newsletter, which will hold all of the Feat-information you've been waiting to hear about, as well as more information about the ecology in the Abyss and some of the game's narrative.

Within the office itself, we'll have a film crew present gathering interviews and footage for the "Making of Underworld Ascendant" DVD. Warren himself is even flying up just to be a part of the shoot, which is exciting!

Overall, the studio here in Boston has never felt busier. You'll hear from us in the next newsletter soon!

Gone Underworld :D

 

[LESS T_T]

Specifically Nina Freeman and Tynan Wales (btw, AFAIK both only worked on Tacoma, not on Gone Home) as previously mentioned.

Comment by the Fullbirght guy:

 

[RatTower]

I still wanna know how all these areas are connected and whether they are intertwined like in UU1
At the moment my biggest fear is that all levels are roughly the size of Ishtass Shrine from the alpha and just a bunch of separate or loosely connected "challenges"

What I would like to see, is the extent and complexity of a Thief level, woven into a big horseshoe layout as seen in e.g. Dark Souls.

Spoiler

So basically Cragscleft Prison but bigger.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

I still wanna know how all these areas are connected and whether they are intertwined like in UU1
At the moment my biggest fear is that all levels are roughly the size of Ishtass Shrine from the alpha and just a bunch of separate or loosely connected "challenges"

What I would like to see, is the extent and complexity of a Thief level, woven into a big horseshoe layout as seen in e.g. Dark Souls.

Spoiler

So basically Cragscleft Prison but bigger.

Did you play the original?

 

[RatTower]

Sure.
The thing I'm hoping for are quests overarching several levels (i.e. like the Cup of Wonders), as well as different ways to travel between those levels (like the backdoor to the dwarven kingdom).
For some reason I'm getting the feeling that the zones we've seen so far might be more isolated than that.

It's just a gut feeling though

 

[Infinitron]

http://steamcommunity.com/games/692840/announcements/detail/1673520734597826385

We're Going to SXSW in March, Are You?
12 FEBRUARY - DARQFLAME

Are you going to #SXSW in March?
If so, be sure to visit our panel
"Exploring Underworld Ascendant with PCGamer"
featuring Paul Neurath and Warren Spector!

MAR 16, 2018 | 2:00PM – 3:00PM
AUSTIN CONVENTION CENTER
GAMING EXPO - DISCOVERY STAGE - EXHIBIT HALL 2

https://www.othersideentertainment.com/forum/index.php?topic=1910.0

Hey Forums! You may have noticed that we're holding a T-Shirt Giveaway on our Twitter and Facebook pages...

...but we're also holding one more! Right here! We're giving away 1 Cabirus-themed screen-printed shirt to a lucky forum-goer and Underworld Ascendant fan!

Here's all we ask:

Reply to this post telling us what you’re most excited about for Underworld Ascendant, and the story of how you found us! Were you a long-time fan excited to see a return to the Abyss, or were you a newcomer who stumbled on our Kickstarter page in 2015?

Must be signed up for our newsletter >> http://bit.ly/1sAdHBK <<

One entry per person, and you cannot enter across platforms. (ie, you cannot enter for the giveaway on Twitter/Facebook in addition to here!)*

+2 entries if you've posted at least 50 times.

Finally, this Friday from 3-4pm ET, we’ll be streaming on Twitch for an hour to celebrate our BackerKit lockdown and announcing the giveaway winners!

https://www.twitch.tv/otherside_entertainment

We’re open to game suggestions, but games we’ve worked on will have a higher chance of being played! We hope to see you there!

*Only entries posted before 2:45pm ET on Friday February 16, 2018 will be counted. If the contacted winners do not respond to us within 48 hours, another winner will be chosen.

We're also looking to release the newsletter this week! What an exciting day!

 

[LESS T_T]

 

[Ash]

Humble as always. Still revealing little about the game as always.

Pushing their "break the game!" selling point further.

I hope everything works out for them and us fans, really.

"Pushing the genre forward"

I sure hope so, though my scepticism is through the roof.

 

[unfairlight]

The gameplay hardly looks any different from Dishonored, if I had to guess it will probably disappoint since the devs are washed up hack frauds.