Underworld Ascendant "Breaking Free of Fantasy Tropes" Blog Update
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Since the last time we checked, two new development updates have been posted on the official website for Underworld Ascendant, the sequel to the seminal Ultima Underworld games. The first deals with the game's first playable prototype, and is well worth a read, but personally I'm partial to the latest one, which explains how the developers are attempting to break free of fantasy genre conventions.
An excerpt:
Part of the challenge in tackling the fantasy genre is there are a few high watermarks that are extremely influential, and a bevy of well-worn tropes. That leads to questions such as, how do you present races like dwarves in new and interesting ways?
I find a good way to start this process is figuring out interesting creative challenges. If you can come up with an idea that you find so compelling that it requires your absolute best work to pull off, then it'll motivate you to give it your all throughout the long, sometimes exhaustive, development cycle. The thinking is also, if you're engaged, your audience will hopefully be as well.
Another key part of the process is research. The old maxim of "write what you know" is spot-on but incomplete, since it leaves out the part where you can actually learn new information.
One of the things I learned from working on Irrational's BioShock series is that research is absolutely essential to good world-building. It's also incredibly fun. By digging through primary historical sources, you get a real sense of how people spoke, thought, went through their daily lives, and more. You pick up little details that make a world feel real, which then in turn helps make the fantastical elements of your setting seem more believable.
To give an example, the target we've given for our Dwarves is that they're true mountain folk: rugged frontier types who are smart and wary, like early pioneers like Kit Carson mixed with HBO's Deadwood and Jack London's White Fang.
I'd since add to that: "Imagine the cast of Deadwood, if they were all members of MENSA." Essentially raise the entire camp's collective IQ up to the 98th percentile or higher. How would characters in that intelligence bracket survive and thrive as pioneers in harsh subterranean conditions? Seems like a pretty fun challenge.
That basically means I get to do a lot of reading into newspapers, journals, and correspondences from North America in the 1600s and early 1800s to try to nail a perspective, tone, and canter of speech generally along those lines.
