Underworld Ascendant Interviews/Impressions
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Otherside Entertainment was presenting their upcoming dungeon crawling immersive sim Underworld Ascendant at PAX East, which included a playable demo and a few developer interviews. You can find a couple of those interviews along with some demo impressions below:
Let's start with this Gamereactor interview with Paul Neurath that also shows off some pre-alpha gameplay:
And then see what they thought of their time with the game:
Recently we were invited to 505's offices to get our hands on a pre-alpha demo of the first-person RPG (the same demo as was shown recently at PAX East in Boston) so as to better understand what kind of foundations the studio is putting down as it looks to give life to the next chapter in the series. Given the importance of the game's legacy to the industry and to the developers themselves, it's clear that the studio is aiming high. In fact, ambition is not a quality that seems in short supply at OtherSide Entertainment, because despite the fact that we experienced an imperfect early build, the studio seems to have some very good ideas as to the direction they want to take this project, ideas that put us in the middle of the action, where the player acts as the fulcrum upon which everything around them is balanced. So far, we like what we've seen.
OtherSide Entertainment has given us a very specific definition of what Underworld Ascendant is, and as far as the studio is concerned it's an immersive sim. The game, in fact, sees players left to roam free in a fantasy world, within which they can do exactly what they want. There's no right or wrong approach; all that matters in Underworld Ascendant is what the player considers the best course of action and, above all, what's most "natural" according to their interpretation of the situation. For that reason, in OtherSide's game there are no pre-defined classes, and instead, each player can create their own unique build. This depends not only on the kind of approach chosen by the player (stealth, magic, combat, etc.) who, from time to time, can change things up according to the way they decide to face a certain situation, but it also on the kind of missions chosen. Naturally, during our short hands-on we couldn't explore this aspect in any depth, but the premise seems very interesting.
In Ascendant we play as Avatar - Ultima's former protagonist - who has to find and save the kidnapped daughter of a baron. Our hero finds himself catapulted into the Stygian Abyss (perhaps the name sounds familiar to you?), an underground world infested with strange and mysterious creatures as well as threatening wildlife that looms large in its narrow corridors. It's an intimidating, claustrophobic place. When we wake up, guided by a voice that prepares us for our adventure, we start to explore the world around us. As explained by Warren Spector himself via the message that introduced us to the demo, in Underworld Ascendant we'll have to unlearn much of what we know from years of playing action-RPGs.
Then, there's an editorial-style interview at VentureBeat that expresses a certain degree of awe with the game's open nature:
These are games like Thief, Prey (2017), and Dishonored 2 that put hurdles in your way and give you a range of tools to overcome those obstacles. Underworld: Ascendant is a spiritual successor to the Ultima Underworld series and the immersive-sim genre as a whole. OtherSide lead designer Tim Stellmach, who worked on the Ultima games, defined Underworld in terms of that lineage.
“In the same situation, there’s often a wide variety of solutions to a problem,” Stellmach explained after my hands-on demo. “That becomes something that you can explore.”
Otherside marketing boss Walter Somol pointed to my own experience as an example.
“You’re [idea of] stacking crates to go over that gap,” he said. “You’re the first person we’ve seen try to do that here. You own that solution now. It’s your solution.”
But that’s also my problem. I get that “my solution” worked because the systems enabled me to use objects that way, but I can’t help but feel like I missed out on some opportunity to show how clever I am by using the game’s systems closer to what the developer intended.
That was true in Prey and Dishonored as well. A chasm exists between my simple, grounded solutions to a puzzle and all of the fun possibilities that designers plan for me. And I know this is something of a personal failing. I’m not patient or creative enough to maximize the potential of these systems, so I don’t feel ownership over anything I do. But I also know that is not the typical reaction.
“Back when printed strategy guides were more of a thing, we had to do one for Thief,” Stellmach said. “This was done out of house, and it came back to us before it was published. Everything in the strategy guide was presented as: ‘This is how you do the thing. This is the walkthrough.’ But my experience reading that was, ‘Oh, it’s interesting how they solved that problem. Is that how you do that?'”
And finally, GameSpace offers a brief general preview:
During PAX East I had the distinct pleasure to preview Underworld Ascendant which is a game seeking to be a continuation of the Ultima Underworld series. If this sounds familiar to you, you might remember it’s successful Kickstarter campaign from back in 2015. It’s been a few years since then and it’s releasing this year so it’s a perfect time to look at where the game is currently.
One thing which was obvious right from the first moment was there is very little direction about where you need to go or what needs to be done. There is a sort of narrator who you would think would be telling you what needs to be done and where to go, but mostly he was just super snarky. Occasionally he’d offer some advice which was useful though so outright ignoring him is probably not a great idea. Also, there would sometimes be text which appeared on the screen giving me direction, but it was also very limited in the helpfulness. For example, the text might read something like “click your use key to pick the barrel up”. Since I had never played the game before I had no idea what the use key would be, so I hope for the sake of people new to this kind of game they include something more specific.
One of my favorite parts of the demo I played was every passage way had multiple ways of solving them. This allows for an incredibly diverse set of playstyles and thinking patterns which will be able to get through the game. Related to this I did notice my habit of making things far more complicated than they had to be was in full force. For example, at one point I needed to burn down a door to proceed. My solution was to put a barrel right in front of it and then light the barrel on fire. This worked well as once the barrel was burning the door caught right on fire too. Of course, I could have just used the torch to light the door on fire in the first place.
