Underworld Ascendant - Kickstarter Live

I love it when people comment on an engine with no real knowledge...oh well.

So backed this....hopefully they can get a bit of the magic back that the originals just oozed.

Thanks for the notification, I was waiting for this, Journeyman Backer.

crpgnut said:

Looks good, I'll back this one too. Mark it down everyone; Couch and I agree on a game

Backed at Journeyman: $35

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What's the minimum backing (read: US$) in order to get the game ?

henriquejr said:

What's the minimum backing (read: US$) in order to get the game ?

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The early backer pledge will cost you only $20.

Dagar said:

Unity Engine - nooooooo!
All these Unity Engine games look the same - cartoon graphics and full of bloom.

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Finally, i thought i was the only one with that point of view.
Backed the game though, seems detailed with some decent power behind it.

So is this officially an Ultima game or just a spiritual successor? I keep reading different things. I heard that Paul Neurath had purchased the rights from EA, but most of the articles I've seen are referring to it as a spiritual successor.

Easy choice to back this one ... my first since they dropped Amazon payments.

Hopefully they hit $750k to get the Mac & Linux versions as well.

The rotating maze lock puzzle looked interesting, and some of the backer in-game items are intriguing (but seem a little 'cheaterous'). I figured the PoC graphics were just that; there's definitely room for improvement there. If the game allows modding, then HD textures could always be swapped in by the community--as long as the models and animations are done well.

JDR13 said:

So is this officially an Ultima game or just a spiritual successor? I keep reading different things. I heard that Paul Neurath had purchased the rights from EA, but most of the articles I've seen are referring to it as a spiritual successor.

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They don't have the rights to the actual name, but everything else. So, while it's not officially an Ultima game - it's as close as you can get without using the name.

DArtagnan said:

They don't have the rights to the actual name, but everything else. So, while it's not officially an Ultima game - it's as close as you can get without using the name.

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So the in-game lore won't be the same then if I understand you correctly. If that's the case, I don't see what the purpose was of purchasing those rights.

JDR13 said:

So the in-game lore won't be the same then if I understand you correctly. If that's the case, I don't see what the purpose was of purchasing those rights.

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As I understand it, they have the rights to use the original factions and the lore - simply not the name itself. They also share some lore with Shroud of the Avatar.

But I think they're using the rights primarily to promote the game, for people who played the original. I know it's one reason it caught my attention

I couldn't care less about the lore, but I care very much about this particular approach to dungeon crawling.

Putting in a bundle of money into this, hoping this picks up in a few hours now that people are getting home from work.

120k already. Further proof that Kickstarter is not dead. You just need proven game designers and a game people want to play.

It looks great to me! Put me down for a boxed CE.

In a strange way, I prefer that UA looks 10 years old… closer to Wizardry VIII than Skyrim.
If they had shown some slick E3-style target render with fake gameplay, I would've pledged the minimum. However, this looks much more realistic on a Kickstarter budget.

Yes, I swore off pledging for any more physical incentives… they always seem to ship months after the game is released… but UU is one of my top 5 rpgs of of all time, so I couldn't resist.

Kickstarter is most certainly not dead. Lots and lots of projects succeed daily, I just think people look at them a bit harder now, compared to 3-4 years ago. If the pitch sounds good and realistic, the moneys tend to come.

Kordanor said:

As I mentioned in another thread I don't see the big appeal of doing this type of game again with a new engine

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I don't really understand your reasoning. The precise flavor of Ultima Underworld hasn't been done in over 20 years (well, perhaps with the one exception of Arx Fatalis). On the other hand, if there's a genre that has been done to death, it would be FPS shooters.

Regardless, I don't see any downside to making games people like to play, even if they've been done to death. If people still like playing them, then who am I to say a game should or shouldn't be made. Just my humble opinion.

Ultima Underworld would be near the top of my favorite games of all time, so I backed this as soon as I saw the Kickstater was live.

Have these folks actually made any modern games ?

@The Mad Gamer

Yeah, maybe my wording wasn't that great.

Of course you are right: As long as people enjoy a certain type of game it's a cool thing that games are made for this audience.

What I was more getting at is that there isn't really much "outstanding" in Ultima Underworld. In other games game mechanics were born out of technical limitations for example. And today these game mechanics might give a game a special touch todays games don't have because they simply don't face the limitations anymore. Turn Based Combat, Isometric view, or tile based movement come to mind. These "mechanics" basically almost died out for about a decade. Today these mechanics are reimplemented in games which call themselves classic or retro RPGs for example.

Underworld on the other hand didn't really have "features" which came out of technical limitations (or at least none I remember). Instead it wen't the other way around and showed everyone what is possible in terms of engine/ graphics.
And so it's not able to score with that. Instead you see the achievements of Underworld in multiple other games. They even showed that in the trailer.

That doesn't make it a bad game. I just don't see the special "selling point". Ok, it's setting is under the earth and it's story might be similar to the game back then. And maybe I underestimate the faction thing.

Or let me ask it in a different way: If bethesda announced an "underground skyrim", or Quare Enix announced an "underground fantasy Deus Ex", or if FromSoftware announced an "underground first person Dark Souls" - what is making Underworld Ascendant standing out?

As I mentioned before: It doesn't mean it's a bad game. And I also backed it with 20$, just because I think it could be a decent first person RPG.
But I don't see the big appeal here. I don't think I would have needed any association with Ultima Underworld to pledge that money.

Hmmm, I never played the Underworld games - not so sure I'm interested in this.

"Hello, I'm Paul Neurath. I founded of Looking Glass..."

BACKED!