Underworld Ascendant - Launch Trailer

I really liked the beginning of Wasteland two, but thought it petered out after several hours. Got my $ worth though. I can only hope Ascendant is similar.

Factions will not be present in the game. We will talk to representatives instead. Its hardly what we were promised during the Kickstarter but the game could still turn out alright I guess.

Beta Backer feedback forum

Hey everyone! We're excited to have the Backer Beta in your hands, especially for people who haven't played any of the earlier builds. Since we have your attention, we want to take this opportunity to give you more background about the game:

1. Underworld Ascendant is based on the original Ultima Underworld games and the plan has always been to do a next generation version, not a remake or remaster. In the spirit of the original Underworld games, we’re aiming to do something different, blaze a new path and take some risks, all within the boundaries of the team size and budget that we have.

2. One of the most important aspects of UW was the consequences of physics and player interactivity within the world, and a big part of UA is acting upon that and taking it to a new level. We highly encourage you to try experimenting with whatever you find in the Stygian Abyss, and use your environment to your advantage. We want to challenge people to think creatively and use the tools they have around them or have equipped to solve problems in their own unique way.

3. UA allows you to explore the dungeons in first person in real time, with real-time consequences. We're providing a LOT of different playstyle options, we believe much more so than in the originals. There's more to combat than just hack and slashing, traversing environments is much more visceral, stealth is now possible and magic is a more useful tool.

4. UA has a small core team! I know for many of you who have frequented our forums, you can count all 14 of us off the top of your head, and for those of you meeting us for the first time, keep in mind that we're an extremely small team making a relatively big game. Our small size and focus on gameplay means that we have limited cutscenes and scripted events. Most of this game WILL be up to the player's actions and self-directed exploration, and we build the tools to allow for that. Like our designer Chris recently said: many modern RPGs are built on the foundations of previous games (or, as Chris put it, you don't start with Oblivion). Creating a game that supports playstyle variety with dozens of skill options for combat, stealth, and magic, as well as dozens of unique spells, is an enormous endeavor for a team of any size, and most modern games are developed by teams of hundreds. We intend to build out these elements further -- and, yes, add new ones -- in future projects.

5. There are no dialogue trees in Underworld Ascendant. If not done well, they can be stilted and boring—and doing NPC interaction in a much more open-ended way is way out of scope. That said, character interactions and relationships are still an important part of UA, so we've opted to allow you to actively choose which Factions you're interested in assisting (or none), without branching dialogue trees. While there are less survivors in the Stygian Abyss than returning Avatars may recall since their last visit, these survivors are turning to you in the hope that you can make a difference where they have not. This is an area we intend to expand upon in the future. Last, storytelling is also accomplished with VO—you’ll hear a lot more of it in the beginning as we set the context for the game.
We are very excited about the game we are making. Our hope here is to try to help you get a better sense of what we’re focused on and how it will come together.

Uh oh first person perspective. I'm out!

I get motion sickness, even watching the video made me feel queasy

Hum. Nov 15 is launch date.

I'm thinking the very earliest I'll be touching this one is maybe January or Feb/March. There is no way this is actually going to be fully playable this month.

Originally Posted by Tiptoe
Uh oh first person perspective. I'm out!

I get motion sickness, even watching the video made me feel queasy

How could it be anything other than first person, it's a follow up to the Underworld games which defined the first person genre imo, it was the first games with mouse look.. it was also the first RPG's to not have the terrible grid movement.

I bet everyone got motion sickness when they played first person games for the first hours, it goes away.

One thing is for sure… I will not be playing this game unless they Implement some kind of manual save system.

Currently, the level you're on completely resets whenever you leave the game. That includes any items you added to your inventory, spells you discovered, etc, since you completed the previous area.

One of the devs on their forum said they're working on putting in some type of quick save. He went on to explain how difficult it was for a team of their size to implement a manual save due to all the variables, etc, etc.

To me, it's completely unacceptable for a game of this type to not have a manual save-load system, and I have a hard time believing that a bunch of Industry veterans can't figure out how to put one in.

I've discovered that dealing with saving in an RPG game is a real headache - maybe one of the toughest things. There are an awful lot of variables that comprise the world state, and it's a chunk of work to plan how to track, save, and restore it successfully. I guess if you just save at the end of a level, it's much easier, as you can disregard the world state, and just save the player data.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's acceptable, and it would definitely put me off, but it might well be true that it's time consuming to implement live saving where they hadn't planned for it.

That type of saving system to me is completely unacceptable. I sure hope they make some serious changes before the release.

But divinity manages it well enough; they even let you save in the middle of combat.

Originally Posted by Ripper
I've discovered that dealing with saving in an RPG game is a real headache - maybe one of the toughest things. There are an awful lot of variables that comprise the world state, and it's a chunk of work to plan how to track, save, and restore it successfully. I guess if you just save at the end of a level, it's much easier, as you can disregard the world state, and just save the player data.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's acceptable, and it would definitely put me off, but it might well be true that it's time consuming to implement live saving where they hadn't planned for it.

Originally Posted by you
But divinity manages it well enough; they even let you save in the middle of combat.

For sure, it's obviously possible - most RPGs manage it. All I'm saying is that they might have avoided a chunk of work by having end-of-level saving only, and now, if the customers demand live saving, there might be a chunk of work to do.

Thing is, this is something that should have been realized and made known very early in development. It's unheard of for a game of this type to only have an end-of-level save.

The key aspect of an immersive sim is that it's immersive, and I can't think of many things less immersive than having to repeat an entire area because you didn't have time to finish it during your previous play session.

I do believe they'll get a quick save implemented soon, but the fact that they're still working on it this close to release is scary.

Yeah, the project strikes me as one that's really been up against it with time and resources. Perhaps it will be another one that gets pulled together in the months after release, but I could see it getting a kicking in the reviews.

The absence of dialogue trees for me is an equally big turn-off.

And regarding the save system: managing persistence is a thing you need to consider early on in every software end product's development. If you try to add it on-top it can of course be extremely difficult. For me that's just poor project management.

How do they reproduce bugs if there's no way to reload a certain world state?