Underworld Ascendant Interviews

Given we’re probably going to have to report on a number of new updates for the Underworld Ascendant Kickstarter campaign very soon, as it currently only has 39 more hours to go, this seemed like a good opportunity to round up some recent interviews with the developers.

RPGWatch sent some questions from their community:

You: The kickstarter presentation talked more about history and not so much on future; can you expand more on the future ?

Tim: We’re pushing forward on multiple fronts. With the state of the art already so far advanced in physics and rendering, we can focus on integrating new developments in ecological modeling, diplomatic AI, and more. These are the big-picture systems that will make the Underworld an even more vibrant, reactive setting than ever.

And we expect there to be more opportunities in the course of development that will surprise us. One thing we learned a long time ago is that to make great games, you have to be really open and flexible as you go. You can know what your goals are, and what your process of discovery will be, but to achieve anything really new and interesting you never have a blueprint for everything, at least not at first. On Underworld Ascendant, we’re excited to be sharing that process of discovery for the first time with our backer community.

Rjshae: Is this game going to use a fully realized three-dimensional environment with climbing, jumping, falling, levitation, and flying?

Tim Stellmach: Yes, in some form. The specifics will undoubtedly evolve during development. In general, the level layout in the original Underworld games was heavily constrained by the technology at the time. Even having different floor elevations at all was a unique feature back then! So our world design and movement systems can make much more use of vertical space in Underworld Ascendant.

And you left out diving and rope swinging!

…

Farflame: You recruited Joe Fielder who was a writer for BioShock Infinite. Do you/he has some fresh idea how to approach dialogues in underground fantasy realm? How to make some races/NPCs unique?

Joe Fielder: We definitely want to give Underworld Ascendant that deep, dark dungeon fantasy feel that was so fantastic in the original games, but in a fresh, original way that’s all its own. We want it to feel familiar, but also be full of surprises. Part of that means coming up with takes on races that you haven’t seen before.

We’ve discussed the Dark Elves as being a sort of a mix of Spartan warriors and social Darwinists, completely dedicated to pushing themselves to mental and physical perfection. Meanwhile, the Dwarves are shrewd, rugged frontiersmen, like early pioneers like Kit Carson with a bit of Deadwood and Jeremiah Johnson. They feel a real sense of ownership over The Underworld, because they helped erect much of its infrastructure. And the Shamblers are a fungal hivemind society that views The Stygian Abyss as a complete ecosystem… that would likely function better under its care.

Each faction has its own unique philosophy and agenda, which may at times make its followers into heroes or villains depending on your outlook. Each group has valid reasons for their actions and they’re definitely headed for conflict.

RPG Codex has a more traditional interview, thanks to a visit to the studio:

mindx2: Let’s talk about the (Improvisation Engine.)

Tim: Is that the question? (Laughing) Alright, I’ll start. So when we talk about the Improvisation Engine it’s really a suite of technologies that are interconnected similar to the approach that we took in the original Underworlds, System Shock and Thief but also extended in some ways that we’re interested in for Underworld Ascendant. So the big picture is we have a number of simulations systems running that give the player tools for addressing problems and they interact with each other. And because of that architecture we’re able to get surprising outcomes because the system as a whole is fairly complicated. The individual parts of the system remain manageable to implement and test. So you have interactions between physics and AI and the ecological model and diplomatic model of the factions for example. This gets into our overall approach to the player’s whole call to action and the relationship to the story in the game. A lot of modern games tend to try to fairly closely script moment to moment events. They try to have these finely crafted experiences, which has its own value and there is definitely an audience that really appreciates that, we feel like there’s kind of an underserved possibility there for a more systems based approach. Where we setup a scenario and a dynamic system for that situation to take place in and a set of player tools that can be used to address your problem and we let the player go. We try to give up some of the authorship for ourselves and put it in the player’s hands in terms of what even their priorities are, how they address the problems. We’ve obliviously talked about the back story of the game and how it relates to the original game, and there is a story, but it’s not a moment to moment story. It has more to do with major plot pivots that are possible.

mindx2: That was similar to the original Underworld where you were thrown in there and didn’t really know where you were going.

Tim: Yes, in the original Underworld you were imprisoned and you need to find seven things somewhere in the dungeon before you get out.

mindx2: . but you weren’t even given that at the beginning.

Tim: .no, no you didn’t find out about the seven things at first, it was just like you were in prison, huh.

Chris: The way I’ve always looked at it and sadly I’ve been saying the same thing since 2000. It’s the difference between building Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride and building Disney World. Modern games put players in a very crafted single path to get to a destination. What we try and do is build a playground and events that happen.

Tim: Theme park rides are great but that’s not what we are going for. The analogy that I like, I think I put on the forums, we’re shooting for more of a vibe, there’s a live action role playing game going on at a playground and the larpers have promised not to hog the monkey bars. So it’s all available to you, to the freedom of how you address yourself to the activities that are available.

Paul: At Looking Glass the only genuine role playing games we had developed, technically at Blue Sky, were Ultima Underworld and Ultima Underworld II. After that, yeah System Shock was a little in between there, but with the Thiefs we really moved to your playing Garrett the character and you had a role and it was mission structured. It wasn’t genuine role playing, you didn’t come up with your own character. So with Underworld Ascendant we’re going with true role playing and that feeds into the Improvisation Engine. You have a whole dimension of meaning to explore as a player as, (Hey, I can approach this challenge in a bunch of different ways. Am I a stealthy kind of thief character or am I a big bad fighter or a mage or hybrid in between? We really want to feed into your sense of the character that you’re developing through the arc of the story. That’s true role playing.

Finally, Red Bull Games has an interesting article-style interview:

“I think it’s a mix [of backers],” he says. “We see comments, people saying ‘I never played the original games I wasn’t born.’ It was 22 years ago! But the first folks to join in on the campaign were people who played the original games. I think, and I hope, that the word’s getting out there that this is a game that’s still relevant today. If you look at a lot of the gameplay [from Underworld], in some ways, it still hasn’t been matched or exceeded. Some people get that, even those who didn’t play the original games, and when they play modern games they’re looking for something a little bit more. That’s what we’re trying to do, really trying to shake things up.”

But unlike Kickstarter smashes like Wasteland 2, Shadowrun Returns or Elite: Dangerous, Underworld’s influence and legacy never really faded. In the two-plus decade interim, fantasy games haven’t gone anywhere. In fact, they’ve elevated themselves from their perceived province of the slightly nerdy to full on blockbuster success. We’ve got Skyrim now. Dragon Age: Inquisition. Game of Thrones. Underworld Ascendant isn’t filling a niche it’s returning home to find a bunch of rowdy young upstarts sprawling on its couch.

“That’s true!” says Neurath, when asked about all the competition that has sprung up in Underworld’s absence. “That’s the consequence of inspiring a bunch of games. But the good aspect of that is that players have seen this kind of gameplay; it’s not so unusual. When we came out with the original Underworld, people didn’t know what to make of it, it was so different. That made it a harder commercial sale back in the day. it took a couple of years to build the momentum, and for people to get their heads round it. Today, people know a lot more about emergent gameplay and open worlds it’s not alien anymore.

“But we certainly hear from our fans that games like Bioshock Infinite or Skyrim still feel pretty different from the experience we had in the Underworlds. Those are great games but tend to [follow this formula]: you’re given a character, you’re given a narrative, and you follow along that. A lot of that is informed by cinematics, which is done wonderfully well, but the sense of true freedom the ability to kind of experiment, improvise as a player to create your own story is not really what games like the Bioshocks are about.”