Stygian Sentinel 30
Hello backers,
Happy Halloween! Hope those of you currently experiencing the change of seasons have been enjoying the fall colors and cooling jacket/sweater weather, and that everyone's having a great time with the increasing number of end-of-the-year game releases.
This month's newsletter has a special Halloween theme -- evidenced by the pervading presence of Underworld Ascendant's Undead -- and includes updates on your Kickstarter-related questions and more.
But, first...
A Special Word from OtherSide's Paul Neurath[edit]
It probably comes as no surprise, but it's taking longer than we'd hoped for Underworld Ascendant to come together. The release will extend beyond the original November 2016 date.
Our goal is to make a game that's not only wonderfully fun and super polished, but also genuinely innovative. We're pushing hard on the Improvisation Engine, going deep with making The Stygian Abyss feel like a living and breathing dynamic environment, on achieving the subtle interplay with the Faction politics, and more.
Innovating is hard work, and not an entirely predictable process. The team learned this lesson on the original Underworlds, and with Thief: The Dark Project and other games that pushed the envelope. We do feel that taking the time to make the game great is the right call.
Before we will be ready to share an updated release date, we want to get over the hump on the key innovations and know that they are working smoothly. In February, we expect to share a new Prototype build with Backers that shows much progress.
We are hugely appreciative of your patience and support, and in being part of seeing this game come to life.
A Rewarding Announcement[edit]
To thank our fans for their patience as we work to ensure Underworld Ascendant is everything it can be, we're providing two gifts...
First off, we've gone ahead and unlocked the current Stretch Goal for The Necropolis of The Ancients, a foreboding lower level location where the game's most powerful Undead, hidden secrets, and rarest arcane treasure can be found.
- Early concept art of The Necropolis, where the Arch Lich Tyball rules.
We'll also be providing to all Backers who have pledged for a digital copy of the game a bonus collection of seven, hi-res Underworld Ascendant wallpapers spotlighting the work of concept artist Robb (SHODAN, Garrett, Sander Cohen) Waters.
- Visit your BackerKit account to access your wallpaper collection now.
With horrible creatures like these displayed on your desktop, you can ensure that Halloween lasts 365 days a year.
An Upset Spectre Named Warren Speaks From The Abyss...[edit]
OtherSide Austin Studio Director Warren Spector took a short break from System Shock 3 to share thoughts about the early days of Ultima Underworld development and our plans for Underworld Ascendant.
Here's Warren:
I've been excited about the prospect of a new Underworld game since OtherSide announced they were doing Underworld Ascendant and asked me to provide whatever creative advice I could offer. Recently, the guys in the Boston office asked me if I could recall any memorable moments from the development of the original game. Here are some of them...
My earliest memory is of seeing the original demo of the tech that would one day become Underworld. Paul Neurath was showing off this fully textured, first-person, 3D, real-time game to a bunch of us at Origin. One thing I remember is how blasè they all seemed. By contrast, I was kind of jumping out of my skin - "The World Just Changed! Can't You Guys See It?" That was all I could think. At that moment, I knew I had to be involved in the project. It took a while for me to get onboard (thanks to a bunch of weirdness at Origin that we don't need to get into here), but eventually I got to work on the project. That kind of changed my life, if you want to know the truth. My mission in life has always been to recreate the feeling I had playing D&D and telling stories with my friends. Underworld came as close to achieving that goal as any game of its day.
- Warren has been with Underworld since the start
Then there was the development itself. The team was crazy inexperienced and they were just making stuff up as they went along. I don't even remember how many movement systems and combat systems they did. There was no process, no nothing - just a bunch of guys doing a bunch of stuff until something good came out of it, or work had to be thrown out. Actually, now that I think about it, that may have been the first time I encountered Agile Development! Ooh. Snap!
Anyway, much of the game was developed in the Blue Sky Productions office in New Hampshire but some of the game was developed in Cambridge, Mass. at "the house of ten dumb guys" (aka "Deco Morono") where a bunch of the team lived together. The first time I visited Deco Morono, I'm pretty sure the team was carrying on a conversation in Old English. If it wasn't Old English it was some language I sure didn't understand. Maybe it was some MIT thing... Instead of coffee the guys drank an evil brew of hot Mountain Dew with marshmallows. Or maybe they were just punking me. It was vile. I also remember something about a Chia Pet, but the details are lost in the mists of time.
- Underworld then...
Deco Morono was a pretty strange place, but the coolest and craziest moments for me happened in a single room in the basement of some government building in Somerville, MA. It was winter and a cold wind whipped through the gaps at the bottom of the doors. We shoved towels in there but they didn't do much good. It was freezing. (At least, it felt that way to this Texas boy.) And there were no desks, just a couple of folding tables and a bunch of beach chairs. Yes, Underworld was created by a bunch of guys in beach chairs. The whole team -- not that there were that many of them -- crammed in there, along with testers we invited in once in a while. I've never worked on another game where the testers were MIT PhD's!
For all the fun we had in that basement, the thing I remember most vividly from that frigid winter was how many parking tickets I got. Somerville is not car-friendly! I'm pretty sure if I ever show my face in Somerville again, I'll get arrested instantly.
As far as the game itself went, a couple of things stand out:
The decision to allow players to select a male or female avatar, as well as his or her ethnicity, was a good one. I got mail about that for years. Many people were grateful we allowed players to select an avatar that looked like themselves. That was cool and I'll never understand why more games didn't do that back then. Thankfully, more games are doing that now. (Though we need even more games that aren't just for white guys...)
- Underworld now...
My favorite part of the game? My favorite level? Definitely level 4. The quest for and confrontation with Rodrick the Chaos Knight was one of the most epic things I'd ever done in a game. If memory serves, Doug Church designed that level and it showed just how talented the guy was (and still is). Funny thing, though? There was a whole meme -- before memes were a thing -- that you could only kill Rodrick with a dagger. Completely untrue. No idea how that myth got started.
And then, there were the in-jokes. There were so many it's hard to list them all. There's the first-person perspective Pac-Man game on one of the game levels. (Was it level 6? I can't remember.) Every Blue Sky and Looking Glass game for a while included an homage to some classic game or other. And I was flattered that the team included "an upset Spectre named Warren" in the game. (Also on level 6, I think.)
- Warren's cameo in Ultima Underworld
So many stories... I've barely scratched the surface. The big thing about Underworld, though, wasn't the individual stories but the way each element of the game worked with every other element to offer players the most fully developed, most deeply simulated fantasy dungeon anyone had ever seen up to that time. Sure, others have surpassed Underworld since it was released in 1992, though I've often said you could update the graphics, sound and UI of the original Underworld and still have a state-of-the-art RPG... which is kind of sad, when you think about it. But whatever you think about the game today, in its day, the original UU was a revelation.
Today, the Underworld Ascendant team at OtherSide isn't just updating graphics, sound and UI. They're working to shock the world of gaming again with a whole new game inspired by the original Underworld. There's still plenty of room to innovate in games and the team has learned a lot about simulated environments. (And graphics and sound and user interfaces... Definitely about user interfaces!) Anyway, they've learned a lot since the first game shipped and the goal of the team is to take advantage of everything they've learned to deliver something fresh and new and altogether wonderful.
One thing we've all learned is that innovation and a chance at greatness can't be rushed. The UA team is committed to both goals. It just takes time.
PS: The original Underworld shipped two months before Wolfenstein 3d, making it the first fully-textured, real-time, 3D game ever. So there.
An Ecology Lesson of Underworld Ascendant's The Stygian Abyss[edit]
Since the start, we've discussed how The Stygian Abyss will be its own character. We're striving to create a world that's fascinating to explore, a place where you want to unearth every last secret and that remains constantly full of surprises.
Part of that is narrative, but in Underworld Ascendant, the story is meant to always work in support of gameplay systems.
For instance, the Will O Wisp (seen left) is a creature that acts as "the sun" in The Underworld. It ingests Mana and excretes light, so is an absolutely key part of the subterranean ecology.
Without it, and the incursion of foreign environments through dimensional gateways, The Stygian Abyss would be a completely desolate place where life wouldn't exist.
But the presence of these factors has led to a thriving ecology to exist underground, allowing for rich flora and fauna, as well as towns housed by the three Factions (the Dwarves, Deep Elves, and Shamblers), Lizard Men, and more.
At odds with this fragile habitat are The Undead, who drain Mana to ambulate in a sad parody of life. They're not necessarily "evil," but have a parasitic relationship with the environment, only taking and giving nothing back.
You've seen some of The Undead before and may have even fought a few in our Pre-Alpha Prototype, but we wanted to show you previously-unrevealed concept art of another: The Eidolon.
These floating spirits are part of the "Confounder" AI class, meaning that they enhance enemies or detract from the player in combat. In the case of the Eidolon, they attempt to keep their distance, using their abilities to raise fallen allies and convert the bodies of fallen foes into Undead.
Those choosing to play without the use of ranged abilities may find the Eidolon particularly vexing... until they develop new strategies for dealing with them.
Like all AI in Underworld Ascendant, they're designed to push you to constantly utilize The Improvisation Engine to come up with creative solutions to challenging situations.
In Other News[edit]
Here are a few more notable OtherSide-related news items:
- Underworld Overlord - the innovative VR action/strategy game where you play as a Lich and defend your dungeon against an onslaught of invading "Heroes" - is coming soon from our VR team, exclusively for the Google Daydream!
- For those of you who qualify for exclusive, higher-tier rewards for crowdfunding Underworld Ascendant, here's when can expect them to start rolling out:
- Access to exclusive developer's blog - Early 2017
- Developer Roundtables - Starting Spring, 2017 (post Pre-Alpha Build)
- Special Conference Call w/ dev team - Spring, 2017 (post Pre-Alpha Build)
- Design a likeness, lordy abode, & heroic prose - Summer, 2017
- We'll have further details as these dates approach.
- OtherSide has a new web-site coming in November!
And finally, a few things you might find interesting and/or entertaining:
- There's just a few more days left to back inXile's Wasteland 3 on FIG. Don't miss out!
- The latest update from Night Dive Studios on System Shock has new details and some great new Robb Waters concept art.
- Our friends at Arkane Studios will be releasing Dishonored 2 on November 11th for PC and consoles. We can't wait!
That's all for this time.
Until next!
Best,
The Team at OtherSide