Underworld Ascendant brought to you by Zombie Looking Glass

Damn, Stephen Kick of Night Dive fame doesn’t sound too happy!

Gotta dig deeper.

Sorry Telefrog. I tried searching for System Shock 3, Otherside, Spector, and even Google’d Quarter To Three System Shock 3, but nothing came up (well, a thread from 2003 did but I didn’t want to bump it). :/

When searching make sure you use the filters, to make it focus on the games section, and also the very first post.

Thank you. I’ll be sure to do that next time.

That line about Starbreeze being “able to recoup the development costs” sounds pretty concerning, unless they have a new publisher lined-up. I doubt Otherside could afford to self-fund both SS3 and substantial updates for Ascendant out of their own pocket, especially when they have another project under way (Thick as Thieves). I believe the original budget was $12 million, so who knows how much of that the team received? I assume payment stopped a while back given Starbreeze’s recent woes.

He sounds like Stevie Nicks. Bet he didn’t know Tom Petty.

According to the Otherside community manager, as of February 2018, the game was still in pre-production, so even if System Shock 3 immediately entered full production after that post and the Starbreeze stuff didn’t stall development, it’s probably years away from releasing. Crazy to think this was first teased back in 2015, and Starbreeze announced they were backing it two years ago.

Hows this, for obvious reasons I cant say much…
But I’m not worried.

Hopefully they either have the money to self-publish or found a different publisher, either one would probably be a good sign.

The alternative is Starbreeze saw what happened with UW:A and noped the F outta there.

We have very much enjoyed working with Starbreeze on System Shock 3. They’ve been a great partner. As developers themselves they understand the challenges of game development and that’s been refreshing. However, in light of Starbreeze’s current situation, we decided together that it would be best for us to go our separate ways for now. We wish them the best of luck.

OtherSide is rolling forward with System Shock 3. Warren Spector has built a great team and the game is more than halfway completed. At its core, it already feels like a System Shock game, while at the same time introducing new elements to the franchise. As the original creators of the game, we want to see this game made as much as our fans do.

Look for more information about System Shock 3 soon.

Someday, a long time from now I’ll talk about UA.

Awesome! :)
Best of luck with the project.

Good news re Shock3, and I very much look forward to the UW:A post-mortem!

Maybe throw a few feelers out this time before you commit to design. Changes to UA were not for the better, to be honest. Sometimes a simple refinement of a proven formula is enough for a good game.

Totally agreed, and I trust Spector not to f*** up the design of SS3.

The main danger would be competing with Arkane’s efforts – they’ve advanced the immersive sim field, and SS3 should provide something that’s comparable, and preferably advances the state of the art.

Not my team Bateau. I know what you mean tho.

Past successes do not predict future performance. UW:A was produced by Paul Neurath and built by a dream team of Looking Glass vets. Warren Spector was an advisor. Sometimes things just never gel, or external forces intrude. Shit happens.

Quote from Warren Spector via the Otherside forum:

We parted ways with Starbreeze (amicably), which means we are in the process of lining up a new publishing partner. Happily, given the pedigree of System Shock and the progress we’ve made so far there’s been a lot of interest. Has the situation affected development? Not really. The team is still, as we say, ‘psyched and cranking’ - in other words, continuing as normal. We’re confident we can bring System Shock 3 to market and have it take its place as a leading title in the immersive simulation genre.

Hopefully Shock3 is a larger team. My general feeling is that UW:A tried to do too much with too few people. They were all strong veteran developers, but an immersive/emergent RPG with a “tons of verbs” core design is just too much for a small team.

Stusser kinda nailed it. The thing that sucks about games–more than film, music or books, is its so damn long to get another swing at the plate.
Most of us at one time or another have been involved in a non-optimal project for whatever reason. It sucks its painful, and hindsight is 20:20 on what happened. Frankly in the middle of it as a dev-it is hard to see. Too focused on the small picture, not the big…a strange spot for me since my career has been ‘big picture’. The biggest guilt I have is leaving the producer role for a dev role.
Anyway all you can do is Pick your self up, dust off and get back at it. I will say, the game is better after Update 2. We basically redid the whole guts of the game-how it progresses, missions, exc. Movement, combat, AI improved. After clearing our heads post launch…and post public beatings…there has been a bunch of things by pretty much every developer like ‘how the hell did that get in there like that’ The bane of rushing to a date, and a bunch of other stuff. It wasn’t particularly fun. As for this that or the other on how or why–I just am not saying. Wait for the book. :)
Stusser also nailed it with ‘too small team’ yeah, that was the biggest ouch. Shock is far larger.