Underworld Ascendant brought to you by Zombie Looking Glass

Games
666

Haven’t had time to dive in yet but am a little incensed by the whole we totally never intended to make UU3 line. Portalarium trotted out the same thing with Shroud of the Avatar. Both games’ pitches very heavily leaned on their predecessors and I’m sure the funding was much more as a result. No wonder then when backers are disappointed as the games veered further from the prior games.

I get it, nostalgia is a heck of a drug, but other Kickstarters have managed to invoke the spirit of the originals. At least with SotA I did get a really swell boxed edition (and it is nice), hopefully UA will deliver on that front as well.

667

Shroud of the Avatar feels like a very different scenario. They had a tremendous budget and many, many years, and they veered off the path deliberately, charging thousands of dollars for housing and collectibles and never actually focusing on making a fun game.

668

Fair enough. I luckily steered clear of all of that. The original pitch was a bit of single-player Ultima meets UO and ended up being almost all UO – disappointing. But I wasn’t too surprised that they ended up there, I have a feeling that RG would never have had the single-player Ultimas if he could’ve been making multi-player games all along, the technology forced him into it. The boxed edition is nice, though, and I honestly never thought they’d deliver on that.

669

Just now reading up on the save system and as it is it means I can’t play it. At all. I have a wife and baby and need to be able to save and quit at any time, period. Now his makes me angry. I am still baffled why Devs muck about with save systems. If a collosal game like AC Odyssey can manage a save and quit any time and save progress I expect a small game like this to do it. It’s 2018. The garbage about save game size means to me the Devs did not consider this properly before deciding on a design and engine. I can excuse things being cut and a game turning out different then expected. But this is QOL stuff that’s just required in this day and age.

670

Warren Spector did an interview this week where he says that UA is set in a different universe from UU:

Warren Spector: The real answer is that fans of Ultima will still have to wait! Underworld Ascendant shares many characteristics with Ultima games, but it isn’t, technically, an Ultima game itself. If you love those games, we think you’ll love Ascendant, but while we’ve incorporated some elements of the original Underworld lore, Ascendant is set in a universe all its own. Gameplay similarities will be there, sure, but in terms of setting, story and the most modern approach to gameplay, we’re unique.

671

Right, they do not have the Ultima license, but they have everything else from the Underworld games. So you are the same avatar, it’s the same Stygian Abyss, you banished the Slasher of Veils, and you saved Lord B’s castle from the blackrock shell. But the B doesn’t stand for British.

672

It does, and I’m intrigued. A save system like this is different enough that it must have been thought through. Trying to be innovative? Not intrigued enough to buy though until somebody chimes in that it actually works.

673

Every indication I can find is that what they “thought through” was “our programmers aren’t good enough to make a real save system”

674

This thread makes me want to cry. So disappointing.

675

After E3, when the game was delayed from September to November, Otherside paid for the extra development time. I hope that doesn’t mean 505 won’t be providing post-launch support.

For the record, as we got closer to September we realized we needed more time too. We paid out of pocket for the extra two months of development time.

676

Every time the thread gets bumped I become more disappointed. :p

677

Exactly.

678

I’m just going to repost my comments from TTLG–

So against my better judgment I tried installing this in its current state. First thing I realized is that I need a newer graphics card to play this. My current one, a Radeon 7800-something, renders the “environ” with regular stuttering and hitching.

That being said, my first impressions…

The aesthetic is fine so far. Nice looking environments, good ambient sounds. It didn’t crash. This concludes the positive points.

The intro is bad. It’s just a floating face reading off some painfully generic spiel about how you have been summoned to defeat the great evil and bla bla bla something about factions factions factions. Did absolutely nothing to immerse me in the world. Felt more like the kickoff of a weekend D&D session, and not a good one. I realize this is the product of a small team with a limited budget, so I wasn’t expecting something like Thief’s intro cinematic, but it just feels like the bare minimum effort was put into it. All it needed was some good writing. Compare with the intro to the original Myst, which is 90% just a tumbling book, but still gives me chills. That intro made me want to discover the game’s secrets. UA, on the other hand, just slaps you on the head and yells, “We got secrets! Go discover them! So many secrets we have!”

There are glowing bright blue bottles scattered everywhere. Since they’re glowing, they’re some kind of potion, right? Nope, just environmental trash. Can’t even put them in inventory.

The voice I picked for my character (Stephen Russell), makes screaming grunting sounds like he’s about to die just from lugging a small wooden crate around.

Every piece of ore I pick up seems to fly straight into my mouth.

The first door I set on fire, the burning sound never went away even after all the pieces burned up. And it was loud.

Frobbing locked doors always displays a line of text like “The • symbol is visible.” No, that symbol is not visible. WTF does this even mean?

Every time you open a chest, there’s a big puff of smoke, a burst of sparks(??), and then the “contents” of the chest visibly spawn into the world right in front of you. It looks ridiculous.

When arrows are equipped, your current arrow count is not displayed. Also, maybe it’s just my crappy frame rate, but arrows seemed to be hitscan instead of actually flying to their target.

The mission summary screen (yes, UA is apparently mission-based, sigh) seemed to be displaying internal variable names instead of proper descriptive labels for some of the stats.

680

They probably didn’t have the bandwidth to actually create a • symbol and put it on the door.

681

I’d be down with that if dark regions also displayed the message, “It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.”

682

Or even bothering to ship me my $500 copy.

683

Wow. And I was annoyed with Obsidian for taking three months to get me the physical rewards I’d ordered.

684

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685

Got an immediate update on my $500 Shroud of the Avatar (maybe someone reads these forums): “Hopefully before next year!”

Yep. Hopefully.

686

Why not ask for your money back? It’s not like SoTA still shows any real promise. At least drop back to a less extravagant funding level.