Not sure that’s an option for a 2013 purchase. I doubt I’ll ever play the game, at this point, so I guess it was a donation to help Richard Garriott do something he liked for a while. But it’s now been more than 25 years since he did anything worthwhile on the gaming front, so I guess it’s time to let it go.
This comment reminded me that I hadn’t uninstalled SOTA. So thanks. Freed up like 100GBs.
Heh, that’s how I feel about UW:A, but they didn’t sell in-game houses for thousands of dollars and that was only like thirty bucks.
Video update from the game director:
That… Kyle McLaughlin… hair…
I preferred him with glasses, an axe, and Carmack.
That’s a bit glib and dismissive. What you said you were building was a sequel to UU. The expectation, both logically natural and continually encouraged by your team, was a game that shared DNA with its predecessors. It seems that, when you changed your minds about delivering what you promised, the people to whom it wasn’t communicated were everyone not working for Otherside.
Somehow, I suspect reading you say how happy you are to come in to work every day doesn’t fill anyone with contentment. More like inexpressible rage with a soupçon of horror.
I’m not into game development but just from a layman point of view, I asked again - why launch a game prematurely and then struggle to rush out hotfix after hotfix? They don’t have publisher to pressure them so why???
Because they didn’t have a publisher to throw money at them to keep them going when they were left with zero funds, probably?
It’s either release or cancel in such case, isn’t it?
Never worked in that crazy industry, so I should probably just shut up!
If they were out of money before release, that won’t change now. The game was in the Steam top ten for about two hours and has double-digit player numbers. Maybe 10k copies sold, and most of them refunded.
Underworld Ascendant is the first game from OtherSide Entertainment. Established by the original founder of Looking Glass Studios, OtherSide is essentially Looking Glass 2.0, employing some of the same designers and seemingly sharing the same ideals about game design. Its legacy includes the likes of Thief, System Shock and of course, Ultima Underworld—three mighty pillars of PC gaming. Just take a moment and think about those games, how massively influential and ahead of their time they were. Imagine what those designers could do with today’s technology and tools.
Now imagine the complete opposite. You’ve just imagined Underworld Ascendant.
ouch :(
The Gamereactor review is more positive: https://www.gamereactor.eu/reviews/712903/Underworld+Ascendant/
True, technically, 3/10 is better than 25/100 :)
So many of these points were brought up during the beta, it makes me wonder what the beta was for.
I’m still irked about the defense of this game being “we never intended to design a UU sequel.” So, then the intention was to make an utterly terrible game? They claim to be fixing the save system because they’re listening to the feedback – so, the save system is currently working as intended? You know, there’s probably a very good reason no one ever intentionally designed a save system like this.
The design decisions are so utterly terrible that I’m skeptical a game could be patched and pasted to the janky bones of this mess.
Sure it could. If they fix all the bugs, QoL issues, and polish it up, it could be a fine game. It won’t ever be what the fans expected, but it could be a fine game.
Not the case. There had to be a line in the sand for a ship day. I can’t say more without being destroyed by the grue.
save system
I cannot tell you how much I agree, and lost this fight repeatably. Being fixed–and rage inducing as expected by some of us. As for ‘they did it 20 years ago’ yes and both those teams were triple what we had.
Funny. Sigh.
Door symbols-- yep, bigger fish needed frying…
PC gamer review-- congrats my worst number ever.
Interesting. You have me curious about that postmortem. I hope it gets written.
The thought that even a single person on the team didn’t want save-anywhere is beyond baffling to me, and edges well into “Those responsible should be permanently stripped of any decision-making authority” territory.
Gamer reaction to save game models should not be a surprise. There are quite a few examples from which to choose, so you have to be a bit blindered to end up as a(nother) cautionary tale.