That is what we are hoping Zak.
MrTibbs- yes, that is why LGS rocked. That comment right there. Do I have to be a mass murderer to be the hero in a game?
Blows my mind as I go back and play all the old games - Origin, LGS, Bullfrog, Fallouts…on how far we haven’t come. Its sad that some of the things we were thinking of 15 years ago haven’t really been tried, or there has been absolute regression.
Well, us, inXile, Roberts Industries, Garriott…we all have a stake in attempting to change it. Wasteland 2 a perfect example. Star Citizen…let’s hope. What I have seen is the game that CR touted back in the Freelancer days. Finally he can build it. If we can all be successful, then we can pay it forward and help the next generation join the pantheon without selling out their IP, deal with publisher producers and waste money on development demos that don’t need to happen, but give them some safety net and support so they can succeed.
At least that is my crazy ass plan.
#IWantToBelieve
Unsurprisingly, RPS just a few days ago published a retrospective of Arx Fatalis. As the previous standard-bearer for 3D-accelerated homages to Ultima Underworld, I imagine it will be getting brought up a lot over the course of Ascendant’s production.
Kickstarter is 1/3 of the way there and still ticking along.
I’m pretty sure this will get funded. I’m just hoping they get enough pledges to hit the extra goals.
I loved it, but Wasteland 2 was a throwback game. It didn’t move the genre forward, it looked backwards to past games and did that, largely ignoring innovations and positive changes made over the past decades. I was particularly disenchanted by the way it incentivized quicksave/loads on traps and locks. Again I thought Wasteland2 was a fantastic, joyful experience, but some of that was fueled by nostalgia. I couldn’t believe it existed.
I hope Underworld doesn’t deliberately eschew modern niceties in a misguided effort to appeal to nostalgia. I don’t want UW3 to be exactly like UW2 with the addition of modern graphics and mouselook.
It’ll probably end up around $1.5-$2m. Kickstarter fatigue won’t allow many more wasteland2’s or doublefine adventures.
If you look at kicktraq it projects to hit > 3 million, so I don’t think there is any real concern that it won’t get funded. It’s more a matter of how much they’ll go over.
I also wonder how much recognition Ultima Underworld has with today’s gamers (to address your comment another way). Sure, all of us old guys know how awesome it was, but does someone in the 20s have the same appreciation for what a groundbreaking game it was, or does it look like just another first person RPG, I wonder.
I never got to play these games in their “prime,” but general knowledge of their importance and the KS itself drew me out of KS hiding to back at the lowest game-getting level. So, there’s that at least!
That kicktraq graph is a straight trend line, but Kickstarters don’t work that way. They generally have a huge spike in the first 3 days, then drop very low, then another huge spike right at the end.
If I was running a Kickstarter I would actively try to combat that trend by thinking up 2-3 huge kotaku-link-worthy blockbuster bits of news for the middle of the month.
I never played Underworld, but I did play Thief I and II, and the name Looking Glass means a lot. So yeah, I backed. Good luck, guys!
Some of those stretch goals are quite tantalizing. I want companion creatures & co-op mode! That being said, I’d be surprised if they reach beyond the first stretch goal.
It wont be. That would bore us. There is an itch with this team to surpass what was done in the Underworld games, and in the LGS games. It really is coming full circle back to what we used to talk about in those last days of LGS. On how we were going to move the needle. The thing that was great about that team, and the new team is the hunger. Even us ‘old fogies’ still have the burning passion for the design ideals we want to explore.
So would I. :) :) :)
And don’t count on it getting funded. If you want it back it. Read between the lines, what else would former LGS folks make.
Right! British Open Golf II!
no…maybe not that…
Pledged for $20 but it is just a placeholder for either $100, $150, or $200 – can’t decide which physical version I want yet. So awesome that this is happening!
Great to hear!
What I was getting at is that Ultima Underworlds had some pretty crusty design concepts and UI. The awful inventory system with tons of nested bags, the need to eat (which Grimrock also continued, to its detriment), item durability (in a finite single-player game!), consumable torches for light, and most importantly the terrible magic system. that made you have a rune bag open with spells prepared beforehand.
If those things make it to UW3 they’ll certainly pump up the nostalgia, but they won’t result in a better game. They have no reason to exist today. We know better.
Hey, FU buddy.
IMHO, that’s part of what made the magic system cool and unique. Also the thrill of finding a rune that would open up new possibilities, plus the chance of discovering new spells by combining known rune elements.
I don’t wanna turn this into a discussion about Kicktraq, but even though the projection is a straight line, it’s not derived by simply multiplying the pledges times the number of days. That would be pretty useless. I’m aware (and I’m sure the guys running kicktraq are aware) of the way kickstarter project pledging works. And the trending line reflects that.
Though it’s difficult to find a lot of hard data on the projections, there is a little discussion on the linkunder the trending portion of the page, and a little more on their blog. The bottom line is that the projection gets more accurate as more time passes.
And now back to our topic at hand: Go Underworld Ascendant!