Underworld Ascendant Interview - It’s Back

If you’ve been a gamer for more than twenty years, you may remember Ultima Underworld, the first person spin-off that made history along with its sequel.  The good news is that Otherside Entertainment has finally gained the rights to make Underworld Ascendant, a new game in the series in all but the Ultima name.

The team is seeking crowdfunding right now on Kickstarter, and we’ve checked with Paul Neurath, head of the studio and original creator of the Underworld series, to learn more about the game. Enjoy!

• The Stygian Abyss, where Underworld Ascendant takes place, is described as a vast world with many different environments. Is it going to be a seamless world, though, or will there be loadings between zones?
• We have not sorted this out as yet. Ideally it would be seamless, but there is some tradeoff between detail and scope of each era and trying to keep it all seamless. We certainly understand that nobody likes frequent pauses in game play while levels load up, so we will not be doing that.

 

• How long do you expect the main story to be, approximately? Also, will players find many sidequests in Underworld Ascendant?
• On order of 10-15 hour is our target for the single-player story arc.  We are putting a high priority on re-playability, where your experience and outcome can vary quite a bit between play through, depending on what type of character you build and on the choices you make.  So we think a fair portion of players will play through it 2 or more times.

 

• On the Kickstarter campaign you mentioned that “Rune Gates connect to other worlds as well, including the lands of the Shroud of the Avatar. Over the eons travelers have spanned these worlds, including a band of rogue dark elves who set themselves up in The Stygian Abyss. Discover how these worlds have intertwined over the ages.” Can you explain this part to us?
• We are using pretty much the same trope as the original Underworlds where magic portals took the human Avatar from earth to the fantasy world, and often within the fantasy world itself.  Where we are going further is in having gates that connect to other worlds, and other times.  More to come…

 

• The Improvisation Engine is perhaps the single most interesting feature in Underworld Ascendant. Can you tell us how it works? How much of it is based on physics? 
• It is one of the most distinctive parts of the gameplay for sure. The Engine is a set of technologies that allow us to create a fairly complex model of a dynamic world, and one where the player has an especially wide palate of ways to permeate the systems through their actions and choices. Each component is not that complex, but the many different ways they can combine and create spiraling effects is what gives it power. We did a comparatively primitive version of this with the original games, including a piece we called the “Act / React” system. Basically going 10-fold deeper now that we have much more powerful hardware to leverage.

 

• Speaking of combat, will there be dual wielding with weapons/spells like in Skyrim? 
• Great question. Don’t have an answer yet. Something to think about ;)

 

• Can people expect to find way stronger enemies in certain parts of the Stygian Abyss, or are you planning to implement NPC scaling?
• One thing we liked about the original games is that the player could get in too deep if they wanted, and encounter a creature that would almost surely overmatch them. We wanted to give players the freedom to push themselves, sometimes further than was wise, but it was always their choice. Same with the new game.

 

• A stretch goal would add the Underworld Builder Toolkit. Are you planning to let folks share their work on Steam Workshop? Would it be possible to create completely different environments, like in a total conversion mod?
• TBD

 

• Another stretch goal would add co-operative play with a friend. What about an optional PvP “invasion mode”, though? Would you consider something like this if the fans asked for it?
• We have a stretch goal that we’ve not revealed as yet that goes further down the multiplayer path. Let’s wait and see if we approach that before talking further about it.

 

• You mentioned using Unity in the campaign. Is that Unity 5 and if so, are you planning to use PBR and/or Global Illumination by Enlighten? 
• Our prototype runs in Unity 4.55. We are using this version because it is quite stable, and we can make fast progress on prototyping with it. Our current plan is to step up to Unity 5 as soon as it is sufficiently stable for a full production environment. We will be exploring the various new rendering capabilities.

 

• Microsoft is starting to push Windows 10 and along with it, DirectX 12, which look very promising in the early benchmarks. Are you planning to use DX12 in Underworld Ascendant and if so, do you believe there will be significant performance gains?
• I would presume so given when we plan to commercially launch the game, but don’t have the details on that as yet.

 

• I understand you’re focused on PC, but what are the chances to see Underworld Ascendant on PlayStation 4 and/or Xbox One as well at some point?
• We’re focused on PC at this stage.

 

• Thank you for your time.