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KickStarter Underworld Ascendant Pre-Release Thread

Zakhad

Savant
Joined
Dec 10, 2012
Messages
284
Location
Gurtex
I think there are two scenarios here:

1, they are developing the game well, but marketing it poorly, or
2: they are marketing it poorly because it's poorly developed.

IMO these guys are not natural salesmen like, say, Fargo (who somehow tricked us into crowdfunding Wasteland 2), so I think the first option is, a priori, pretty likely. So I find it really hard to judge how well the game is tracking.
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
505 Squad (Warren Spector and Joe Fielder, Remedy dev, Indivisible devs) at Giant Bomb live:



They talked about usual things. The host asked about System Shock 3 but to no avail.
 

Curratum

Guest
Arrow fired at the floor went Garry's Mod crazy.

Thrown water bottle bounced off a wall torch, as if it was made out of rubber.

Rafters under feet glitching and looping sound as player model gets stuck and unstuck in them, before the game finally decided where the model stands.

Skeleton scrolls backward along the floor without moving its legs.

In heaven, everything is fine. See you in September when this abortion launches out of Otherside's quivering, talentless womb and into the world for everyone who got fooled by Stellmach and Neurath to enjoy.
 

Curratum

Guest
Instead of flagging me with "autism", could you instead maybe post a single thing you actually enjoyed in this last footage?

All mechanical interactions barely work, the animations are hideous across the board, items pop out of chest-pinatas, the environments look very cookie-cutter, like Skyrim lego dungeon blocks.

Fielder keeps babbling on and on and on about the consequences of your actions and the factions and the NPCs and the influence of the player and they haven't even shown a single NPC yet, or a single second of dialogue, or any part of any quest, or the Marcaul hub and the fucking game releases in 3 months.
 

Infinitron

I post news
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Last edited:

Infinitron

I post news
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth

Nano

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 6, 2016
Messages
4,648
Grab the Codex by the pussy Strap Yourselves In
...also we haven't forgotten about our backers with Mac and Linux!

They still haven't released the pre-alpha for them? I remember reading about this months ago :lol:
 

RatTower

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Apr 24, 2017
Messages
468
I liked it. Melee combat could have a little more oomph to it. "Heavier" animations and more feedback. But that also depends on sound effects.
Also there was some strange culling behind the iron bars of that cage-like room. Either way, looking forward to the Q&A and actually seeing some videos this weekend.
 

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Arcane
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Codex 2014

Zed

Codex Staff
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17,068
Codex USB, 2014
it's really getting slammed

from that critical hit piece

The multiple paths seem obvious, the combat is janky, and it just isn’t much fun to play. There’s probably more to the game, and when it launches in September it may be a more fleshed out, cohesive experience. This vertical slice was anything but.
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
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Codex 2014

LESS T_T

Arcane
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Codex 2014


@aplayingfield (Jared Mitchell) is this guy:

Via Facepunch, a Youtuber who did level design analysis on System Shock 2 got hired by Otherside as a contract QA. With a chance to prove himself as a potential level designer, it looks like:



He's also contributing to an indie game Albino Lullaby, which is directed by his co-worker and level designer at Otherside Boston Justin Pappas.


I guess he's really proving himself.
 

Infinitron

I post news
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.othersideentertainment.com/forum/index.php?topic=1998.msg27606#msg27606

Joe Fielder said:
Hey all,

Just wanted to drop a quick note to reply about a few concerns about the relative ubiquitousness of Cabirus' VO in the game.

If you've watched some of the footage of the Pluto's Gate or Upper Erebus levels from PAX East or E3, you've heard more from him than you'll actually hear him in game, since those were public demos and were meant to give some narrative that would normally be covered in the intro or subsequent narrative interludes. (It's better to have Stephen Russell's golden pipes cover these in-game than to explain them in a press presentation.)

The first level picks up after the game intro where you meet Cabirus for the first time. During the "un-training" sequences that follow, which introduce the player to the immersive sim elements of the game, he provides some commentary that's meant to teach the player to think and experiment with the game systems, without overt hand-holding.

This will be a real season to taste process for us as we continue polishing and refining the game, since we do want players to pick up key elements about core systems and VO is one of the tools at our disposal for that, but we _really_ don't want to hold their hands. This isn't a game that will have quest trails, map markers denoting exact locations of quest items, onscreen text telling you when to duck, etc.

Gah! Will write more later when I'm not on a plane, but wanted to let you know, we've heard your concerns and agree with them.

Thanks!
 

Curratum

Guest
Maybe I'm so butthurt over how bad this turned out to be because I literally made a KS account for it and it's still the only thing I've backed... :negative:
 

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Arcane
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Oct 5, 2012
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13,582
Codex 2014
Another E3 impression from RPGamer, but by a different writer who is the owner of RPGamer and also a backer of this game: https://rpgamer.com/2018/06/undeworld-ascendant-e3-impression/

It's somewhat positive and relatively detailed:

Underworld Ascendant E3 Impression 2

Disclaimer: I backed this game on Kickstarter.

I’ve been avoiding media on this game so I could see how it would turn out as a finished product. Moreover, what little I saw up until this point looked rough and I didn’t want it predisposing me to a bad impression based on an unfinished game. That said, it’s clear Underworld Ascendant needs more time in the oven.

The focus in Underworld Ascendant is on letting you play the game your way. Other Side Entertainment doesn’t do classes in this game, instead letting you build your character organically and allowing you come up with your own solutions for puzzles and challenging situations. One of the team’s guiding design focuses is that if something should work in the real world, it should work in the game.

In our 15-minute demo, we had to recover a memory sphere thing from a dungeon. The point was to get in, get the item, and get out. We had many tools to do the job: a bow with normal arrows and exploding arrows, a nice sword, and a magic wand that could enslave monsters.

The first thing I remember encountering was a locked door. This door was made of wood. Nearby, I saw a big brazier with burning coals. Excited about being able to burn some stuff, I slowly dragged the brazier across the room and set a wooden box on top of it, next to the door. I don’t know why I enjoyed this so much, but I laughed as the box caught on fire and ignited the door, which fell to pieces, allowing me into the room. I felt very smart.

Moving on, I encountered a far-away chest surrounded by water. The chest was too high to climb to from the water, but there was a rope hanging nearby that I could use to Tarzan swing over to the chest. It totally worked: I got my treasure and then struggled for a while with climbing back onto the rope.

I next entered a room with no exit, but with a giant lever in the middle. Expecting a trap, I reluctantly went ahead and flipped the lever and… nothing happened. I couldn’t actually tell if it did anything. But upon looking closely at the wall, I saw a pipe running from the lever. I followed it along the wall and noticed it went up to a higher area I had just came from. So I backtracked, and when I got there I saw a hidden door had open. This organic, logical world design was my favorite part of the demo. I hope they keep this level of detail into the later parts of the game.

Continuing down, I came across skeletons. Unlike me and my demonstrated door-burning genius, they were not very smart. I hammered on them with my sword for a while without much effect. A developer took pity on me and explained holding down the sword attack button would perform a heavy attack. That worked much better and the skeletons went down in 1-2 hits.

In theory this is where I would start coming up with creative ways to kill the skeletons, but, unfortunately, the enemy AI at this point was rather brain dead. The developers acknowledged this. They’ve recently finished making most of the game and are now going back to work on the combat system, start squashing bugs, and adding polish. Having no qualms about taking advantage of the situation, I quickly dispatched the rest of the skeletons in two hits and continued my quest for the memory sphere.

That’s when I found a room full of traps: giant rotating saws that I had to time to move between, pits filled with spikes that instantly killed me, and more rope swinging. After three or four deaths down there, I finally came through to the other side… and found the whole thing was basically a short cut to avoid the skeletons I had already killed. Oh well. At least I knew the memory sphere wasn’t down there.

I pushed onward into the rooms the skeletons were guarding. I had to burn another door and learned that it’s a bit intimidating to watch a skeleton punching his way through a burning door to come kill you. Undeterred, I killed many more skeletons and searched several rooms until the memory sphere was safely in my hands.

Taking my prize, the disembodied narrator (who is apparently named Cabirus) told me I could take a portal to leave this area and end the mission. There was only one problem. The area with the skeletons and the memory sphere was kind of at the bottom of a cliff I sort of just jumped down. And the portal, of course, was back up where I came from. I tried to navigate some paths but none of them quite got me there. So I found a platform with some boxes scattered at its foot and began to try to play Jenga to build some stairs up. It turns out that I apparently suck at Jenga. Alas, that’s when time ran out on my demo and I had to abandon my quest. So close!

All in all the game feels like it has a huge potential for being a really fun sandbox of puzzle solving and playing with your enemies and the environment. The lack of a real combat system and troubling navigating, however, is really troubling. All games go through this phase, so it’s just too early to judge. We’ll have to see what Underworld Ascension looks like when Other Side Entertainment decides it’s ready for release.
 

Abhay

Augur
Joined
Aug 12, 2013
Messages
204
Location
India
^^ that's a very good and honest impression. I am absolutely positive that this game is going to be an amazing experience. All it needs is polishing and stuff. That last thing I want is a buggy game and they should take as much time they want to release a fantastic product to the backers and those old school gamers who have high expectations from this game.
I loved Arx Fatalis and this is the only game that is close to satusfying that itch of another underworld/arx experience.
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
Another 'is this really a game coming out in September?' preview: http://www.gamerassaultweekly.com/2018/06/underworld-e3-2018-han/

[...]

Combat is what you would expect. Swordplay is responsive and archery requires proper aiming. However, the lack of audio impact made determining whether my hit landed harder, relying on more if the enemy fell to the ground and stopped moving.

Spells were fickle. I attempted to use a blind spell multiple times and had a hard time determining if it did anything. A specialized summoner who could revive fallen enemies, seen in the image above, was immortal and made things much harder. I was told that the enemy wasn’t fully finished and couldn’t be harmed. With such a powerful enemy it may have been prudent to remove it from the build.

I was encouraged to try different methods such as slicing open doors, wall running, and other movement feats. However, the movement felt floaty and I found simply running and dodging much more effective. Since enemies tended to give up finding me quickly my personal traps, while available, were unnecessary.

From the built, I played Underworld Ascendant looks like it needs a lot more work. It shows a lot of promise base of what the developer stated but what I played was different. I thought to myself, “this could be great with another year of work” but considering the release date of September 2018, it seems unlikely everything I was told will be finished. Perhaps the OtherSide has some surprising material locked away. For now Underworld Ascendant shows a lot of promise.
 

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