Underworld Ascendant

Honestly, the game already got delayed twice. I can live with a (rather justified) third one.

edited 1st Jun '18 5:22:06 PM by UltraWanker

That's very fair, I think—I'd much rather it was late than poorly done.

Yeah, especially since this game will ultimately decide how much faith people will have on System Shock 3. I guess Nightdive could take over the development in the worst case scenario, but they're not exactly above scrunity thanks to certain screwups during the remake development.

Remind me: is System Shock 3 being built by the same team? I forget whether they share members.

At the least System Shock has Warren Spector, who has a pretty impressive record in game development, I believe.

That said, I can see people simply associating the games with the studio, and problems with one game therefore reflecting poorly on the other—which seems like a pity, to my mind. :/

Based on a forum-posting, it seems that the devs are acknowledging the critique, and taking it on board.

Two perhaps-mitigating factors:

They note that the version shown at E3 was simplified, due to the rather limited time that members of the press had in which to play (fifteen minutes instead of the "up to an hour" available at PAX). While it may have helped press members to see more in so short a time, it may also have backfired in terms of the impression given.

As to the animations, I saw another quote on that forum (see the quote-box at the bottom of the post) indicating that they've been adding in more animations to go along with their new animation system. Perhaps some of these will go towards adding impact to some of the interactions.

If I'm not much mistaken, the backer alpha is due out in a few days. Perhaps that will give us a more detailed look at the game, and a better impression—one way or the other.

(I'm quite eager to see a Let's Play of the alpha, especially now that there's more reason for qualms.)

None of this addresses the spell-effects, of course. I fear that those may be here to stay. ^^;

So, the backer alpha is out—and reactions are rather mixed, it seems: some like what they see, while others very much do not.

I do get the feeling that some of the more strongly-negative reactions take the demo to be representative of the final game—in particular in what features it has, or more to the point, lacks. Specifically, the demo is rather linear, and has no RPG or social elements present.

If I'm not much mistaken, Otherside have indicated, that in these the demo is not representative of the final game: As to the missing elements, they have stated that further elements are to be shown soon. As to the linearity, the non-tutorial level is stated to come from stripping out a relatively-polished section of a less-linear level.

There are other issues present: the physics is rather touchy, the AI is a little dodgy, and the spells perhaps unreliable, for three of the perhaps-larger ones.

Otherside has stated that they're taking note of the feedback being given.

Worry has been raised regarding the amount of time available for changes and fixes in the few months between here and September. Counter to that, I believe that I've seen it stated (by Otherside; possibly someone else, too) that other games of this sort have come together late in development; I think that either Thief or System Shock 2 were mentioned. (Possibly both.)

Speaking for myself, I remain anxious, but hopeful. Without seeing internal builds, or how the development team is progressing, I feel that it's hard to say how feasible September is, or what the state of systems not yet shown might be.

So... For now, I continue to wait and see. I do remain excited for the game.

Thus far I've only seen two videos of the demo, one from Otherside themselves:

Otherside staff playing it: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/278312219

Someone else playing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfmWfLYHPic

So the game came out yesterday... to very little fanfare. Not much in terms of reviews, and the main criticism so far is the game being a big Obvious Beta.

What kind of issues we talking about?

Besides the obvious ones, the game's AI and save system appear to be completely broken. One odd case in particular is the Russian translation missing half the letters.

My understanding (as of some time ago, at least) was that there wasn't going to be in-level saving, only saving at the central hub—although I think that there was also talk of changing that. What did they end up going with, and what's broken, if I may ask?

I'm really hoping to see a stream or two of this, and perhaps a video review or two, to get an idea of whether to play it: I'm really excited about it, and it's looked really good in the pre-release videos that I've seen, but (as is generally the case) I want to get a more-solid impression of how it's turned out.

It's a pity to hear about the bugs—hopefully they'll be patched up! (For myself specifically, I'm not too worried about the bugs as long as they are patched: I'm not in a good position to get the game right now anyway, I'm afraid.)

[edit] According to the Underworld Ascendant Twitter account, as of about twenty-one hours before the time of writing this, Underworld Ascendant was "[the] #1 Global Top Seller and #1 Streaming game on Steam". If so, then it's a good start for the game, at least!

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Nov 16th 2018 at 6:13:23 PM

It only really stayed there for an hour, which isn't saying much. Lack of coverage around the period didn't help. Is this gonna be like Shroud of the Avatar all over again where everyone forgets about it?

Edited by UltraWanker on Nov 16th 2018 at 8:50:21 AM

I hope not, and I'm sorry to read that it dropped from that ranking so quickly. :/

I'm really not sure that they've done a great job in marketing this game, I fear. :/

(But then, perhaps they haven't had the resources with which to do so.)

Yeah the steam reviews are... pretty bad. Even a lot of the positive ones basically come with giant asterisks.

Oof, that's unpleasant to read! Well, we'll see how things shape up in the coming months, I suppose...

Did the developers forget to send people review copies or something? As of writing there is practically none at Metacritic, and the only thing really floating about is memes about bugs.

Not even a year in and this game's already preparing the steps of falling into obscurity.

Edited by UltraWanker on Nov 20th 2018 at 4:11:29 AM

Perhaps they intend to do so once they've released some patches? It is odd. o_0

I've seen a few streams go up, including one that was sponsored by them, but nothing major, that I recall. I think that the previous Co-Optional Podcast that was uploaded onto You Tube mentioned a desire to talk about the game, so perhaps the next one will. (Or has; I'm not sure of when the streams go out, since I watch the uploaded VO Ds.)

According to a recent tweet, they're working on a hot-fix that sounds like it's intended to contain some fairly major fixes and tweaks, including bug-fixes and gameplay improvements (they mention making it easier to get out of water). They're also apparently "working on speccing and scoping" a much more significant update, which might including things like the save-game system and AI.

Their twitter also recently tweeted at least one article that's been written about the game, by Game Informer—link here.

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Nov 20th 2018 at 6:45:18 PM

Review from PC Gamer came in, and the reviewer ain't impressed.

Edited by UltraWanker on Nov 21st 2018 at 5:27:46 AM

Welp, that sound awful.

Ouch! That is pretty rough! :/

The bugs do seem to be a pretty major issue—I do hope that they manage to patch those out. Similarly, here's hoping that they manage to implement a less troublesome save-game system.

On a few points I feel that the game simply doesn't match the reviewer's taste: for example, my understanding is that the look of things like walls is intentionally artificial, meant to resemble table-top models. Of course, it's possible that they haven't conveyed it particularly well! Similarly, the idea of piecing the story together from scattered texts actually sounds rather neat to me—although again, it may be that it's been poorly implemented.

It still is really a pity that the factions aren't more directly present, and that there's no significant NPC-interaction (if I have it correctly). :/

Even the gameplay described in steam reviews seems meh. Seems a lot of the vaunted "Environmental puzzles" are "Stack crates" or "set crates on fire" and that's it.

Yeah, that would be disappointing, if accurate. :/

I think that I've seen at least some praise for the core gameplay, at least—although I'll confess that I don't seem to have a good source to hand.

Hmm... I wonder whether the problem with the crates isn't that they're provide the only traversal solutions, but rather that they're too common, and thus provide ubiquitous, convenient, and obvious solutions.

I recall that I found something similar in a game that I'm working on: such objects can all too easily trivialise traversal elements that are intended to be challenging.

In other words, I'm wondering whether the problem being described isn't less a game-mechanic issue than a level-design one.

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Nov 21st 2018 at 10:18:00 PM