'Ultima Underworld' could resurface with your help
Before The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim there was Ultima Underworld, and with your help, a sequel to the highly influential role-playing game could happen. It's called Underworld Ascendant, and perhaps most importantly, the development team is comprised of former Looking Glass Studios employees who worked on the original -- including Paul Neurath and Warren Spector. The studio didn't get rights to the Ultima name, but everything else from the series is theirs to use.
The fantasy RPG takes place entirely underground, as the name implies, but the team promises everything from jade dwarven halls, arid plains, ice caverns and forests rife with gigantic mushrooms will help it from feeling too claustrophobic. How you interact with the factions that inhabit those realms can change the landscape a bit, too. One example OtherSide gives is flooding the aforementioned plains could curry favor with the fungal race known as Shamblers, because it'll allow them to expand their territory. I'd hope that there's a reaction involved with that choice, too.
The pitch video embedded below also shows off a ton of crazy stuff you'll find spelunking through the Stygian Abyss. You know, like a gigantic multi-armed creature inhabiting a subterranean body of water that's actively trying to murder you. Naturally, there are giant spiders to fend off, but apparently you can charm them into helping you get across tricky spots as well. In fact, Neurath tells PC Gamer that there's "almost always" a nonviolent solution for enemy encounters.
Twenty bucks is all it takes to get an early copy of the PC game should the campaign meet its $600,000 Kickstarter goal (as of this writing it's almost half-funded on its first day), but there are a ton of options should you feel a little more generous. For example, a $1,000 pledge will net you a digital version of every game OtherSide releases for the next decade. The team plans to bring backers into the development process by having them vote on specific areas of design (the art style for the fungus people is up to you for the moment), too. There are stretch goals for co-op play and new game-world areas as well. If I'm being honest, it all sounds incredibly ambitious. Maybe too ambitious? We'll have to wait and see. If you're interested in bringing Ultima back, though, hit the source link below.
