14 DAY TRIAL // Paul Neurath, the founder of Looking Glass, has minted a brand-new studio in Boston and is looking to create a spiritual successor to the Ultima Underworld games, titled Underworld Ascension.
Ultima Underworld was the alternative to Wolfenstein 3D for lovers of spell-slinging and orc-slaying, offering gamers the chance to wander its dark halls and explore the woes of various NPC communities from the first-person perspective, back in 1992.
"As producer on the original Ultima Underworld games, I'll never forget the first time I saw a working prototype of the game. I felt as if the world had just changed. As the first fully-textured, real-time, first-person game, Underworld paved the way for every other first-person game that followed," says Warren Spector regarding Paul Neurath's work.
The game focused more on depth of interaction than on twitchy, fast-paced combat, although it also featured a ton of that, and is the precursor of modern immersive first-person adventures such as Dishonored, Deus Ex or BioShock.
Now, Paul Neurath has founded OtherSide Entertainment in order to deliver a modern dungeon crawling role-playing game experience, in the form of Underworld Ascension.
"With Underworld Ascension, we are excited to be bringing back the Underworld franchise, making it more vital than ever before," Neurath says in the official announcement on the company website.
"Our team include some of the folks who created the original franchise. When we made the original we looked to redefine the fantasy RPG genre. With the reboot we're going right back to innovating, and our goal is to make the franchise more vital than ever," the blurb on the website states.
It's an excitement announcement, as Ultima Underworld has left its mark on an entire generation of gamers, and hopefully some of the innovators of the role-playing genre will be able to pull off a truly remarkable game that doesn't just bank on nostalgia.
Walking through the dimly lit underground halls, exploring every nook and cranny, and discovering various communities of cave-dwelling NPCs create an experience that many long-standing fans of the fantasy role-playing genre regard as a very fond memory, an experience that further ingrained their preference for immersive and rich experiences.
OtherSide Entertainment has promised to reveal more during the following months, so we'll be keeping our eyes open and come back with the juicy scoop regarding the reinvented Underworld game as soon as new information becomes available.