00:00Peggy Diciotto
00:30We've introduced and pioneered some new game design, new technologies.
00:34And that's really the spirit that we're carrying forward with OtherSide
00:38to continue to innovate and push forward these genres.
00:41We've spent the last few years really assembling this indie dream team of developers.
00:48Many of them former Looking Glass, former Irrational, like myself.
00:53It's a small, scrappy indie team, and we're tackling a genre that hundreds of people generally work on.
01:02We're able to do that because of the talent and the experience of the team.
01:06Underworld's a fantasy game set in a classic high fantasy setting,
01:11the Stygian Abyss, which is a vast volcano.
01:16And so you explore in a dungeon-crawler-like way the Underworld,
01:20but in a first-person, very immediate feel.
01:23The term that we use most often to describe the kind of game is an immersive simulation.
01:28An immersive simulation is a game that removes as many barriers to belief that you're in an alternate world as
01:35possible.
01:36The idea is to create systems and rules that players can exploit however they want,
01:43to interrupt the experience as little as possible and in as unobtrusive ways as possible.
01:49We really wanted to create a gameplay where if you yourself were this fantasy character in the Stygian Abyss,
02:01the things you might creatively come up with to try to solve challenges would work.
02:06The game is not about, you know, trying to optimize and do the best possible playthrough.
02:13You get rewarded for trying different solutions and often coming back to, say, a quest or the same location
02:18and saying, well, last time I just fought my way through.
02:23There's, you know, ten other ways, you know, fifty other ways I could have approached it.
02:27Let me try some different things out.
02:28Open world games tend to simulate a world that's an inch deep and miles wide.
02:37If you scratch just below the surface of the simulation, you don't find much, frankly.
02:42In games like Underworld Ascendant, we're doing something different.
02:45We're simulating a world that's an inch wide and miles deep,
02:50where within the confines of a smaller world, you interact with a much deeper simulation.
02:56Every time you come into an environment, things will be markedly different.
03:00Different challenges, different opportunities.
03:03Sometimes when you come in, you'll see a deep slug, a useful deep slug,
03:07which has a flammable trail.
03:10Another time you'll come in and you'll have a green lizard man ally.
03:14The environment's also changing as far as movement options.
03:17Sometimes you'll come in and the outcast tribe has set up platforms in certain areas
03:22and other times they'll be torn down.
03:24So we're focused more around jump in, have a fairly intensive session where you can do a quest.
03:33And then if you want to do another quest and another quest, you can continue to do that.
03:36There's a lot more sort of replay and coming back and revisiting things.
03:39Fans will also find that they're immersed in a world that is somewhat familiar.
03:45Now, non-fans are not going to have to have knowledge of those earlier games.
03:50But for people who do know those earlier games, there's going to be a little thrill of recognition here and
03:57there that I think they'll really enjoy.
04:00Not only one of our main characters, Cobyrus, who is voiced by Steven Russell, who is Garrett in Thief, is
04:11a major character from the series backstory.
04:14There are also some ties that are a little deeper and a little harder to find.
04:19The spirit of the original Underworld was really to innovate and try something new that other people hadn't been doing.
04:28That's really the legacy of those games more than the specifics of what the actual game did or the actual
04:34specific features or content.
04:37And so to me, that's the legacy that we're respecting, honoring the most is continuing to innovate, see where we
04:46can move this genre forward.
04:47It's a lot of fun.
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