00:00In 1990, Paul Neurath co-foundedte Looking Glass Studios,
00:06a team of developers who revolutionized role-playing games.
00:10They brought labyrinthine worlds to life,
00:12pitted players against a malevolent AI,
00:16and taught us that the shadows provide an alternative to violence.
00:20Paul went on to found Other Side Entertainment,
00:23and now, in 2018, is carrying the soul of Looking Glass forward.
00:29Into the Underworld.
00:33One of the defining characteristics of games from Looking Glass,
00:37and all the games that were influenced by Looking Glass's games,
00:40is that they don't depend on scripted sequences to drive player experience.
00:46The first game that we developed was Ultima Underworld,
00:49a groundbreaking fantasy role-playing game that came out in 1992.
00:54So we really created this whole new genre of immersive gameplay,
00:58combined with this emergent, improvisational element
01:03that empowered the player to, you know, create their own story with this interactive medium.
01:09A lot of modern adventure games have gone in the direction of really trying to script tighter and tighter moments,
01:15so that everything is very carefully crafted.
01:17Most other games, even to this day, actually rely on designers crafting clever puzzles,
01:23even puzzles that have multiple solutions at times.
01:26And that's great, but it's not what we first came to love in our pen-and-paper RPGs,
01:32where we sit around the table and we just kind of improvise with our DMs.
01:36What I'm really excited about is that the team working on this reboot of Underworld,
01:40they have ambitions to advance the state-of-the-art as much as Underworld did back in the day.
01:46You have your own ideas about the kind of experience that you want to have,
01:49and our goal is to allow you to do that,
01:54to put together a system where all of you,
01:56with all your different answers to the questions, are all right.
01:59This year, in Underworld Ascendant,
02:03the Stygian Abyss is yours to explore.
02:07How you do it, well, that's up to you.
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