Otherside Entertainment has released its first full trailer for the Ultima Underworld successor, Underworld Ascendant, since the sizzle reel released for PAX South in January. The new trailer offers a look at gameplay and areas that players will be able to explore, including dungeons, enemies, traps, and magic. “The Stygian Abyss, where life should not exist,” the trailer says. “Without your help, it won’t much longer. In this deadly environment, more than survival is required. To resist requires ingenious thinking and bold measure.” In the otherworldly RPG, players will explore, evolve, and reshape the powers that be in the Abyss.
“Underworld Ascendant is very heavily about player choice,” said game director Joe Fielder. “One of the best things about the improvisation engine to me is the replay ability, the idea that I can come back to a level and have a widely different experience with different quests, goals, and different creatures that I’m fighting.”
Developer Otherside also released a dev diary that delved farther into Underworld Ascendant’s creation, and what gameplay was designed to look like for players. “What we’re doing with Underworld Ascendant incorporates some of what we like best about our favorite computer roleplaying games, but also tries to incorporate some of the field that we get out of tabletop gaming,” added lead designer Tim Stellmach. “You have the space in which to solve problems in ways that we might not have even foreseen. We’ve seen this, where people come up with solutions to challenges that we are surprised by. There’s nothing we like better than to be surprised by the way that our players solve a problem that we pose them.”
Underworld Ascendant is expected to release in the second half of 2018 for PC, Mac, and Linux. You can check out Otherside’s full dev diary below.