I should have gotten this up sooner, but…OtherSide Entertainment posted another update to the Underworld Ascendant Kickstarter page last Friday (they’ve been pretty consistent about Friday updates, no doubt taking a cue from Portalarium in that respect). In it, designer Tim Stellmach discusses some of their plans for the magic system in the game:

As longtime fans will know, players chose spells in Underworld 1 & 2 by selecting sequences of collectible rune stones. One such sequence could be prepared at a time, indicating a spell that could then be cast repeatedly (while the character’s mana held out). Each rune was associated with a meaning such as “light” or “harm,” and the rune formulas for different spells had a kind of logic based on those meanings. This helped it to feel that certain laws of magic underlay the system, and players could even guess a few undocumented spells based on rune meanings.

…

…changes in our approach to magic reflect the wider context of what we’ve learned about character progression in our years of development experience. The skill and progression systems in the 90’s took a lot of cues from pen-and-paper RPGs that don’t necessarily work as well through the veil of automation. As a simple example, maybe you have to make a die roll to successfully cast a spell in a tabletop game. You can see all the die rolls, because you’re the one rolling. But on a PC, if you try to cast a spell and it doesn’t work, the veil of automation can make that failed die roll hard to tell from a lost mouse click. So in Underworld Ascendant, the whole character skill system will be getting an overhaul to reflect the last 25 years’ advancement in user experience, and the magic system is no exception.

More fundamentally, we’d like to capitalize on the strong concept of the game’s rune language. As evocative as it was in the original Underworld games, players were ultimately still limited to a set of pre-authored spells. In Underworld Ascendant, we’ll be experimenting with using the runes as a true language for varying different aspects of players’ spells procedurally. For example, some Underworld spells had more powerful versions tagged with the “Vas” rune. But what if you could change the power level of any spell? Maybe change the way a spell is delivered to its target, or how it draws its mana? We have a number of ideas to try out, and these kinds of tests are a great opportunity afforded to us by our early access backers.

I’d personally love to see a magic system, based on the runes, that was limited only by the creativity of players in concocting runestone combinations. Wouldn’t it be awesome if each runestone either caused a specific effect or applied a specific modifier, and the game computed the combined effect of a runic sequence in real-time when a spell was prepared?

Anyhow, OtherSide are also quite close to reaching their next crowdfunding stretch goal, which is the addition of the Necropolis area to the Abyss.

Deep in the eldritch darkness of the Stygian Abyss lies the foreboding Necropolis of the Ancients. Teaming with the restless dead and wandering spirits of a long-forgotten people who once lived and thrived in the Underworld, these catacombs pulsate with malevolent intent for those who still cling to life.

You can check out some new Necropolis concept art above.

Finally, the team have made a full-time employee out of one of their contractors:

OtherSide is happy to announce that Joe Fielder, who’s been helping shape Underworld Ascendant’s narrative the last few months, has come aboard full-time as Design Director. Joe’s worked as a writer, designer, producer, and creative director on games like BioShock Infinite, BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea, Lost Within, The Black Glove, BOOM BLOX, and the Medal of Honor series. He’ll be helping guide Underworld Ascendant’s player experience (the place where level design, systems design, and narrative all meet), digging deep into the game’s world-building elements, and more.

Is it just me, or does it seem to anyone else as though the dissolution of Irrational Games worked out rather well for the development of Underworld Ascendant?