Underworld Ascendant Updates #1-4, $347,121 and Counting

Since the Kickstarter campaign launched, four updates have been released for Underworld Ascendant, OtherSide Entertainment’s Ultima Underworld successor. Of all the four updates released so far (links: 1, 2, 3, 4) the most interesting by far is the latest, given it presents some of the members of the team working on the title. An excerpt on the art team:

Robb Waters worked with our team at LookingGlass in the 1990’s, doing some of the most memorable concept art for the System Shock games (including SHODAN), as well as for Thief (including the main character Garrett.) More recently Robb did a bunch of the concept art for BioShock and BioShock Infinite, games which won awards for their visual style

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Shaddy Safadi, art director of his own concept studio One Pixel Brush, has been behind some of most stylish game art coming out in recent years, including for Uncharted 2, BioShock Infinite, Last of Us, and PlanetSide 2.

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Getting a superb look for a game is more than just fancy rendering and high-end hardware. Great concept art can inspire more than mere pixels can. We are still refining the visual style for the game, it’s an iterative process, but we are off and running towards reaching a high bar. The concept artists are keeping notes and works-in-progress. This will all get rolled into a special Concept Art Portfolio. All Backers who pledge at the Adventurer tier or higher will get a digital copy for free.

It doesn’t look like this Kickstarter campaign will have any problem meeting its funding goal, though I suspect it might not manage to reach all of its stretch goals. Either way, we’ll find out in 25 days.