Descent to Undermountain I Retro Reviews
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- Опубліковано 9 лип 2024
- A retrospective review of Interplay's infamous 1997 "360 3D" dungeon crawler, considered by some to be the worst CRPG ever made. Covers the background to the game's development, the critical response from fans and the press, its relationship to the Forgotten Realms licence, and whether it really deserves its bad reputation. Timestamps are below for convenience. Sorry for the slightly lower quality audio, I had to buy a new microphone for the noisy new apartment but I haven't set everything up properly yet. Next video will be Myth 2: Soulblighter. Enjoy!
00:00 Opening
01:43 Part 1: Introduction and Overview
07:15 Part 2: Behind the Scenes
31:53 Part 3: Gameplay
32:16 3.1: Gameplay Basics
44:50 3.2: All Hope Abandon Ye Who Enter Here
51:09 3.3: Gameplay Analysis
1:12:22 Part 4: Art and Sound
1:30:15 Part 5: Story and Roleplaying
1:30:29 5.1: Background Lore and Story Overview
1:42:38 5.2: Story and Roleplaying Analysis
1:59:39 Part 6: Final Thoughts and Outro
2:00:06 6.1: Final Thoughts
2:05:08 6.2: Signing Off - Ігри
This channel will blow up eventually. Such obscure and thoroughly researched content.
I'm loving these videos and the sheer quality of them.
Well, we're all doing everything we can to make sure that happens! This channel truly DESERVES to blow up!
agreed. This is top-tier content :)
This channel inspired me to start playing all the infinity engine DnD games all from the beginning since it's been over a decade. 50 hrs into BG1 at the moment, and binging MrEdders123 in between game sessions ; )
That quote from Wesley Clarke at 29:24 is a modern day prophecy💀
😔
Glad I found this channel. Very comfy and easy to sleep to but also enjoyable to rewind and watch.
Watching this makes me want an immersive sim based on the forgotten realms universe. More fleshed out steath and magic mechanics ontop of traditional CRPG character progression
While not an AD&D title, would you consider Arx Fatalis to be a close match for what you’ve in mind?
It's strange kinda... DND is more popular than ever, they're making a movie, maybe we're due for a big budget game. "Immersive sim" is kind of gone as a genre though... as cool as those games are. Lmao I forgot about baldurs gate 3 but I've been waiting for it to leave early access 🙃
If a triple-a first person AD&D game was released today, it would just be Skyrim with a different leveling and magic system.
@@error4159skyrim is so shallow and elder scrolls lore is a pale imitation of the forgotten realms. It could be really good. But good luck getting any company to make anything good now.
@@TehTezMan how do you feel about the full bg3 release?
Always good to see longform coverage of obscure games whether they’re bad or good, I’ve heard of this one a few times but never seen much of it
Same.
This channel is just great. Thanks for introducing me to games I was otherwise unaware of and giving them so much time. This is the kind of thing UA-cam was made for!
I wish this game would get a rerelease somewhere. I love the old, polygonal graphical style and action oriented gameplay.
In its current state I think it would be unethical to expect people to pay for it. Maybe a free release, or as an extra with another Interplay game.
Cozy gaming exemplified. Brilliant video, as always. Appreciated!
Cheers.
This channel deserves more views. Good, well researched and interesting content. Thank you.
What a fantastic channel! The background, interview clips, finding design docs, etc. You do a fantastic job!
16:00 Even in the 90s tacked on multiplayer modes were being forced by Publishers
56:00 Yeah D&D particularly AD&D is not built for a lone player everything you mention about spell caster concessions comes back in Neverwinter Nights
cheers
I mean, I get what you're saying...but the multiplayer mode of DtUM, by concept, wasn't a tacked on feature. They started production with the immediate goal to make use of Descent's excellent multiplayer capabilities and with the understanding that, by nature, RPGs are a social activity. It was the developers' desire to make it a group experience.
Jim Cummings is in so many older D&D games. Such a legend.
VA did Gorion in Baldur's Gate, lol. Love him.
I'm so happy I found this channel! I've only recently gotten into mid-late 90s CPRGs and have totally fallen in love. It can be hard to find in-depth, smart game analysis, particularly for older games.
It’s amazing how quickly games advanced in just a few years
Y'know, I just have to say - I recently found your channel thanks to a mention of your HeroQuest review in WilliamSRD's recent Space Hulk review - and while I was initially skeptical that I could get through whole vids of yours when the runtimes are generally so long, I am just _eating this stuff up!_ Turns out I got no problem cranking the speed up a bit and listening to you while playing games on my other monitor or whatever, and all the work you put into these long-form vids on PC games is just fascinating.
Or in the case of your DeathTrap Dungeon vid, PC and Playstation. I've been slowly checking out your backlog of vids and it's really fantastic stuff, man! And I have no history with any of these - when these came out, I was on the N64 and PSX, or if I DID play PC games (and my PC wasn't great, so probably not... plus I just prefer controllers... but not the old Microsoft Sidewinders, oddly enough), I mostly stuck to action games like Quake, Descent, Jedi Knight and Earthsiege (and lots of magazine demo discs, lol). Learning about all these crpgs and strategy games and adventures and whatnot, as well as... _as much of the history behind them_ you can find and share through research, is just super captivating.
Just had to leave a comment and let you know 😄
Cheers, yeah I really enjoy researching these old games. Archive.org (and CGW Museum) is by far the most useful resource, but a lot of stuff is removed from there so you have to go by hand sifting through old magazines. If you're incredibly lucky one of the devs will reply to an email and share their memories.
Well, I must confess this is going to take me a few views to get through, and you've done a fantastic job! You've taken me back to 1995, and for that I thank you. I made sure to subscribe, can't wait to see what other videos you do.
Thanks to your lovely videos I know what was going on in video games when I was a baby haha. I particularly enjoy your inclusion of contemporaneous reviews! Really good stuff.
I always wondered what the deal was with this game when I was a kid and now I know. You've earned my subscription
Terrific video, as always.
Interplay seemed to have a lot of pull with big name voice actors, even games like Red Asphalt, a clunky combat racer on the PS1 is full of very recognizable voice talent (a very similar list of VA credits to this game). I wonder if this was just indicative of the budget Interplay was willing to spend on the presentation in their games, or if there was a more convenient happenstance that made it more viable. Were the dev studios close by to LA recording studios maybe? I don't know, but it's something I've always appreciated about games published by them anyway.
Yeah I've noticed Interplay had serious pull with the entertainment industry - as early as Stonekeep, for example. I wonder if anyone's asked Fargo or whoever about where that relationship came from.
Awesome context behind the team making the game. It makes your videos really stand out to me. Thank you!
Well thought out and researched, and possibly most important the audio levels are for well. That's a sub from me dawg.
Marvelous and incredibly detailed video, as always. Hoping very much for Torment and Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader reviews in the future. It seems like it's the last couple of games to conclude the Black Isle games in your series.
Torment will hopefully be in 2023. Lionheart I dunno, I only played it a bit and I haven't researched it. It depends on whether there's anything particularly interesting to say about it.
First time catching the channel very informative never heard of this game love how thorough you are with the information you present
Thanks dawg
incredibly underrated channel
cheers!
Hey just found your videos, and I'm really enjoying them. The longer format is so much better for games. Anyway I was just wondering if you could throw all your reviews into a playlist?
To be honest I don't have enough content for that to be worthwhile, but at some point I will definitely try to organize them into Infinity Engine reviews, Dungeon Crawler reviews, Point and Click reviews etc.
Brilliant breakdown of the game, I love in-depth game analysis like this!
On the brown colour palette, it is not a resolution tied issue, but the VGA being limited to 256 colours. To explain; for fast rendering in VGA, those 256 colours are predefined in the game's colour palette. Having dynamic lighting means every base colour in the palette must have dozens and dozens of different shades from bright to dark - and every shade takes one of the 256 colours. This is why DOS era 3D games with immersive dynamic lighting (Quake, Descent to Undermountain, Chasm the Rift etc.) have very limited colour schemes - it's all the shades required to make the lighting to work.
These days limited colour schemes are a choice, but back then they were a necessity.
That's interesting, thanks! I'm not too familiar with early graphics modes - I had to look up things like "EGA" when I first started covering early 90s games :D
The Lands of Lore reference got me off guard but was very nice to see haha
I was waiting months to use it 😁
What a thorough and deep dive into a nearly forgotten game and its place in CRPG history! However those stills of some classic D&D art in Section 5 were a truly great surprise treasure hidden away in this video!
Thanks, they took long enough to find hehe
Such a good video dude, I watch this every few months
That intro was the best commercial this game ever got.
Nice hear a mention of a game's reception in Polish '90 gaming mags. And a game based around aerial combat between dragons and beholders - there's an idea.
Thanks, I'm trying to work in a few references to non-English magazines from now on, as they're very easy to find on archive.org and you can get the general gist of them with DeepL translate :P
@@MrEdders123so cool
Great work. This is my favorite kind of content. Long form deep dive of a game I'm aware of but would never play.
As always a fantastic in-depth review. Great work.
Thanks!
FWIW, I completely my LP of Descent to Undermountain, plus speedran the game completing it in just over five minutes! I did have problems with getting copyright claims on the LP, though.
Also, I'm in some of those screen shots of hostile comments on release that you included. 😁
TSR at the time had some very strict requirements for implementing D&D rules which meant bringing over flaws in those rules that got magnified when they were put into things like real-time systems that weren't suitable to them. Interplay made quite a few games that ran afoul of this.
Fantastic review! :D
I had to come back and check if you had new videos after Meat Puppet hit Gog.
UA-cam just doesn't let me on when my favorite reviewers upload...
I think you have to subscribe AND click on the bell or something. At least that's what other videos say. I personally find those kind of reminders a bit annoying and don't put them in my videos lol
@@MrEdders123 I’ll do what I can! You really go the extra mile with these videos
More than I ever needed to know about DtU. Great video. Thanks!
This was just a random suggestion from youtube. I have now watched all you your videos to date.
Some really really good stuff here!. Was really interesting to learn about this disaster of a game.
How the hell does this channel only have 3.7k subscribers? Amazing content, if niche. Looking forward to your inevitable growth.
I don't have any illusions about the channel becoming a full-time thing - if I can get a few thousand views on really obscure games, I feel like I've contributed something :D
@@MrEdders123 l
Pm
@@MrEdders123 lpl
Lo
i was waiting for a video like this. this game has fascinated me for years. it's a very interesting game for sure. i actually kind of like it in a weird way. i mean sure its aged horribly but out of time and historical context, im not concerned about it being outdated by the time it was released, and can enjoy it for what it is.
It could've been better...I got in contact with some ex-developers but I must've pissed them off with my wall of text emails XD
@@MrEdders123 i imagine alot of them would like to distance themselves from this project as much as possible, which is understandable, but I also think it's a miracle it turned out playable at all given the circumstances
01:17:35 hell yeah, love me a good Lands of Lore joke drop! Also iirc Jennifer Hale was also a credited voice actor for this game? Insane. Anyways, what an excellent review vid!
Cheers! Would like to do a LoL vid one day since it's so accessible.
edit: AFAIK Hale just did combat grunts and stuff for the PC, I don't know who did the unused Drow audio stored on the CD though...
@@MrEdders123 Lands of Lore: Throne of Chaos was our very first RPG! We covered it a loooong time back on our channel and it still holds up pretty well minus a couple quality of life annoyances. Probably time to give it another spin!
Anyhow, definitely glad to see some more smaller channels with similar tastes 😁looking forward to your coming vids!
The best review of this game so far. Make sur you read the TCRF on this game oh and try watching the credits from the menu from an unpatched game.
Yeah that was where I found out about the weird credits conversation in 1.0. Luckily I found an original retail CD, though I think TCRF host those audio files anyway.
Watching this again because I fell asleep last night without meaning to. Almost done with it, you did a really good job on this video. Please do more (lesser known) first-person dungeon crawlers, but even if you don't, I subscribed and am excited to watch your previous videos and see what you do in the future.
I will definitely do more dungeon crawlers in the future, especially more accessible ones.
"...PC Power suggested that the game heralded a worrying trend of developers releasing broken retail games on the assumption they could simply patch them over internet later on..."
😶
...Oh? And it was only year 1997😁
29:30 had me laughing out loud "a worrying trend of developers releasing broken retail games they later hope to patch"
JFC 34:30 i think i'd return the game for the portraits alone
Worries that devs would release broken games assuming they could just patch them? Whew, good thing that never became an industry norm.
Another amazing video and insight into a classic CRPG, one that I sadly didn't play. I kind of want to, even after realizing what a bug-infested mess it is
I didn't know this game's backstory before, all I knew was it got bad reviews from back in the day, but I had NO idea of the level of insanity behind it. What made Interplay think that using Descent's 360 engine was a good idea for a first-person perspective RPG game? Wow, this is like the Star Citizen / Crytek fiasco, only 20 years prior... and to think that THIS could've ruined the Fallout/Baldur's Gate CRPG renaissance is truly unsettling.
Maybe do Menzoberranzan next... or those two Dark Sun games?
I'll probably cover all the DreamForge Intertainment/Interactive games eventually.
Dark Sun I'm not sure, seems like better channels than mine have covered them
The original purpose of the engine is not the problem in this. There have been a good number of engines that were reused for different genres.
What has probably been the bigger obstacle was an eventual lack of research before starting development. I assume there was a lack of communication between the people who came up with the idea to reuse the engine and the actual coders who wrote it.
Love these videos. Undermountain is one of my favourite D&D settings, though never played this game. “Spellfire” by Clyde Caldwell is one of my favourite pieces of D&D art. Although the D&D art of the green horned face portal (1:35:18) is from Gary Gygax’s legendary module Tomb of Horrors, not Undermountain
It was a bit of a pain to find the right images, especially keeping the art style consistent. I don't know why I did such an in-depth background lore thing when I'm probably covering Eye of the Beholder one day too lol
Imagine a remake of this game, without any bugs and with improvements on top of that. A finished version as the game should have been.
This is such a comfy video :3
I like your Yorkshire accent. It fills my head with visions of sugar plum pudding.
...
Never heard of this game before (and there are German tests in the video, which I've never seen before or I simply forgot them - which is also quite possible) and I'm a huge Forgotten Realms Geek. Again an really interesting review and documentary about the making of.
It's definitely been buried - I got into PC Gaming around 1997-ish and I don't think I even heard about this game until decades later lol
Fantastic review and deep dive. I love anvil of dawn and was wondering if there are games like it modern or classic
Try DreamForge's earlier titles - menzo and the ravenloft series (not exactly single-character, but close).
Really hope we get a version of this someday. Maybe a bit polished like with the re release of blade of darkness. Somehow i would really like to play it. Sounds weird but i like its graphics, artworks and soundtrack
Watching the initial footage of this video, I actually expected this game to be good. It looks fast-paced and action packed, and the graphics are maybe hitting some nostalgia buttons for me but I think they look fine. So it's too bad that it went through development hell and turned out so full of glitches. Really sounds like the coders pulled some straight-up magic to get it working at all. Grafting on gravity and combat just... wow. What a load of work, it's tragic. If only the team had been given a decent engine and adequate time, I think this could've been something really special.
I had to work really hard to find footage that not only matched, but also didn't show really obvious glitches, that's why it doesn't look so bad in the opening lol. To be honest the "behind the scenes" wasn't as complete as I hoped it might be, but I wasn't able to get any of the ex-staff to talk to me about it.
Considering the depth and breadth of coverage of Interplay’s games from this period now on YT (this channel likely providing some of the most depth), I find it surprising that Brian Fargo has largely managed to swerve criticism of his leadership of the company (for example, had never heard about their deal with AOL for the online service, but damn if that isn’t so emblematic of the late 90s lol). Anyways, keep up the great work!
My impression is that despite criticisms, Fargo seems to be generally well liked. Chris Avellone said that when he left, he took the "soul" out of Interplay's upper management (although he may have been more critical during his "May of Rage" on RPG Codex, I dunno). Tim Cain also gave Fargo credit long after he (Cain) had left Interplay. Fargo also seems have been genuinely passionate about some Interplay projects. At worst, people seem to think he made some bad decisions, rather than being unethical or unpleasant, which is probably the best you can hope for as a boss.
edit: Although I should add, Steve Jackson might disagree...but that's another story :P
@@MrEdders123 yeah from the brief history provided on his Wiki entry, it looks like Interplay fell prey to the late 90s mania of merger/acquisitions with strange companies (ie Sierra and it’s handful of parent companies that eventually ran it into the ground) so I imagine the number of c-suite execs at Interplay increased significantly and probably had something to do with a lot of the ill-informed decisions of the company’s later years. Well it appears I misremembered Fargo being a guest on Soren Anderson’s “Designer Notes” podcast (it was Rob Pardo of Blizzard), but there is a good interview with Avellone on the podcast from 2016; plus Westwood’s Louis Castle (among many others). Also forgot Digital Antiquarian wrote a couple posts on Interplay and Fargo back in 2015 (another awesome goldmine for gaming and technology history; highly recommend).
I'm kind of surprised there is no fan made patch out there. I'm not a developer or programmer but it seems like someone could take the 1.3 patch and fix most of the issues it introduces while keeping all the stuff it fixed. Fans did wonders with The Temple of Elemental Evil and the fan patches that fixed that game.
Oh god you just gave me flashbacks to trying to play that unpatched!
Partly a lack of interest (some people really liked ToEE), partly I think ToEE's problems were due to rushed development and features that Troika felt were too difficult to add (certain classes) but the publisher or Wizards forced them to do as part of the contract. Though unfinished, DTU wasn't really rushed, it was just fundamentally unstable due to the engine being used for something it was never meant for. It would take a colossal effort to fix, I imagine.
Fixing issues in engines is not as simple as you make it sound in your statement. For some of the issues you may have to rewrite a lot of the code. In fact, it may be so much that you would be better off just writing a new engine that is more efficiently structured. Patches can't fix everything...not always, I mean.
@@Kijinn as I said I'm not a developer or programmer so I dont know but it still would be nice. Fans have been able to put out some amazing patches with some titles. Im just surprised there's noone out there that would try just fir the challenge.
@@AncientElectronics
The thing is, hundreds of people may have tried and given up, for the reasons I mentioned.
Coding is extremely complex. You can't compare it to any of the other creation processes that we know and can relate to.
If you change any lines in the code to fix something, you might end up either destroying core functionality or creating new and potentially even worse or more numerous bugs. Fixing all of that might take up the same amount of time that was required to create the engine. That would be coding for 6+ hours every day, 5 days a week, for maybe a year or more.
And you'd be doing all that with just the hope that maybe you'll end up with something that works. Cause there's a good chance that maybe it won't work at all.
That's why I said you might be better off restarting from scratch and writing your own engine.
Thanks for the video, excellent work as alwas.
Am a little sad that the nex incoing vid is not another CRPG but I will wait to see it, maybe I find something interesting on that game.
I try to divide the channel into roughly 60% CRPGs, maybe 20% adventure games and 20% other random stuff I find interesting. :D
@@MrEdders123 thats a good way to schedule for your channel.
I know I'm late with my comment but with life and all it took me a bit to pay the right attention to the whole piece and oh my god what a piece this is! I was 18 when this game was released and with my closest friends we were really looking forward to this... At least at the beginning of its development. Thank you SO MUCH for adding so much context to the troubled history of this unfortunate if faulty gem of a game.
Thanks! Would be nice if someone got more info out of the devs about what was happening behind the scenes. I have a suspicion that interpersonal issues might be involved, and considering the fact one of the producers passed away, it's possible the DTU team don't like getting into the topic.
Wow, two videos on this in quite quick succession! William SRD did one on it recently.
Yeah I saw that for the first time like four days ago, just as I was finishing off the story section. I was really pissed haha
Thumbnail/box cover is reused from one of my favorite forgotten realms books as a kid - Spellfire by Ed Greenwood. Those were the days! *edit - just saw fellow geeks also pointed this out in comments.
This is a small thing but I absolutely love the character portraits in this game. Peak 90's comic art
Yeah. I did contact one of the artists and to try to clarify who did what, but wasn't successful unfortunately. Pretty much all the Black Isle/Interplay RPG art crew of the mid-to-late 90s did something for DTU.
Bullseye youtube suggestion - great stuff!
Looks like you got several interesting videos up as well, Ill stay awhile.
oh boy a first person descent-style game wherein you play as a beholder with all of his eye stalk abilities, oh man that would be baller as hell
Man i hope to see you review Arx Fatalis someday, that game is just really special when it comes to magic and world interactivity
I thought about it back when I was getting footage. Not sure though, it gets covered by bigger channels now and again due to its heritage.
I played hordes of the underdark but interested to see this ancient history :)
I don't know why, but it took me darn near 30 years to realize that Descent to Undermountain is not only the name of the game but the project outline.
For some reason, this video didn't turn up in my feed, after a week now it turns up
I dunno, UA-cam is weird about that stuff. So long as people see it eventually lol
These retrospectives hit different
Amazing video.
No beholders in it, but there is an AD&D Dragonlance flight simulator game, named DragonStrike... not to be confused with the AD&D VHS board game, named Dragon Strike. The engine chugs, and the enemy dragons look like origami swans, but the missions are pretty good and it definitely deserves more recognition.
That's interesting, thanks! Maybe I'll have to track it down and do a quick video on it one day haha
@@MrEdders123 A physical copy is probably too much to hope for, but it definitely counts as abandonware, and some roms might even work. The copy protection on the rom I just found isn't accepting answers. There is a cult classic NES port that's actually an entirely different game (since the NES wasn't quite equipped for a 3D flight sim with the dragon and the lance being controlled separately), which muddies the waters even more. The Amiga version has better music, but the lag is insane, compared to the PC. I think that there's a Japanese version, as well, but I don't know what changes were made to work on their computers.
It's not an easy game, especially since there's always a hard counter (Blue dragons, if you're piloting a Bronze, for example). There are technically multiple endings, and I vaguely remember there being alternate missions, if you've upgraded from bronze to silver or gold.
Regarding the reviewers and their "expectations", it's relevant to note that the late 90s were a very different time for video games. That market was still young. Reviewers and even a lot of developers didn't always think in genres...yet. Or at least not to the same degree as now. Two good reasons: 1- There were still a lot of games that had too much originality to pinpoint their genre. And 2- the common lack of any understanding for programming. When an RPG-related game like DtUM didn't have features that you could find in table-top RPGs, most reviewers would call it out for that, due to not knowing the limits of video game design/hardware.
It was also a time when many people still believed that the games of their dreams only didn't get made because developers didn't have the same ingenious ideas as them, rather than to assume that maybe not everything can be programmed with/for the available hardware.
the problem with a game like this is that it better be better than ultima underworld 1/2 at least when released 5 years later. just having polygonal enemies doesn't quite cut it and if you drop rpg elements out of it, that doesn't quite cut it either.
5:35 Secret Service! Didn't expect to see that title in an English speaking video.
5:49 ...or Reset for that matter.
I've been playing Overload a spiritual successor to Descent by some of the original devs. It's still a fun style of game that deserves more love.
diablo immediately came to my mind, then you bring it up half way through the video. oh yeah, you know
ya they got jennifer hale and had her just grunt into the mic lol amazing
I dunno some people would probably pay for that too...
criminally undersubscribed channel. ✊🏻
Love U! Thx =)
Love u 2
The last thing I expected to hear in this review was the term "death metal". Color me amused and entrained.
Ed, you have a good voice for this. Moar! Luv Commie.
Worst enemy in Undermountain is the dirty commie.
Thanks gommie
29:14 we must be going through a loop because i swear i've heard all this before
hehe
good stuff
1:29:58 The tavern track being struck with copyright claims is even more absurd, considering it's a composition no younger than 500 years...
I can't even find any info on the claimant. Might be a very obscure copyright troll or something.
Ah i miss these days. Such an innocent gaming time…
It didn't feel innocent at the time. Especially as a CRPG fan it felt like a dark age.
There were a lot of tiddies n ass 😎
Another great video.
Congratulations on your success!
incredible depth, hex codes for new classes? wild
Despite seeing this and recent William SRD's video about DTU I am intrigued to give it a shot
I don't recommend it but if you do, make sure you make multiple saves and "stagger" them around different stages of your progress. If you upgrade to the 1.3 patch, be aware there are a lot of enemies in the Shadow Thieves Act I area and the Dwarf Act III area. You might have to use the bundled savegame editor to skip those.
*a lot of enemies who crash the game
@@MrEdders123 Thanks for the advice. I love D&D and janky dungeon crawlers like Witchaven so I feel like giving it a shot regardless. Also developing a first person dungeon crawler in my spare time so this is also for "research" :)
@@MrEdders123 Also a really great video once again, Your and GeorgGreat's channel are the unsung heroes of video essayists.
1:17:34 ... Oh god that's probably my favourite line in "Lands of Lore". If I had money to spare, I'd throw some of it at you.
A two hour video on a mess of a game that was ruined by corporate greed and executive stupidity? Frigging aces, man.
So this is the waterdeep gale spoke of.
Absurdly enough but the thumbnail shows images from Descent on mouseover, completely confusing me.
UA-cam randomly grabs stills from within the video in the thumbnails, it probably happened to land on Descent footage ;)
46:45 hahaha. No. We all knew DTU was doomed and it was not because of the launch. It was because they were trying to use a 360 degree zero gravity 3D engine to make a D&D dungeon crawler. Also several starts and stops where people tied to the project left the company, were moved to other things etc…
In the end, the team who finally finished the game was TINY, very very tiny.
We all called the game Descent to Brown.
Oh and don’t blame Q.A. Either, the game had the Q.A team literally in the programmers office ( no joke ) so they could WATCH the issues in real time. Sadly, no one cared and the marketing department convinced Fargo to SHIP IT. Despite everyone knowing it was no where near ready.
Haha, you can't expect Jenks to admit that publically though :) I think the video gives a fair indication of the unfair situation faced by the team(s) over the course of the development. I did get in touch with a couple of former team members but sadly lost contact with them. I think it's one of those situations in which everyone knows what happened (I forgot to mention Bethke, the author of the Game Developer article, was producer at Interplay around that time) but nobody could say it out loud.
I wonder if you will take a look at Anvil of Dawn and those types of obscure games. I know very little about them and the only types of games I’ve played from that era are strategy games and grand strategy.
Yeah I'll cover Anvil of Dawn one day, probably not this year though as I'm trying to clear a backlog of stuff I've been wanting to cover since I started the channel 😁
so.. interplay basically did what EA/Blizzard/Activision/Ubisoft have been doing for years and yet they failed while those modern companies are thriving.
Interplay didn't have sports licences like three of those (though they tried!) :D
It would be interesting to hear your thoughts on the Ravenloft Series.
I will get round to it eventually! Check out the channel Willliam SRD if you haven't already though, he covers all the 90s AD&D games :)
Such a cool idea for a game. You had a great review.
But my god. The actual game itself is such a mess. I had such a terrible time as a kid, I returned it to the library early.
An outstanding video in both quantity and quality. I’m sad that the game isn’t better; the core issue is, as it so often is, the tools. That awful Descent engine was just not made for D&D.
I really like seeing the modern retro RPGs that are like this, but… good! Legend of Grimrock isn’t quite the same but it’s fun.
Anyway. Great video on what I think is the worst game with D&D in the title.
Descent is actually a really good engine for the time...just not for anything else.
This game actually looks pretty damn good for something that came out in '97!
97? No. Pretty substandard for 97. 95? Sure.
@@johnpoole3871 well, I was a ps1 player in '97 so maybe it looks good by console standards? I had a PC at the time but it could not really run 3d games.
It probably would've looked fine with hardware acceleration and better lighting. To be honest I was surprised how negatively contemporary reviews of the graphics were, as it didn't look that bad to me. People at the time were probably more sensitive to subtle differences (probably comparing it directly to Descent 2 and other 98 3d titles), plus I imagine it ran horribly.
I got stone keep for Christmas one year, and to this day I still can't get it to run on anything.
Hm that's weird, the GoG release runs fine last I checked...
@@MrEdders123 I mean the original disk
This video has such a deep subject.
I wish there was more info on DTUM, but whenever Avellone et al are interviewed, people only ask them about Planescape. DTUM and Stonekeep 2 are maybe two of the biggest "unsung" projects that took place at Interplay/Black Isle - Torn is very interesting too but there are actually some in-depth stories on that.
You know, this is the kind of game that is prime remake material.
Under the buggy engine and the crappy rule implementation, there's some genuinely good design hidden there.
I was actually trying to unpack the art assets myself out of curiosity, and wondered about how they could be reused for another game's modding tools (making a mod out of them would technically be a copyright violation, but I doubt anybody would care if it were free). I'm not very good with extracting files and stuff though.