One key difference between Underworld Ascendant and the titles that spawned is it is that the team is ditching the pen-and-paper RPG mechanics from the original games. "No more rolling dice to see if you get 18 Strength," says Neurath. "With the original games, we felt we needed to keep an anchor in the pen-and-paper games to ensure the games felt suitably familiar to RPG players. Now we're free to design fully for interactive and immersive experiences that can stand on their own."
The game’s Improvisation Engine is fantastically ambitious. The idea, essentially, is to attempt to create a setting where player will be able to approach scenarios in their own way; the thinking behind these improvisational options is to capture the sense of those pen-and-paper D&D sessions, where one’s own wild ideas aren’t limited by what’s been programmed, without the dice. “[The Improvisation Engine] comes from what we learned on games going back to the original Underworlds, through System Shock, Thief, and various team members’ work on more modern games such as BioShock Infinite,” Neurath says. Across these games, he points out, the team has in various shapes and forms experimented with technologies and design approaches that enable players to make clever choices; the Improvisation Engine builds on that experience, and then nudges it forward with some new ideas. “Our goal is to set a new high water mark with player choice, and sandbox, emergent gameplay.”
