Underworld Ascension headed to PC from Thief, System Shock studio co-founder

OtherSide Entertainment is resurrecting the Underworld series of dungeon crawling role-playing games with Underworld Ascension, the newly formed studio revealed today.

Paul Neurath, a veteran of games like Ultima Underworld and the former co-founder of System Shock and Thief developer Looking Glass Studios, founded the independent development studio, which acquired the Underworld brand and is looking to hire developers.

“With Underworld Ascension, we are excited to be bringing back the Underworld franchise, making it more vital than ever before," Neurath said.

Developer Blue Sky Productions' Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss was released in 1992. Neurath served as the game's designer, while Richard Garriott directed and Warren Spector produced the RPG. OtherSide's Underworld game is headed to PC at an unannounced date.

"As producer on the original Ultima Underworld games, I'll never forget the first time I saw a working prototype of the game — I felt as if the world had just changed," Warren Spector said. "As the first fully-textured, real-time, first-person game, Underworld paved the way for every other first-person game that followed. If that doesn't qualify as 'changing the world,' I don't know what does!"