Descent to Undermountain was a Dungeons and Dragons video game released in 1998 by Interplay. Despite coming between Interplay releasing back-to-back classics like Fallout and Balder’s Gate – Descent still manages to go down in history as one of the greatest trash fires of the 90’s.
Maybe they shouldn’t have programmed it on a spaceship combat engine?
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No comment on the inimitable Frank Welker who has defined childhoods for nearly forty years now?
Also, I loved Descent! It came with my father's brand new Win95 work computer…
not gonna lie i want to see Strahd going full ace combat against a dragon after Elite Strahdgerous joke
they also got frank motherfucking megatron welker on this game too??
Did anyone else hear the "get up noise" from Strong Bad Emails in this video?
The development of Stonekeep, also by Interplay, was plagued with problems and difficulties.
Update: finally remembered the name of the worst (official) D&D game from this period! — yes, worse even than Birthright, but you can try that one, too. The name is generically "Blood and Magic", developed by Tachyon Studios for Interplay two years before their Descent adaptation came out. It's an RTS which uses blood forges to something something golems for something something reasons. It is paaainnnfully bad. Not as insane as this game, which to be fair (as I noted earlier) I never got running on my system to experience the full wreckage of. So Descent may be in fact the worst game, but Birthright and B&M were the two worst I played and made me swear off D&D adaptations until Balder's Gate. (Which fortunately was released only a few months after my bug-broken attempt to play Descent.)
Any rpgs with this graphical style that are actually good? Looks kinda cool
"Game journalists were lazy?"
And corrupt. Don't forget corrupt.
I miss Interplay games, they had a fascinating distinguish quality about them and they always tried to push forward in terms of tech
Underdark, Undermountain, why is everything always "Under"?
many
Mrow!
"You may call me Infinite, in the brief moments that remain to you."
11:49 Elite Dangerous uses Frontier's COBRA engine, the same engine used for Planet Coaster, Planet Zoo, and the Jurassic Park Evolution games, you could probably make a perfectly functional DnD game with it.
Dungeons & Dragons: Forgotten Realms: Pool of Radiance: Attack on Myth Drannor is one of my favorate games.
The engine you use matters less than good art direction and good game design. I think the biggest fault of this game was its bad timing along with a rushed production.
While this game heavy on the color brown, its has way more consistent art direction than Doom did with its random wall textures that lack any sensible direction…. Oh right Doom is supposed to be "hell" and the maps are not supposed to make sense lol.
At least in Undermountain the map layout and aesthetics make sense. To its credit it has much higher quality textures than the non existent textures on N64 games of that specfic time.
Yes its a bad game but there is way too much focus on blaming the engine for its issues…
I asked for this game for Christmas and got it at release. I couldn't even figure out the controls or how to move. So I just returned it.
1998? That is the same year Half-Life came out.
I love how they couldn’t decide whether the player character in the last cutscene would be left handed or right handed so they just switched which hand was holding the sword every time they cut back to him. 😂
Me as Me watching this video and having a good time.
Then the Hex Girls clip happens.
1.5 hours later
Me as DM of a Shadowrun group still scribbling down notes about a run in wich my players have to find the lost last unpublished single of a goth band that broke up years ago and has a dedicated fanclub…
Thanks ^^
You somehow skipped over Frank Welker! The voice of Totoro and Megatron, as well as most of the characters of Gen 1 Transformers!
"Haha. You got carpal tunnel!"
Seriously had me giggling with that one.
I wish Square Enix would make a D&D game in the style of their tactical games like tactics ogre or final fantasy tactics. that would be a great formula.
If you think the creation of this game was bad you should check out how the 3DO port of Doom was made. It is so painfully bad that it's a miracle they even had a game to release.
Lots of people love secrets in games. Doom was half running into walls searching for hidden areas. So were many other games.
These characters aren't sprites but actual 3d models. Very low poly, that's why it looks so bad, at the time it was better to rely on sprites
Descent to Undermountain.. OoOOOOooOH. I get it.
Speaking of the voice actors I saw Frank Megatron Welker on the list and I wonder what he did in the game.
14:37–14:44 Welcome to the Upside Down, William the Wise.🙃
Sorry, I have to Disagree heavily. Aside from Descent beein more Advanved than Doom, and not beeing a Flight-Simulator, making a Role-Playing Game on a Game Engine from a Frist Person shooter is perfectly sound. The Point is Game-Engine is not Genre. A lot of Genre-Defining stuff like intreface an combat-mechanic has nothing to do with the Engine. Any other 3D-Engine would be no more suitable in that aspect.
Also Aside from obviously beeing published by Iterplay, Descent has a lot of unique features:
*Fully 3D-Engine (Quake-Style), and Sector-Based Space-subdivision (Duke-3D-Style). No other Game had this combinatination.
*Is there any impossible Geometry, random map generation or Geo-Modding ? If yes, this wouldn't be possible in other Game angines. The Indie-Game Sublevel Zero for Example (only FPS with random maps) uses the same principle as Descent, and the Volition Game Red Faction (that popularized Geomodding) is based on the Descent-3-Engine
*Descent Models use a primitive Bone-Animation, beeing somewaht simpler to use than Quake. (Thought Descent Models need Sorting-Planes)
*Descent has Multitexuring and Stencils (using a second tranparency), that was pretty unique
*Elaborate Dynamic lighting.
*Texture-Based Doors
*Ilusory-Walls emulating volume-effects
Temple of Elemental Evil as recommendation of worst :3
I loved descent and I loved D&D, so this was a no brainer, and while it was one of my first exposures to a this kind of a dungeon crawl, and therefore has a special place in my heart, looking back, there is a reason why I dropped off after just a few hours of play. 😅
Worst DnD game of the 90s? Ah, so you've played Baldur's Gate
Also I was wondering while watching the Strahd trilogy why you were complaining about the controls, but now I see.. you have one of the strangest keyboards I've ever seen. Those DOS games are 100% intended to be played with a numpad. I played Menzoberranzan and the Eye of the Beholder games with just my regular keyboard numpad, and then I had the idea of buying a cheap dedicated numpad meant for accountants, then I tried it out with Ravenloft. God damn what a gamechanger that was. Plug in the numpad, shove the entire keyboard farther, and have just the numpad and the mouse. No more awkward and uncomfortable hand position, just oh so smooth gameplay
One of the best 5$ purchases I ever did, as a DOS game enthusiast