Any thoughts on the upcoming Underworld Ascendant?

It should be the spiritual (or not-so-spiritual) successor of Ultima Underworld, but looks like a cheap, terrible, off-spin.

There is a very small chance it might be ok. It looks like steam only by the way.

I'm not hyped but I'm curious about it. Why do you think that? Because of the cartoonish graphic style?

Cartoonish graphics is a start.

The environment lighting is too colorful and cheerful: blue, green and generally realy reminds of hack-and-slash dungeon crawler.
Huge, immense, caverns don't help in providing that claustrophobic feel. Randoms chains hanging from the ceiling are just cheap.

That highlighting surrond around objects have that sci-fi feeling on it.
The heands showing remind me of Bioshock.

In addition... jumping and grabbing a rope while shooting arrows.
That frog monster is just ... ugh...

I don't know the "cartoony" look was there in the originals too (and it's not just UU, most Ultima games had very cartoony graphics too) and, at least in UU2, there was some huge areas too (within the realm of the period technical limitation), If anything you could say it's more reminiscent to it's predecessor than it would be with photo realistic graphics .

Perhaps at that time, but UU looked more gritty, gothic and unsettling place to play in.
The overall environment was less extreme-fantasy than what they are presenting.
Perhaps a consequence of technical limitations?

So no, doesn't occur to me as any UU successor.

I wasn't reminded of Ultima Underworld when watching this, but rather of Thief. Still could become a good game, but I don't have high hopes. And as long as they don't release it DRM-free, it won't exist for me anyways.

The game is supposed to have a DRM-free release (at least that was promised during the Kickstarter)

Here is what they said the 29th of August :

DRM-free versions will still be distributed to backers, and we're still discussing with GOG. Backers who are eligible to receive beta access should hear an update by the next newsletter...

So hopefully it will appear on Gog soon.

What kinda cartoons did you watch? Ultima games tended to look more like fantasy novels and D&D covers. Except maybe the later games which looked like a bunch of game pieces about to fall offscreen due to terrible perspective.

this looks... terrible.

but maybe it'll be excellent, what do i know

id wait for reviews for sure.

Looks a bit ropey (heh), but could be fun. If they're aiming for AAA, they've missed the mark badly, but aside from the terrible 'chandelier hits flat surface just above the creature's head' bit, nothing looked exactly dreadful, IMO.

Although, given that they ended up tying this into Shroud of the Avatar, which was/is a trainwreck...

I had great expectations for this game, but looking at current material I'm not so sure anymore.
Time will tell.

I still think Ultima Underworld is the best in its sub-genre.

The voiceover makes my eyes bleed.

Do you have a source on that?

Back during the campaign they assured backers that they "plan to have a DRM-free PC release, as well as a Steam version". They confirmed that backers can choose between Steam and DRM-free as recently as 7 months ago.

It only mentions steam on the video, and there is a vast proportion of games released on steam not on gog, almost all them. Even ones which were promised (symphony of the night or the other one). Until it actually arrives here and is updated as per steam then I will expect the worse.