Looking Glass Studios Retrospective 1/3 (Origin Systems, Ultima Underworld 1, Ultima Underworld 2).

What if I told you that games like Assassin's Creed, The Elder Scrolls series, Half-Life, BioShock and Deus Ex were all inspired by the works of one developer? Looking Glass Studios pioneered many game elements such as dark, creeping atmosphere, deep 1st-person role-playing, advanced stealth mechanics and rich worldbuilding through written notes and collectable audio logs.

Let's find out all about this company's history together in this episode of Retro-Spec as we venture Through the Looking Glass...
In 1989, video game designer Paul Neurath had just finished "Space Rogue" he developed at Origin Systems, the game developer and publisher best known for the Ultima series as created by industry legend Richard Garriott, and later on the Wing Commander series as produced and designed by Chris Roberts.

Neurath believed the combination of genres in Space Rogue outlined the first steps on the road toward creating truly immersive games. Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss Inspired by the popular games at the time like Wizardry and Dungeon Master, he set out to take the first person RPG even further.

Believing the abstract vector visuals of Wizardry were immersion-breaking, and that something like the detailed and colorful Dungeon Master graphics were the way of the future, Neurath envisioned "Underworld", a 1st-person RPG set in a dark, cavernous environment that had freedom of movement that wasn't locked into an arbitrary four-directional grid of preceding games.

His early design documents read like Tolkien's Moria, with one paragraph describing situations like "Goblins on the prows of rowboats tossed in the waves, shooting arrows at the player above on a rope bridge swinging in the wind." Contracting a former Origin employee to create concept art and an animation which showed a user interface and a creature moving toward the player, essentially serving as a proof of concept which would help define the game's direction.

In the spring of 1990, Neurath formed Blue Sky Productions in Salem, New Hampshire, composed of Doug Church , Doug Wike and Paul Neurath with the purpose of creating Underworld. The team's ultimate goal was to create the "finest dungeon game, a game that was tangibly better than any of the long line of dungeon games that came before it." After struggles with technology such as texture mapping, Neurath contacted a colleague at Lerner Research to help develop an algorithm that would work in conjunction with the Space Rogue engine in formation of the new game.

Neurath later described the prototype as looking similar to Wolfenstein 3d with textured walls but flat colors for the ceiling and floor. Blue Sky built a demo of Underworld that was shown off at the Consumer Electronics Show that June. Folks from Origin Systems were very impressed with the initial Underworld demo, with Origin game producer and tabletop gaming veteran Warren Spector was totally floored by the demo, later saying he had never seen anything like it before.

Blue Sky Productions and Origin came to a publishing agreement that summer, and they began starting on the real meat of the production immediately. Origin recommended renaming and retheming the game into the popular Ultima universe and so "Ultima Underworld" was born.

Spector had hoped to fill the role as producer of the game, but was disappointed to find that he wasn't assigned to that role, admitting that he had to "watch jealously from the sidelines". The team started developing their own original engine for the game which would push it even further past previous RPGs in terms of technology.

After the initial excitement died down however, the production of Ultima Underworld began to fall apart. During the first year, Origin seemed less and less interested in the project. Underworld had lost not one, but two producers, was developed without a producer for a time, and rumors circulated that Origin might pull the plug on the publishing deal entirely.

After a proposal from the team, Warren Spector had joined the team as its new producer. Spector and Neurath had worked together previously on Space Rogue, and the new producer, combined with Spector's experience and new outlook helped turn the project around entirely.

According to Neurath and Doug Church, the lead programmer, Spector immediately understood what the team was trying to accomplish with the game and turned around the then-rocky production. With a re-energized development team under Spector's leadership, the game started really coming together, and despite a long crunch period during a cold winter in a drafty, badly heated office, the game "went gold" and shipped in March of 1992.

"Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss" received critical and consumer acclaim with its revolutionary engine, compelling atmosphere, interactivity and emergent and smooth gameplay. No longer constricted to static screens and choppy movement, players could now walk, jump and swim freely through a dark and ominous world the likes which had never been seen before.

Textured walls, ceilings, floors and ominous simulated lighting through distance haze, not only was its engine impressive, Underworld offered new mechanics and gameplay that few had ever experienced before in a 3d 1st-person perspective. The game offered impressive features, many of which had never existed before, such as walls at more angles than the standard perpendicular 90 degrees, freedom of movement and verticality like jumping between platforms, walking up ramps, and experiencing the shift from claustrophobic tunnels to the vastness of open caverns with the new features shown in the engine such as dynamic ceiling height.

Although many graphics were 2d sprites the game even featured fully 3d modelled objects as well which was almost unheard of at the time. With interactive puzzles, tense combat with all sorts of fantasy creatures, choices in dialogue with NPCs, and items you could pick up, throw and use at your will, it became one of the most influential RPGs of all time, and of 3d games in general.

Ultima Underworld in many ways shifted RPGs out of the realm of text-based imagination and into the third dimension. After the game's successful release, Paul Neurath agreed to join up with Ned Lerner of Lerner Research, of whom he worked with in development of Ultima Underworld.

This combination, along with the avoidance of having a similar name to Blue Sky Software which was founded a year earlier, the two groups formed Looking Glass Technologies . The success of the original led to the demand of the development of a sequel called Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds.

Really quick. From concept stage to shipping date, the game was pushed through production in about 9 months. Warren Spector recalled in a later interview that the game was rushed out the door, and that he generally maintains that a game should take 32-36 months to finish.

Because of the incredibly quick turnaround, resources from Origin in Austin had to be used to finish the game in the timeline given. While staying true to the strengths of the original, Underworld II improved the game's interface, showed off enhanced graphics, expanded the gameplay window, streamlined the clutter and overall delivered a more polished experience.

The technological improvements however may have outpaced the average PC user's hardware though, as the game was criticized for its steep system requirements at the time. Underworld II told a story follow-up to Ultima VII in an adventure featuring familiar characters like Iolo, Dupre and of course Lord British.

The Guardian, the antagonist from the later Ultima storyline makes a return as the primary villain of the game as well. The scope of Underworld II was much larger, with a focus on emergent gameplay and nonlinearity, as well as polishing the rough edges that the original game had.