I reckon we’re all just about ready for a new Descent. It’s not like people aren’t trying to recapture the feeling of flying around, deep inside a planet, searching for things to shoot and equipment to upgrade your ship. A proper reboot, though? We’ve had to wait until 2015 for it to happen and like many classic games of yesteryear, it’s coming to us via Kickstarter (hopefully).
Descent: Underground, by the appropriately named Descendent Studios, has collected just shy of $US170,000 of its $US600,000 target. That’s a fairly healthy chunk, given it still has 27 days to go, so at this point I’m confident it’ll be successful, though — don’t ask me why — I get the impression it might not hit too many of its stretch goals.
The project is described as everything a Descent successor should be — six degrees of freedom, first-person ship combat and a “Twenty-First Century Update”, courtesy of Epic’s Unreal Engine 4. What I found a little sad though is the focus on multiplayer. A solo campaign is planned for some point in the future, but the initial release will have a “mini-campaign” that’s more of a prologue than anything else.
In terms of experience, the team has worked on a variety of prominent titles, including Wing Commander, Ultima Online, Crusader: No Remorse and Star Wars: The Old Republic, to name a few. At the helm is Eric Peterson, who most recently held the position of “president of production” for Chris Roberts’ Star Citizen.
Descent: Underground [Kickstarter, via RPS]
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