Descent to Undermountain

Plot

The player character, an adventurer in Waterdeep, seeks employment from Khelben Blackstaff, the city's high mage. Blackstaff reports that people have been disappearing mysteriously, and some return from Undermountain with frightening tales. He assigns quests to uncover the cause of renewed activity from the dungeon. It emerges that the Flame Sword of Lolth is buried deep within the dungeon; whoever possesses it gains control of an undead army from the Abyss. The Drow, followers of Lolth, seek the sword. To subdue its power, the Spider Amulet, broken into eight pieces scattered throughout Undermountain, must be reassembled. Lolth is the final boss.

Development

A team of five designers—Chris Avellone, Scott Bennie, John Deiley, Robert Holloway, and Steve Perrin—created Descent to Undermountain, with programming handled by Andrew Pal, James Gardner, Robert Holloway, and Chris Farenetta. The game’s name comes partly from the Descent 3D engine it used. While earlier PC role-playing games like the Elder Scrolls and Ultima Underworld had already explored 3D environments, this title was the first to replace 2D bitmap sprites with fully 3D characters.

That engine, however, caused problems. Creative director Michael McConnohie explained that the collision spheres in Descent were designed for spacecraft, making close-quarters combat with humanoid figures difficult; shrinking those spheres enough to land a hit with a hand weapon proved a major hurdle. The developers originally planned a four-player network mode, but ran out of time to include it. The cover image, titled “Spellfire” by Clyde Caldwell, had already appeared on Ed Greenwood’s 1987 novel Spellfire and on Westwood Studios’ 1992 role-playing game Order of the Griffon.

Reception

Descent to Undermountain was generally poorly received. The decision to use the Descent graphics engine was cited as a design issue, requiring heavy code rewrites to support an RPG setting. According to game designer Eric Bethke, bugs, poor AI, unappealing and shoddy graphics, and other issues contributed to a consensus that the game was pushed to release before it was ready. Technical issues delayed development, forcing redesigns and re-engineering; the quick change to Descent's rendering engine proved extremely challenging, exceeding the technical understanding of corporate leadership resolved to predetermined delivery dates.

Bethke called it a classic example of a game shipped too early. Julian Schoffel, in Australian PCWorld, called the game woeful, hoping the following release Baldur's Gate might redeem Interplay. GamePro blasted it for outdated visuals, numerous bugs, and difficult setup and configuration, though it praised the level designs; it concluded that despite the two-year delay, the game still seemed unfinished, giving it 2.5 out of 5 for graphics, 4.0 for sound, 3.0 for control, and 3.0 for fun factor.

Ahmed Kamal Nava of the New Straits Times called it the best role-playing game of 1997. Next Generation rated it one star out of five, citing outdated visuals and a poorly designed player interface, though it said the character creation system was the best recreation of the Forgotten Realms universe in a video game to date. According to GameSpy, the game's only virtue was making everyone forget about Gorgon's Alliance and the previous two years of atrocious Dungeons & Dragons games.

Interplay acknowledged the poor reception with an easter egg in Fallout 2, where a Magic 8 Ball item includes the line, "Yes, we KNOW Descent to Undermountain was crap."