Since I felt it needed to be said, here's a heartfelt "thank you" for both the time it took and the commitment to a single project necessary to release something as amazing as Underrail. It's been almost 15 years since I've had the same sense of exploration and amazement at discovery in a PCRPG, and its absence is something I've almost taken for granted. My last post in this forum was three years ago and I had all but forgotten about Underrail, until I heard it was being released in December. I fondly remembered the early tech demo, and what I got as an end product is nothing short of amazing.
As an old-timer who grew up on Fallout 1 & 2, Arcanum and Planescape Torment, Underrail is one of the few games that get the concept of self-paced storytelling and world building absolutely right; where memorable events don't come from a cutscene or a scripted sequence, but are instead put together from environmental detail and player choices. It feels like many modern RPGs suffer from graphics dictating the content (instead of the other way around) and dialogue wheels where any amount of text beyond two lines gets treated as a TL;DR (Pillars of Eternity and Divinity: Original Sin being wonderful exceptions), but here we have an indie release that holds more life and attention to unique detail than any big-budget title I can recall from these past years. Sure, there's big-name upcoming releases like Tides of Numenera on the horizon, but if it weren't for Kickstarter it would've never seen the light of day (same with PoE)!
It's the combination of all the little things (character-dependent dialogue responses, unique approaches to challenges, item descriptions (nobody does those anymore! It's awful!), NPC details and personalities) that show how much love really went into it. I'm really hoping Underrail was a worthy return in the time and resource investment (I bought 3 copies to share), because that would mean there's still enough others out there who can appreciate something taking so much devotion.
So, thanks again!
