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but it was also deep and substantial, succeeding in a completely different respect from id's hit. Compared to what DOOM would bring, Ultima Underworld felt glacial and cumbersome. Yet, at the same time, the window on the action is surrounded by a classic RPG frame that depicts icons for various actions, a text window, inventory items, and a breakdown of the protagonist's gear and stats.
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While not really a shooter in the modern sense - melee weapons were far more common than missile attacks, and the computer tallied attack damage with virtual dice rolls - it nevertheless feels like a proto-FPS in many ways.
#System shock 2 full
Developed by Blue Sky Productions, Underworld had debuted nearly a full two years before DOOM, and it simplified the rules and mechanics of Ultima in order to make them work in the context of first-person action. It was Ultima Underworld that served as the inflection point for System Shock and its sequel, System Shock 2. DOOM had evolved from Wolfenstein 3D, and even that game was preceded by other attempts to codify FPS combat, including the multiplayer maze shooter Faceball 2000 and, to a certain extent, Origin's Ultima Underworld. Nor did DOOM single-handedly inform every shooter to come along for example, Looking Glass Studios' System Shock games have very little in common with DOOM besides simple player perspective. DOOM was by no means the first of its kind, nor were id the only ones attempting to create a revolutionary first-person shooting game at the time. One of the most common tales people tell about video games is that the first-person shooter genre owes its entire existence to id's DOOM, without which there would be no Halo or Call of Duty or Metroid Prime. The evolution of video games resembles a complex web of both cause-and-effect and isolated events, and we can only write about what we've seen or read about. People writing about the history of video games tend to fall back on certain pre-set narratives, convenient shortcuts for contextualizing the past - something I've certainly been guilty of, despite my best attempts to do otherwise.