Looking Glass History

[673f1f61bc9d1Kolya]

Tags: °LGS °history °LGC
Used by permission of The Next Level.

14. Jan. 2004

History and Background

Most video game developers play it safe; they create games in established genres and follow the conventions of their predecessors. Then you have those few brave developers that dare to continually try new things, to tear down the barriers of tradition. In the console game world, a company like Treasure falls into the latter category. Treasure's Guardian Heroes, for example, strays from conventions of the beat-'em-up genre by blending in elements of role-playing and strategy to create something new. In the PC game world, Looking Glass Studios' refusal to follow a set path has contributed to its success.

The story begins in 1990. After completing the science-fiction RPG Space Rogue at Origin Systems, Paul Neurath decided to found his own company. Origin artist Doug Wike joined Neurath, who began hiring talented MIT graduates like Doug Church and Dan Schmidt. Blue Sky Productions was born, a company designed to take role-playing games in a new direction.

That new direction was the third dimension. Most RPGs up to this point were two-dimensional and used an overhead perspective, with some utilizing the first-person view in battles. Inspired by the first-person perspective of FTL's 1987 RPG, Dungeon Master, Neurath knew this was the path he wanted the genre to take as he began work on his new RPG. The tentatively titled Underworld was rechristened Ultima Underworld when publisher Origin suggested they use Richard Garriott's popular franchise. Eventually, Origin sent Warren Spector over to Blue Sky to produce the game. Spector had worked alongside Neurath on Space Rogue.

Upon its release in 1992, Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss did indeed take the RPG genre into new territory. It had the most advanced 3D engine of any home game of its time. Its more popular contemporary, id Software's Wolfenstein 3D, was a landmark title for action games and was an impressive technical showpiece, yet compared to Origin's title it was simplistic. Underworld had full 360-degree movement, which Wolfenstein lacked. However, Underworld was more than just a technological achievement. As Neurath said, "It established a new genre, combining first-person action with traditional role-playing to deliver an immersive experience." Its larger and more detailed sequel, Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds was released the following year.

After the first Underworld, Blue Sky Productions officially changed their name to Looking Glass Technologies, which was again changed a few years later to Looking Glass Studios.


(Click to enlarge)

As groundbreaking as the Ultima Underworld games were, Looking Glass managed to surpass them. Released for the PC in 1994, System Shock defied all genre conventions. To this day, gamers are unsure how to classify it. Is it a first-person shooter? Is it an adventure game? Is it a role-playing game? Well, it's all of these things. It wasn't the first game to mix first-person action with adventure elements (early 3D games like Incentive's Driller and The Dark Side did that in the late Eighties). Still, System Shock was an experience not quite like anything before it. Looking Glass truly created something unique and ahead of its time. Not until four years later with Valve's Half-Life did a first-person action game approach this level of story integration.

System Shock's story starts with your character hacking into a computer of a large corporation called TriOptimum. You get caught, but the vice-president of the company offers you a deal. You can avoid being turned over to the police if you hack into the A.I. that maintains one of TriOptimum's space stations for him. He even offers you cybernetic enhancements. You accept the offer and undergo cryogenic healing for your operation. When you awaken, you find the crew of the station dead. The rest of the story unfolds as you find various crew members' message logs throughout the station and you encounter your A.I. rival.

Looking Glass' next great achievement for first-person games was released for the PC in 1996. Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri was a mission-based action game. It provided the strategic variety and vast landscapes found in sim games like Dynamix' MechWarrior yet had the accessibility and controlling grace of a standard first-person shooter. Most games that try and stand between genres like this fail by turning away both crowds, but Terra Nova succeeds at finding the perfect balance and stands as an action classic. The only downside is that the company never completed making the game's multiplayer mode, which given the tactical nature of the game would have made it the predecessor to games like Dynamix' Starsiege: Tribes and the Half-Life mod, Counter Strike.

1998 was a year of milestones for action games with stealth gameplay. Konami released the long awaited Metal Gear Solid and Activision localized Acquire's ninja game Tenchu: Stealth Assassins. These were both PlayStation games, but the PC game world had a quality stealth action game of its own.

Thief: The Dark Project was a tale of an 18th century pickpocket trying to survive. Looking Glass dubbed their new creation a "first-person sneaker," emphasizing that this game is about lurking around and not just shooting everything in sight like most first-person action games. It's about hiding in the shadows, attacking only when necessary, and using your lockpicking skills to enter forbidden places. Like the previous Looking Glass games, Thief refused to be pigeonholed into a rigid genre definition. The influence of its stealth gameplay can seen in games like Monolith's No One Lives Forever.

Thief II: The Metal Age, released in 2000, was a solid sequel, although not vastly different from the first game. A new version of the first game with additional levels, called Thief: Gold, was also released.


(Click to enlarge)

In 1999, between the releases of the two main Thief games, System Shock managed to get a sequel despite disappointing sales of the original five years earlier. System Shock 2 kept intact what made the original great yet had a feel all its own. It was darker and scarier than the first game and showed the influence of the survival horror genre.

System Shock 2 was co-developed by Looking Glass Studios and a new developer called Irrational Games. Irrational Games consisted partly of ex-Looking Glass employees and was headed by Ken Levine, who worked on Thief as a story writer and designer.

Ultima Underworld, System Shock, Terra Nova, and Thief are Looking Glass' most notable achievements, but they weren't its only games. Looking Glass also made the following: the PC racing game Car and Driver, the PC flight sim series Flight Unlimited, the Nintendo 64 port of Westwood's Command & Conquer, the PC sports game British Open Championship Golf, and the Nintendo 64 port of Reflections' Destruction Derby.

The company was developing Deep Cover, an espionage-themed PC stealth-action game set in the Cold War era and a game called Mini Racers for the Nintendo 64, but these games were never completed. The company was financially unstable and closed down in May of 2000.

Click here for rare gameplay footage of Mini Racers, courtesy of IGN. (QuickTime, 5.9MB)

Influence
The developer's demise is not a sad one, since its legacy lives on in other developers.

Paul Neurath went to Arkane Studios and created Arx Fatalis on PC, the spiritual successor to the Ultima Underworld games. Arx Fatalis saw an Xbox port in December 2003. Also in 2003, Neurath and some other ex-Looking Glass people at Floodgate Studios released an expansion pack to Bioware's RPG Neverwinter Nights called The Shadows of Undrentide.

Terra Nova lead designer, Dorian Hart, and a few others are now at Ken Levine's Irrational Games. Irrational is currently developing the latest Starsiege PC game, Tribes: Vengeance, and the horror action/adventure game The Lost for PlayStation 2 and Xbox.

Warren Spector, Doug Church, and others are at Ion Storm Austin. They created the excellent FPS/RPG Deus Ex which expanded upon the type of gameplay found in System Shock and Thief. Ion Storm Austin developed Deus Ex: Invisible War and Thief III for PC and Xbox.


Complete Gameography

Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss PC, 1992 RPG	John Madden Football '93 Genesis, 1992 Sports
Car & Driver PC, 1992 Racing	Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds PC, 1993 RPG
System Shock PC, 1994 Adventure	Flight Unlimited PC, 1995 Flight simulation
Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri PC, 1996 Simulation	British Open Championship Golf PC, 1997 Sports
Flight Unlimited II PC, 1997 Flight simulation	Thief: The Dark Project PC, 1998 Adventure
Command & Conquer Nintendo 64, 1999 Real-time strategy	System Shock 2 PC, 1999 Adventure (With Irrational Games)
Flight Unlimited III PC, 1999 Flight simulation	Destruction Derby 64 Nintendo 64, 1999 Racing
Thief Gold PC, 1999 Adventure	Thief II: The Metal Age PC, 2000 Adventure
Flight Combat: Thunder Over Europe PC, 1999 Flight Sim ***Cancelled***	Mini Racers Nintendo 64, 2000 Racing ***Cancelled***
Wildwaters Nintendo 64, 2000 Racing ***Cancelled***

Front & Center

The Haunting - System Shock 2
(contains some spoilers) There's a reason System Shock 2 is often referred to as one of the scariest PC games ever created. It's a mix, actually: the Hitchcockian silence, the little bloody trails, the impending sense of doom created by reading and listening to journals written by people who are now very dead thanks to a computer that's gone slightly mad. Did I mention that you're all alone on a space ship and every thing has gone very wrong!? Oh crap, look! A mutated creature coming to kill you!

In a terrible moment, you traverse Janice Polito's office, discovering what really happened to the mining station and SHODAN after the events of the first game. Then you realize that the haunting secret of System Shock 2 isn't zombies or mutants it's . . . oh, my . . .
The realization that you had to go mano a mano with SHODAN, a computer so advanced and long-lived that you were just an insect compared to it, was as horrifying anything you ran across. For the final showdown, the developers fashioned a place in cyberspace that represented the creative imagination of SHODAN. Where gamers went in expecting a slug-out battle royal they found only the haunting reminders of the first System Shock in a retro-themed level. For gamers that didn't know that the events of the game had happened before, it was akin to Neo realizing that he wasn't the first One.

So loved is the series that it's been given a free graphical overhaul by fan Etienne Aubert (Rebirth) and many other fan made modifications.

The First Person Sneaker - Thief 2
Thief changed what gamers expected from first-person shooters. Instead of engaging in another run-and-gun key hunt, gamers played as a thief, Garrett. Set in an almost steam-punk medieval time period, the game started off the player armed only with a trusty bow and arrow. The only friend to be found was a worn sword. From these simple weapons Looking Glass built one of the first stealth games. There was a lot of trial and error in areas where you had to think your way past a foe. Breaking and entering required a tad more finesse than gamers were used to utilizing. Guards had to be avoided when possible, knocked out and hidden when not. Even at its release, Thief was recognized as a damn right revolutionary game, and although sales weren't through the roof, the successes of the younger Lara Croft encouraged Eidos to send Looking Glass out to bat one more time.

For the sequel, the programmers stretched the Dark Engine's rendering technology to the limits. They created an entire city open for the traversing. The core gameplay also took a shot in the arm. Instead of just breaking and entering for the crime of theft, the storyline allowed for more diverse game play experiences: a kidnapping, a bank robbery, and a murder to be solved. And though some balked at the game's use of unrealistic tools like slowfall, invisibility potions, and the moss arrow, others found them stylishly cool. A small but devoted core of fans sprouted up around the game and continues to wait with bated breath for the upcoming Thief III.

The Good Storm - Deus Ex
This is an unusual choice for this retrospective, since it is in fact a post-Looking Glass game, but it represents the evolution of the company's trademark gameplay and finesse. The good name of Looking Glass was gone, replaced with the tarnished name of Ion Storm, and many of the old developers had gone on to other places. Many fans were convinced Deus Ex was a pipe dream that would never amount to much, but there seems to be something about Looking Glass employees.

What Ion Storm created was a game that melded the science-fiction intensity of System Shock with the "sneak and think, don't shoot" dynamic of Thief II. However, Deus Ex allowed for far more freedom than even the Thief series was able to offer. So much so that the developers were surprised at some of the maneuvers that gamers came up with. For example, they never foresaw gamers using wall mines as a method to traverse over walls meant to be adventured around. But with freedom comes innovation.

Just as Thief was one of the first stealth games, Deus Ex was one of the first games to meld traditional role-playing mechanics with first-person shooters. Throughout the game, players upgraded their character with nanotechnology that allowed players to decide how they wanted to solve the problems. If you wanted to shoot the terrorists you could, but if you had the right upgrade you could hack the computer and order the gun-toting guard bots to shoot their former masters. Even the final outcome of the storyline was not beyond the influence of the player.

Today, the influence of the System Shock and Thief series and Deus Ex can be seen in the success of games like Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, Manhunt, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. The future holds more tributes to the ideals of Looking Glass with titles such as Doom III and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. on the horizon.

Used by permission of The Next Level.

Links
● Ahead of its time: The history of Looking Glass by Mike Mahardy (Polygon)
● Game over - Did the game industry's obsession with gore kill off Looking Glass, its most creative studio? (salon.com)
● Reasons for the Fall: A Post-Mortem On Looking Glass Studios ~ James Sterrett (ttlg.com)
● www.lglass.com (web.archive.org)
● Final Days - a photographic tribute to Looking Glass Studios by Mike Chrzanowski (digital-eel.com)
● Looking Glass, The Series Finale (youtube.com)

[673f1f61be985lanael]

Paul Neurath went to Arkane Studios and created Arx Fatalis on PC, the spiritual successor to the Ultima Underworld games.

The way it's written, it lets you think that Paul Neurath decided to make Arx !
IIRC, Arkane was making Arx when they contacted Paul Neurath for advices because they were fan of LGS.

[673f1f61beb4aKolya]

I think some of the game dates may be wrong. The games I just opened separate threads for (Command & Conquer, Destruction Derby) were both released in 1995, not 1999 as listed here. Though these are the Nintendo 64 versions which may have been released later.
According to Wikipedia the Nintendo 64 was sold in North America from September 1996. So I guess the real date of these games is something 1996-1997. Confirmation would be appreciated.

[673f1f61bef6cMarvin]

http://www.mobygames.com/game/n64/command-conquer/mobyrank
"Released 28 Jul 1999"
... which matches the magazine review dates.

http://uk.ign64.ign.com/articles/151/151976p1.html
"Release Date: October 2, 1999"

A friend of mine bought C&C 64 in 1999 when it was released, I don't think your 1996-97 estimation is correct.

[673f1f61bf076Kolya]

Ah okay, thank you for the research. *tips hat*

[673f1f61c0145voodoo47]

The Haunting - System Shock 2
(contains some spoilers) There's a reason System Shock 2 is often referred to as one of the scariest PC games ever created. It's a mix, actually: the Hitchcockian silence, the little bloody trails, the impending sense of doom created by reading and listening to journals written by people who are now very dead thanks to a computer that's gone slightly mad. Did I mention that you're all alone on a space station and every thing has gone very wrong!?

[nitpicking]von Braun/Rickenbacker are ships,not a space station.[/nitpicking]

[673f1f61c025eKolya]

True and changed now.

[673f1f61c1304voodoo47]

The Haunting - System Shock 2
discovering what really happened to the Gateway Station and SHODAN after the events of the first game.

wait,gateway-what?

[673f1f61c1478Kolya]

The Polito office scene also doesn't happen in the "final moments" of the game.

Okay in an attempt to keep changes as small as possible while still keeping with the facts and making sense, I moved that sentence to the beginning of the paragraph and made that "In a terrible moment" instead of "In the final terrible moments". I also changed the "Gateway station" to "mining station".

[673f1f61c38cbunn_atropos]

°podcast°gambit
I'm very surprised that this podcast wasn't mentioned here on sbf yet. Or was it?
http://gambit.mit.edu/updates/audio/looking_glass_studios_podcast/
It's a great series of interviews with former members of Looking Glass. They talk about who were responsible for projects and who had specific ideas. Finally I now know what a taffer is and where this word comes from. Gotta love education

[673f1f61c3a71Kolya]

Not sure if it was mentioned here. It was on TTLG definitely. And we used to have a torrent of the whole collection, back when torrents were still a thing.
Now for your childlike amusement, the LGS - Come out and play wallpaper. (Actually a wall on a local schoolyard.)