The Unbelievable Nature of the Next Unreal Tournament

[Shamus Young]

The Unbelievable Nature of the Next Unreal Tournament

The wonderful thing that Epic is doing for the next Unreal Tournament.

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[Hutzpah Chicken]

I hope that this new Unreal keeps the silly and unrealistic things of classic FPS. I'm sure it won't be a CoD clone, but I hope that it's fast paced, has really ridiculous guns (I've missed rapid fire rocket launchers), and stays fresh. With community creations, that might just happen.

 

[TiberiusEsuriens]

I imagine they'll be developing towards the UT 2k3. While it 'slowed things down' a bit from the original, it is still infinitely faster than modern FPS. It had original/unique weapons, vibrant colors, and still placed importance on knowing where powerups and weapons were on the map. I'm hoping for a return of gameplay where what weapon you have equipped drastically changes the way you approach encounters, whereas in all modern FPS (i.e. corridor shooters) every gun is treated the same - run at the enemy and spray bullets.

 

[Rad Party God]

In a perfect world, they'll keep the recent UT's aesthetics (Gears of War-esque) with the fast paced ridiculousness of UT99.

Personally, I'm one of the very few people who actually liked UT3 (post Titan patch), it had some neat ideas going on and it still kinda retained that old school flavor (as old school as you could get in '09 at least), some modders even went as far as creating mutators that sped up the game signifficantly and they even remade some of the older UT99 maps.

Also, that "levolution" thing of BF4?, yeah, the UT series did it first (don't know specifically wich one started it, but I'm going for UT3).

I appreciate each and every entry on the UT series (strictly speaking of 99, 2K4 and 3), each and every one of them brought something different, perhaps '99 might be the best out of raw and pure break-neck speeds and sheer amount of content and fun (dem bots... they don't do them like that nowadays), so I hope that the new UT picks the best aspects of each game and improve upon them in some way.

 

[evilnancyreagan]

Epic could ultimately care less how the next UT turns out.

What they DO care about is getting future game developers familiar and competent with the Unreal Engine.

Taking a cut from a user-made content store is all fine and dandy but, Epic has their eyes set on the bigger prize, UE licensing to the next-next generation of triple A titles. The more kids they get modding for UE, the more royalties they will eventually be swimming in.

 

[Callate]

Are they going for the madcap cartoon action of UT 1999? Or are they aiming for the more deliberate pace of UT 2003? Or are they going for something more modern and tactical?

If they're truly opening up the game's files to prospective modders, there's no real reason the game couldn't be all three, or combinations thereof. Sure, it would risk fracturing the community- but it could still be done.

 

[Gezzer]

Epic could ultimately care less how the next UT turns out.

What they DO care about is getting the next generation of game developers familiar and competent with the Unreal Engine.

Taking a cut from a user-made content is all fine and dandy but, Epic has their eyes set on the bigger prize, UE licensing to the future line-up of triple A titles. The more kids they get modding for UE, the more royalties they will be swimming in.

^^ This ^^

Epic has moved on from UT, I'm not even certain how much they want to create games for the next generation. But they do want their latest and greatest engine in all the games to come. I'm sure when all the figures are in, selling the tech to make next generation games is both more lucrative and more stable than attempting to create a new AAA with the enormous costs involved and no guarantee that it'll be a hit.

 

[evilnancyreagan]

I'm sure when all the figures are in, selling the tech to make next generation games is both more lucrative and more stable than attempting to create a new AAA with the enormous costs involved and no guarantee that it'll be a hit.

When everyone is hanging themselves,

why not invest in the rope market?

 

[UberPubert]

This sounds nuts. I've been an Epic fan from Unreal through Gears and the idea that they would go back to Unreal again after finally completing the Gears saga raises so many questions about what this new game is supposed to look like - especially with the totally free to play aspect factored into it.

 

[Tiamat666]

Are you sure you have your Unreal Tournaments sorted out? The way I remember it, the sequels UT 2003 and 2004 where way twitchier and faster than the original. They even introduced features like bouncing off walls and double jumping. The opponents seemed smaller and more difficult to hit too. I played the original on "Adept" for a comfortable game that I could win without trying too hard. In UT 2003 and 2004 I would frequently get my ass handed to me on Adept, the main reason being that it was so damn hard to hit the guys.

It wasn't until UT 3 that they returned to the slower paced, more strategic game of the original.

 

[DSK-]

Technically speaking, movement speed wasn't necessarily reduced in UT2003/4; walking speed was, perhaps, but in place of that you had dodge jump, wall dodging, wall dodge jumps and boost jumping (not forgetting dodge, which was in UT99) which made for a very satisfying dynamic (particularly in maps like Antalus or Osiris2).

Spoiler

 

[shiajun]

I've only played UT2k4 and I did not find it radically different in speed to say, Quake2. Maybe there was a difference, but it wasn't different enough to alter the way I played both, to the end result of the frantic, explosion fest that our LAN matches ended up being. Some maps were slower like Tokara Forest and whatnot with the whole low gravity, but in general, it was fast. It was breakneck fast compared to the whole cover/shoot/cover dynamic the CoD model has going on. I am curious to see what route they go with this incarnation.

 

[Kinitawowi]

As you get further from cartoony '90s graphics and closer to photorealism, you need to change the way characters move.

This is 99% of what's wrong with the last fifteen years of video gaming; we've sacrificed art styles and unique aesthetics for photorealistic humans with slightly smoother noses. And we've badly constrained our games in the process.

I'd love UT2014 to be as deranged as '99, or at least '03. As long as one person can carry around seventeen absolutely ridiculous guns at the same time, I'll be happy. But it'll probably just be CoD again.

 

[Captain1nsaneo-J]

I just want to know where I have to go to play on some of the really cool old custom maps. I still remember one that was a bar with a pool table with the players all the size of mice. That map was filled stem to stern with secret passages, fake walls, and teleporters. The only other games I know of that had similarly silly maps were old CS and a few in TF2.

But yeah, Facing Worlds. Best map. The remakes weren't nearly as fun.

 

[92Sierra]

A little bit of constructive criticism: This article felt too short. A page and a half on the differences between old and new FPS and then the last half page on the very interesting question of how this free FPS with mods that can be sold is going to work. I would rather have equal treatment of the subject.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

More 99 and less UT3....

One thing I have to say no damn invisible walls put a force field around an area is fine but let me go on rooftops and such.

======================
On a side note anyone do any codeing? Do you still need to write up a code for explosive bullets?(I'm asuming you do unless they have a explosive bullet weapon, then again I think you could put radius damage on bullets in UT3 making it so you did not need to make a whole new hit scan code for explosive bullets) I slogged through coding doing cut and pasting which is about all I can really do since I like tweaking weapons more than anything else I rarely focused on anything else.

 

[Kahani]

I'm not a fan of the newer breed of games, but I think sales have made it pretty clear what the market really wants

This isn't necessarily true. While the market tends to follow demand, the reverse is also true - you can't buy a game that isn't for sale. Serious Sam 3 made a bit of an effort on the single player front (it has co-op, but I don't think there's any PvP), but other than that I can't think of any UT-style twitch shooters since UT itself. So of course CoD-type games have dominated sales for the last decade or so, they're the only thing actually on sale.

As for raw numbers, they're largely meaningless. The market for video games has expanded continuously since they were invented. No matter what type of game is popular now, it's always going to be more popular than whatever came before simply because there are more people buying games. CoD may sell more copies that UT ever did, but I'd be very surprised if there was a significant difference in the proportion of the shooter audience each had. Everyone then had either UT or Quake, everyone now has either CoD or Battlefield. We just now have a bigger everyone.

 

[Steve the Pocket]

As for the whole Call of Duty being more noob-friendly thing... one of these days I'm going to tie somebody to a chair and make them explain to me how a game where people who have been playing longer and racked up more kills and kill streaks and team victories are handed bigger and better weapons on a silver platter is supposed to be more fair to new players than a game where everyone has the same weapons to choose from.