“It can’t be real” – that’s how many viewers reacted to the in-game video from Unrecord. The developers are now proving the opposite.
The recently unveiled shooter Unrecord continues to cause heated discussions on the net. The first gameplay scenes had gone viral for the almost unbelievable level of photorealism – real or game?
Some users even came to the conclusion that these are real video recordings and Unrecord is therefore a fake. These scenes show how one can come up with this idea:
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Unrecord: Trailer for the most photorealistic shooter you’ve ever seen
In order to clear up the fake allegations once and for all, chief developer Alexandre Spindler posted a short clip on Twitter showing his shooter in the Unreal Engine 5 developer interface.
Spindler is the lead developer at the French studio Drama, where Unrecord is currently being made, and comments rather dryly: »For anyone who thought Unrecord was a fake or a real video, sorry.«
link to Twitter content
You can see the development interface of the UE5. Spindler stops the gameplay, releases the camera and no-clips it through the level without colliding.
This is clear evidence: With this, Spindler clearly reveals that the Unrecord recordings are a playable map through which you can actually move freely.
Whether it will eventually become a fully-fledged game is of course another matter.
Why does it still look so real? There are several factors why the illusion of actual, real-world video recording persists at Unrecord:
- exposure time: A trick in the engine mimics brief overexposure. As a result, the incidence of light looks like a mobile phone video.
- Movement: Since the hands are not permanently connected to the camera like in most other shooters, but only follow the movement with a delay, they appear more real.
- Photogrammetrie: By using high-res photos of real locations as level textures, the surfaces in the game look very real – because they are real, so to speak
Unrecord triggered some real emotional chaos among players – some are completely enthusiastic about the graphic quality, others get rather queasy with such real scenes. That’s why we want to hear your opinion in our survey!
Unrecord is intended to tell the story of a police officer on duty using his bodycam recordings. It’s a complex case that requires tactical and investigative skills, the creators say.
There hasn’t been a release yet, after the PC version (via Steam) the studio wants to start porting it to consoles.
