Elaborate fan trailer with strengths and weaknesses under the magnifying glass

There is more and more fan creation in the current Unreal Engine 5. One of the recent examples is a video for the famous Assassin’s Creed series. It shows a fictional part set to take place in Persia. We took a closer look at what was technically successful and what wasn’t.

Of course, we will not lose ourselves here for pages on trifles or fall into the deepest technical jargon. But this new fan trailer is a great way to take a closer look at one of these projects. Because where there is light, there is also shadow.

Nothing is true, everything is allowed. So let’s get started! Or you know what? First of all, watch the video for yourself:

link to YouTube content

That’s behind the fan trailer

First of all, very important information: Anyone who has ever created an extensive fan trailer in a game engine, be it Unreal or Unity, will know how much effort is usually put into it. Therefore, despite all the criticism, one should also appreciate that a person has devoted himself to this topic.

Don’t expect AAA level production here. So when we name weaknesses, we don’t mean it in a bad way at all, but purely factually related to the material shown. You will notice what we mean.

What’s the point? With the fictional title Assassin’s Creed Persia should be immediately clear what kind of scenario we are being presented with. Numerous historical places are shown to us: Persepolis, the tomb of Cyrus the Great or the city of Pasargad. An unspecified character, probably an assassin, travels through the area and we accompany them.

Who is behind this? The fan trailer was taken from the Youtube channel TeaserPlay created, behind which according to their own statements is a team of independent graphic designers. The goal is to create high-quality short films and concept trailers, just like the Assassin’s Creed film.

You can find out here how Assassin’s Creed could officially continue:

These points convince us in the fan trailer

Nobody wants to read something negative directly. That’s why we’ll start with the aspects of the trailer that absolutely convinced us at first glance:

• The terrain: The displayed landscapes of Persia look natural and have been provided with high-resolution textures. That’s why the extensive camera settings, which give us a good view of the surroundings, are one of the biggest plus points of the trailer (see minute 0:24). The creators should benefit from the fact that the Unreal Engine 5 has very extensive tools for landscape design.
• The characters: Whether it’s the main character, the horse or NPCs running around, the characters have many details and fit very well into the historical scenario. The protagonist in particular could easily come from an official part of the series (see minute 0:28).
• Lighting and level of detail: Of course, the big UE5 feature Lumen is also used in this demo, which ensures realistic illumination of the game world (see minute 1:08). And the second major function Nanite does the honors and convinces with very detailed objects such as the sculpture (see minute 0:39) or the stone tablet (see minute 1:04).

The official trailer for Unreal Engine 5 already demonstrated what level of detail is possible thanks to Nanite. (Source: Epic Games)

These points, however, convince us less

For our critical eyes, however, the trailer is not without its weaknesses. We didn’t like these aspects:

• The sky: In some scenes, the clouds in the sky appear strangely flat. Apparently, volumetric clouds were not used here. In other places, however, the sky looks much better. So the bottom line is a fluctuating quality.
• Mismatched Objects: Some of the assets used seem like foreign bodies in their environment. The grave at minute 0:23 in particular seems out of place, which is probably due to the texturing, the coloring and the way the object was placed in the rather barren surroundings.
• The town: Sure, building a big city from scratch is a great feat. The city shown at the beginning and towards the end should have looked a little more detailed for our taste. Once you have noticed the dreary streets and roofs, you can hardly hide the sight.
• Missing and unclean movements: The vegetation in particular appears very static in the video for the most part, which can be seen clearly from minute 0:32. But even the few animations that can be seen could be much smoother.

So much for our compact thoughts on this trailer. If you want to see more of TeaserPlay’s creations, we recommend this one Replica of the game world of GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption.

Prefer to stay with us? You can also admire many more tech demos for Unreal Engine 5 here on GameStar.de:

Enough talking shop, now we are particularly interested in your opinion! How do you rate what is shown? Did you like it for the most part or is there absolutely nothing that can knock your socks off? Is there a scene that particularly impressed you? Write it to us in the comments!