Epic Games held a small showcase titled State of Unreal today at the Game Developers Conference. Designed to keep all those might Play on what’s to come for the industry-dominant Unreal Engine, the highlights are of course also interesting for anyone who wants it plays games as well.
Both Epic and some outside studios took the opportunity to show off some of the things they’ve been working on in Unreal Engine 5. The shortest and perhaps most impressive video is this clip by Ninja Theory Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II
It still doesn’t look like it realthere’s something about the exaggeration of the lips and their teeth that I can’t fully explain, but it still looks that way Great.
Another topic of the technology show was Action RPG Lords of the Fallenwith a more conventional look at how games are made with the engine:
Next comes this gameplay demo from Infinitely small
And finally, we have this driving video, which is not only an advertisement for the Unreal Engine and Epic’s Quixel, but also for the EV company Rivian (their cars’ dash screens run on the Unreal Engine). This one shows some nice leaves, along with some impressive driving physics (it’s especially nice how the car hits small rocks that then fly away):
While one is expected to take everything shown at these presentations with a grain of salt, it is encouraging that three of the four videos here were from current games currently in development, which means the usual “well, your current games won’t look as good” caveats that we usually need for these posts aren’t there quite as needed here.