GC 2006: Unreal Tournament 2007
The latest UT 2k7 news from Leipzig.
by Jeff Haynes
August 23, 2006 - We got a chance to see an updated build of Unreal Tournament 2007 at the German Games Convention, and thanks to producer Jeff Morris, get some of our pressing questions about the title answered. First of all, the designers of the title wanted to try to make the science fiction environment of the venerated shooter a lot less alienating for new players. The way the team behind UT 2007 accomplished that feat was by sinking a lot of energy and effort into the weapons themselves, particularly the detail of each firearm, so players had a sense of actually moving with and firing at opponents with their weapon. In particular, Jeff mentioned that most people know what an M-16 is, but they have no idea what it's like to fire off a link gun, or what that would even look like. By increasing the polygon count on each firearm (in some cases, Morris said that some weapons would have more than some levels in UT 2004), the developers make the player feel as though their actually shooting the gun. For instance, the link gun actually opens up and you can see the working parts that provide the energy for the weapon itself.
Jeff also took some time to show off four of the various vehicles that will be included in the final version: The Cicada, the Goliath, the Dark Walker and the Leviathan. With the exception of the Dark Walker, all of the vehicles will be used by the Axon side (a group of high tech human mercenaries) against the Necris, an evil race of creatures. The Cicada has been spruced up from UT2004, and is primarily useful for ground targets. It also has chaff and missiles, which has borrowed a homing lock from the technology used by today's Apache helicopters: once a target has been fixed, any shot anywhere will cause the missile to immediately curve towards that point. This is extremely useful if you need to evade incoming fire yet still destroy your target. The Goliath appeared to be the standard kind of tank, with a turret attached.
Fear the Dark Reaper -- a Necris vehicle in UT 2007.
The Dark Walker, the Necris vehicle, was a tripod-like machine that had a laser that essentially carved its way through armor in concentrated bursts. While the beam was powerful to wreck some vehicles, the drawback happened to be the lack of speed whenever the gun was triggered. Fortunately, players could leap into the gun turret below for rapid fire, which also provided great opportunity for teamwork as one player could cover incoming threats. To potentially counter this destructive machine, the Axon had one other machine, the Leviathan, which is a massive tank with some decent cannon fire. While the front cannon is enough to take out a number of threats, it's much better when there are five people manning each individual turret on the tank, which each have their own firepower: Some machines have lasers, while others have shields that can deflect incoming fire. The tank can also be deployed to reveal a mega cannon that kills everything with one hit, although it sacrifices mobility for this destructive power.
With the inclusion of vehicles in the game, UT 2007 promises to be one of the largest games ever. With maps that easily dwarf those of UT 2004, the developers at Epic decided to allow players a new way of moving around maps with the inclusion of the hoverboard, an anti-gravity transportation device that moves 2-3 times as fast as simply running around the map. You'll be able to pull off hoverboard tricks, a la Tony Hawk, whenever you want, allowing players a certain amount of style as they move around the massive levels quickly while sacrificing the ability to defend themselves. Any attacks that accurately hit you will cause a player to be stunned for a few seconds, providing for an easy kill. To combat this, you can hop off of your board and engage in combat, or get towed via the energy cable to a decent vantage point and then launch an attack that way. In fact, Morris mentioned massive battles with testers quickly boarding to areas and then hopping off into instantaneous showdowns to prove the skill of the better warrior.
Necris troops will have to deal with the Leviathan.
Morris acknowledged that the single player experience is just as important as the multi-player game, and were taking that gameplay very seriously. In that manner, they've been trying to make sure that there are certain features that players can take advantage of, such as different outcomes of maps that influence the starting strong points and objectives of the next branching map, as well as separate deployed strongholds that players can take control of, such as cannons or other defensive/offensive emplacements. Along with the solid single and multiplayer campaign and maps, there will also be a solid dedication to the mod making community. Epic is dedicated to providing the best experience possible for the fans, and also considers them to be the best extension of the product, according to Morris. To that end, they will be packaging the Unreal Tournament Tool Kit in every single build of the game, and will provide a featured Mod system for those players who dedicate themselves to making the best experience for the community.
This was backed up by Mark Rein, Vice President of Epic Games, who mentioned that there is a potential for cross platform play between the PC and the PS3 engines. In particular, he mentioned that Sony seems to be establishing a safe area with content that has been controlled and corrected by the company (which means that things will be fine to download) versus the rest of the internet (which will be completely up to the user to determine if the risk to their system is worth it for certain mods or user-created features. While the idea of cross platform play is still something up in the air for the Epic programmers to decide upon, they're still interested and excited in the prospect of PC mods being potentially transferable to the PS3 system.
We'll have more on UT 2007 as it becomes available.
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