Developer Interview

Epic's Mike Capps gives us the very first peek at Unreal Tournament 2007.
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In 1999, the Unreal Tournament series broke out onto the first-person shooter landscape and earned a huge following right out of the gate. The game's combination of vicious, lightning-fast gameplay, colorful, great-looking graphics, surprisingly excellent artificial intelligence, and outstanding multiplayer play made it a smash hit. Some years later, Epic returned with Unreal Tournament 2003, which was powered by all-new technology and noticeably different gameplay--something not all fans appreciated. However, Epic returned the following year with Unreal Tournament 2004, which improved everything on all fronts and added drivable vehicles in the new onslaught game mode, and it ended up being a fantastic game that still enjoys a sizable fan following from a very active community. And all the while, Epic has been making a name for itself with unprecedented support for its fan community, calling out the best fan-made content using Unreal technology in its annual Make Something Unreal contest, which awards prizes to the best fan-made maps and modifications.

So what's next?

Unreal Tournament 2007 will bring new technology, new gameplay, new vehicles, and much, much more to the table.

How about an all-new game powered by the next generation of Epic's powerful Unreal engine, known as Unreal Engine 3? This time around, the game will be powered by the very same graphically impressive technology we've seen bits and pieces of at this year's and last year's Game Developers Conference in March. The engine will have support for advanced special effects, including high dynamic range lighting and bump offset mapping--which is an advanced form of lighting that can make a completely flat surface appear to have protruding features, like a brick wall built from jagged, uneven stones--and an all-new physics engine powered by Ageia's Novodex technology. "We've never been able to do an avalanche in-game before," says Epic president Mike Capps, referring to both the simulated mountain avalanche in this year's GDC demo and to the sorts of effects you'll see in the game.

Capps explains that beyond the graphics, UT 2007 will also feature improved gameplay, based on feedback from the fans and from Epic's own goals. According to Capps, the studio is "trying to make sure that UT 2007 is a mix of UT 2004 and [the original Unreal Tournament from 1999]," while maintaining the series' focus on multiplayer competition. "We want to own the deathmatch space." Competitive play is a key element in the series' success, so Epic definitely plans to keep head-to-head competition around in the form of deathmatch, team deathmatch, and one-on-one duels, as well as capture the flag. But what about the other modes? "Domination is currently not on the table," was Capps' answer. We'll probably have to bid domination (or "double domination" as it was more recently known) a fond farewell, since it was apparently the least popular multiplayer mode by far. Capps explains that the decision to remove this mode wasn't easy, but the team felt that it had fundamental issues. Since it focused on capturing two control points at opposite ends of a level, players often found themselves losing points while they went after one control point, only to find out that on the other side of the level, they had lost the other control point--something that was more or less completely out of their control.

And what about the popular assault mode, which presents team-based, goal-oriented gameplay, and onslaught mode, which is vehicle-based gameplay centered around capturing a network of control points? Onslaught is currently planned to make its triumphant return as it was in UT 2004, but the two modes will also be the proud parents of an all-new gameplay type: conquest. "Assault is the kind of thing we want to be bringing into conquest...a mix of [Unreal 2's] XMP, assault, and onslaught." Capps describes conquest as a much more evolved version of onslaught with the kind of directed gameplay and the exciting and varied environments you'd expect from assault, which has featured skyscrapers, moving trains, medieval castles, and many other environments.

Conquest mode will combine the variety of assault, the vehicles and teamplay of onslaught, and some all-new stuff as well.

Where onslaught focused on capturing control points to link up a network into an enemy base, conquest will instead focus on controlling actual territory, which will yield tyridium resources (the same crystalline energy source featured in Unreal Championship 2) when captured. The idea behind conquest is to create huge, expansive levels that take advantage of the engine's new content-streaming technology and use onslaught-style instant transport to jump to hot spots on the map where the action is. Epic apparently feels that one of the greatest strengths of onslaught was the way it could accommodate large groups of players in vehicles but also drive them to congregate around specific areas with the control point system, rather than have them wandering around the map aimlessly.

While the overall format of the mode--whether it will be a persistent-world sort of game similar to Sony Online Entertainment's PlanetSide or more of a pick-up-and-play game like onslaught--has not yet been revealed, it should continue to support the variety of gameplay styles that Epic felt onslaught did. That is, like with onslaught, you should be able to approach the game as a team player looking to help your buddies capture a win, by providing covering fire, going after key targets, and generally not goofing off, but you should also be able to focus more on the deathmatch aspects of the mode, using weapons and vehicles to blast enemy players as a base defender. If anything, Epic wants to make conquest a mode that will appeal to a wide variety of players, from hardcore team-shooter fans to deathmatch specialists to everyone in between.