Unreal Tournament 2007 Exclusive Preview - An Overview of the Next UT
Hang onto your flak cannons. The Unreal Tournament series is gearing up for its next appearance, and it's bringing the powerful new Unreal 3.0 technology along for the ride.
Flak Cannons for Everyone
Epic is already testing prototypes for the game, and apparently one aspect of the game that's receiving heavy scrutiny at the studio's Raleigh, North Carolina, headquarters is its weapon loadout. The final weapon selection is still being tweaked and tuned, so there are very few final details to report. We're told that there aren't any plans to add in any close-range melee beyond a default melee weapon for game balance reasons (that is, we're not looking at any Halo-style pistol-whipping or Unreal Championship-style melee). But join us in a few weeks for a report on the weapons that will be shown at E3, including three Unreal Tournament classics: the combination-firing shock rifle, the rocket launcher, and the flak cannon.
While the final status of all weapons isn't confirmed (Epic is still going over the list of weapons that may or may not make the cut), Capps said in no uncertain terms, "We can't ship the game without a flak cannon." The bright-yellow, insanely powerful short-range cannon/flak grenade launcher is pretty much an Unreal Tournament classic at this point and will definitely be making the cut, untouched (Xbox fans will recall that this was the only weapon that remained as it was in Unreal Championship 2 as well--largely because of how emblematic of the Unreal series the weapon has become). Otherwise, Epic is "trying to find a good balance between the deadliness of [the original Unreal Tournament's weapons] and UT 2004." And what about mutators, the optional gameplay tweaks that have let UT players play games in low gravity or with big heads? Whether all the same mutators from the previous games will make the cut in 2007 remains to be seen, but Capps confides, "We can't ship without instagib"--a mode that's so popular it was even included in the melee-heavy Unreal Championship 2.
When we asked about the plan for vehicles in UT 2007, the answer we got was, "more, bigger, more." Yes, if all you want is a re-creation of ONS-Torlan, the now-famous multiplayer level featured in the UT 2004 demo, with that same environment and with those same vehicles, you'll be able to make that happen in UT 2007 using the game's modification tools, which we'll touch on later. But while UT 2004 featured vehicles created by the militaristic Axon Research Corporation (which largely ended up resembling futuristic Earth vehicles, such as tanks and buggies, as well as a few sci-vehicles like the manta hovercraft), the new game will feature an all-new line of vehicles from the Necris race--the pale-faced humanoid warriors who have been a part of the UT series since 1999. Details on this new line of vehicles remain under wraps, but the Necris will certainly have much more "outlandish" vehicles that look and handle very differently from those in 2004--and you'll be able to choose to play games using only Necris vehicles (or only Axon vehicles from 2004, or team games pitting one set of vehicles against the other).
The new game will also push even harder on one of the series' strongest, but perhaps not quite as famous, traits--the artificial intelligence used for its "bot characters" in the single-player game. Epic's Steven Polge, who was the AI programmer for the original Unreal Tournament, is the lead designer on UT 2007, and he and the development team are putting more emphasis on voice chat--both how characters react to commands and also what sort of on-the-fly chatter bots will use. Currently, the team hopes to make UT 2007's bots just as chatty as they were before but with more context--for instance, they may call out to you that they've sighted two enemies coming up over the next hill (rather than giving out a more-generic warning that some enemies have been sighted somewhere). The new game will also continue to support the less-well-known voice commands that were featured in UT 2004--if you have a headset, you'll still be able to give vocal commands to your teammates to converge on key points or give you backup.
The game's single-player mode is currently planned to have a similar structure to UT 2004's--a single-player tournament ladder through multiple play modes where different computer-controlled characters challenge you for rankings. Epic acknowledges that multiplayer play is the core of Unreal Tournament, but apparently a great many UT players surveyed stated that they generally played the game offline--this is due in no small part to the excellent computer AI, which has always followed orders well, acted on objectives, and put up a surprisingly good fight (without always resorting to unfair superhuman tactics). The single-player game will even advance the story and timelines of the Unreal universe beyond what was seen in the previous PC and Xbox games; you can expect to see reappearances from key characters like the Earth soldiers-turned-gladiators Malcom, Brock, and Lauren, for instance, now older and wiser.
When asked about Epic's plans to expand outreach to the fan community (beyond the studio's already unprecedented support), Capps replied emphatically, "Yes, we really, really want that." Though nothing has been officially announced, Epic apparently has no plans of letting up on its community support, including its Make Something Unreal contest. Epic is also apparently looking to create built-in functionality for things like clan Web pages, matchmaking, and player stats all in-game (but it plans to run master servers for online play just like it has been all along, rather than rely on third-party applications). Epic aims to "at least have the functionality of Xbox Live," a service that has long offered features such as real-time voice-over-Internet and friends lists and is one that the developer is no stranger to. Epic is even investigating ways to help call out the best fan-created content, possibly as an in-game browser that can automatically queue up downloads (so that even casual fans can find the 10 best maps and mods quickly and easily). Regardless, the plan back at the home office is to keep "giving away lots of cool free stuff" in the form of extra content after launch and possibly to revisit the game at a later time with a special-edition packed with all the postrelease content. Any way you slice it, Unreal Tournament 2007 will have a whole lot to offer: all-new gameplay on a massive scale, an entirely new line of vehicles, expanded community support, and graphics and physics that are truly a generation ahead. Stay tuned to GameSpot for more updates on the game leading up to its release next year.
Unreal Tournament 3 Quick Links
Summary | Reviews | News | Previews & Features | Images | Videos | Downloads | Answers | Hints & Cheats | Forum | Check Prices
- GameSpot Score8.5great
Content you might like…
-
Unreal Tournament 3 Demo
This demo includes three maps for deathmatch and vehicle capture-the-flag modes with support for bots and online play.
- Oct 12, 2007
Users who looked at this article also looked at these content items.
Related Content
-
Dark Void Mixed Combat I Movie
Check out some of the different combat styles in Dark Void!
- Nov 30, 2009
Matches based on text similarity.
Images
- Midway
- Epic Games
- Sci-Fi First-Person...
- Release: Nov 19, 2007 »
- ESRB: Mature
Games you may like…
-
Unreal Tournament 2004
(PC) -
Unreal Tournament
(PC) -
Unreal Tournament 2003
(PC) -
Quake Wars
(PC) -
Half-Life 2
(PC)
Users who looked at content for this game also looked at these games.
See More Similar Games
14 Comments