Unreal Tournament (not to be confused with the 1999 classic first person shooter of the same name and from the same developer) is an upcoming first person shooter action video game set in the Unreal series and is a direct sequel to Unreal Tournament 3.
The game is currently in development by the hugely successful developer, Epic Games, who owns the Gears of Wars series and has previously developed all of the titles in the Unreal series.
The title is currently in development for Microsoft Windows PC’s, OS X and Linux operating systems with no mention of an 8th gen home console release. While there’s no specific date, the game is expected to launch around Q4 2014 – Q1/Q2 2015.
Unreal Tournament is being developed in an entirely new way, completely unlike any traditional game that comes out of a huge developer and publisher like Epic Games. The development of the game officially began on May 8th 2014 when the project went live and the collaboration between community and Epic Games began.
Any video game developer that has a subscription for using Unreal Engine 4 can actively take place in developing the game, breaking the mould of how games are traditionally made, a spokesperson for Epic said, “anyone with an Unreal Engine 4 subscription can participate in its development”. It has been referred to crowd sourced development.
The game was confirmed to exist and teased at the same time (on May 2nd) when Vice President and Co-founder of Epic Games, Mark Rein, tweeted, “I love Unreal Tournament – So excited for the comeback! More next week!”, sparking a firestorm of excitement within the gaming community, specifically the PC gaming demographic that largely grew up playing the games predecessors.
It was however official announced by Epic in a live stream that was hosted on Twitch (which has recently been acquired by Amazon) on May 8th.
During the live stream, Steve Polge (a leading programmer on the game) said that there had been demand for a reboot of the Unreal Tournament and that the recent release of the hugely powerful engine, Unreal Engine 4, made this the ideal time to do so. He said, “For years, we’ve wanted to reboot Unreal Tournament, but we knew we had to do it in concert with developers and the mod community, and in an environment that sets them up with the proper tools to make it happen. Given the recent launch of UE4, we think this is the right time to move forward”
Since then, development on the game has moved forward with a pre alpha build being released in a playable state on August 15th. Given the nature of an alpha build, the pre alpha is not at all representative of the finished build of the game. The pre alpha build was made available to members of the Unreal Tournament Forum and is set to be receiving updates on a weekly basis, though as development progresses this may be subject to change.
Gameplay will of course remain largely unchanged from past iterations of the Unreal Tournament series. To change it would be to change the very heart of the game. The weapons that you will be relying on will be scattered across the map at the beginning of each round and will respawn after a set amount of time.
Despite not being confirmed just yet, the gameplay modes expected to return are:
Deathmatch – every man or woman for themselves in this everyone vs everyone battle,
Team Deathmatch – team up with your friends and allies and bring war to your opponents.
Capture the Flag – Grab flag, return to base, win points. Rinse and repeat.
The following game modes were in the most recent game in the series, Unreal Tournament 3 Black Edition and may well return in Unreal Tournament.
Duel – It’s 1v1 in this game mode where players queue to face off before being sent to the back of the queue.
Vehicle – Capture the Flag – it’s capture the flag but with vehicles, need I say more?
Betrayal – You’re a freelance soldier and you don’t care about your team, just the pay cheque. Each enemy kill increases the money in the pot, killing your team will give you all the money in the pot, but only if you can survive for 30 seconds. If you can’t, your team mates get the points plus extra.
There have been no details released yet regarding the plot of Unreal Tournament, it’s entirely possible that this is because the game won’t have an actual storyline and may well be an arena shooter. Only time will tell.
At this time, character specifics haven’t been revealed.
Note: This wiki will be updated once we have more information about the game.