We’re on the ground at GDC 2023, watching Epic Games’ State of Unreal event, where the company dives deep into its developer tools and videogames. The main focus, as will be a surprise to no one, is Unreal Engine 5.
Tim Sweeney kicked the event off with a speech, reminding us what Epic has been up to – fighting Apple, Travis Scott, FTC – before we got a showcase of the Unreal Engine’s new procedural features.
As you can check out in the full video below, UE5’s procedural features allow more streamlined landscape design, plus new objects to interact with the landscape automatically. It’s a super impressive demo.
Meanwhile, Fortnite is still a thing, and we got a look at its new shiny coat of paint, with Epic’s aim to “increase visual quality but still maintain Fortnite’s style”, according to the game’s lead technical artist Jon Lauf.
Meanwhile, the number of studios using UE5 has increased, alongside 550 different film and TV projects that have made use of the engine. Plus, Tyler Black from Kabam – the team behind Marvel Contest of Champions, Disney Mirrorverse, and more – announced King Arthur: Legends Rise.
Developers like Hexworks, the team making Lords of the Fallen, and NCSoft of Guild Wars fame, also got a chance to explain how Unreal Engine helps them achieve their aims. After this, there were two big demos, one of Metahuman Animator, and another for Fortnite Creative’s UEFN, so check out our separate write-ups for each.
For more from GDC 2023, check out our Dinosaur Polo Club interview and Omega Strikers interview to hear all about game development from the people actually doing it.