The Future of Video Games Has Arrived

This morning, Epic Games announced and showed Unreal Engine 5, the next generation of its first in class suite of development tools. The above demo looks absolutely incredible and for the first time actually shows what next-gen video games could look like. It is also intended to be scalable from phones to high end PCs so there will be undoubtedly be interesting choices made with this ability in mind

There were two main focuses for UE5: better visuals and easier creation. I cannot speak to the latter as someone that doesn’t understand the technical aspects, but what I could understand sounded like it would make creation of models easier and faster. ON the former goal, there was a notable detail I felt was immediately obvious: the PS5 is capable of using movie quality assets. Many films use Unreal Engine for at least some of their visual effects, but these have to be higher quality and more detailed to fit in with the live action footage. The question here is if character models will realistically be able to match that level of detail. Only time will tell.

There are a couple important things to note: It has been confirmed that this demo is live gameplay and not a prerendered video like many similar demos. It was running on a PlayStation 5, which means this is a realistic look at the level of visual quality the next God of War or Spider-Man game could have. In fact, Epic and Sony worked together closely during development to ensure UE5 was as compatible as possible with PS5. I cannot wait to see the fruits of that partnership.

Ultimately, the quality of this engine and the games it can produce is yet to be seen. As the first real look at next-gen gameplay, this was an exhilarating demonstration. I just hope everyone is able to live up to the potential that is so clear. Hope springs eternal.

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