PALGN: Firstly, can you please introduce yourself and your role in Unreal Tournament III?
Jeff Morris: Jeff Morris, producer.
PALGN: Unreal Tournament III’s single-player experience has been given a major overhaul in that now it features an in-depth story and is, in essence, different from the multiplayer modes. Why was this decision made and how do you feel it’s affected the overall experience?
JM: A staggering percentage of UT2004’s customers never went online, even though the game was primarily billed as a MP game. Now, we’ve always had excellent AI and that enabled a very online experience offline. But at the same time, if so many of our fans preferred solo play, we wanted to ensure UT3 had a single player that merited the purchase on its own. We’ve got a great campaign mode in UT3, one that takes the player (in the guise of the leader of the Ronin team) through an epic adventure than spans multiple planets.
PALGN: Have any modifications been made to the game’s Unreal Editor in terms of interface and options available?
JM: There are a HUGE number of improvements and additions, enough to fill an article by itself. The tools are far simpler to use and focus on giving power to content folks normally restricted to programmers. UT3 wouldn’t have nearly as much content in it were it not for the rich and robust feature set incorporated in UE3.
The visuals are looking very impressive.
PALGN: What are some of the new vehicles and weaponry players will be able to utilise in the game?
JM: One thing that was very important to us was that the new vehicle team was balanced, but at the same time radically different from the Axon team. An excellent example is the Necris Darkwalker. It has all the “tank” like attributes of the Axon Goliath: it’s heavily armed and armored, has a slow turret traversal rate, and has a secondary gun for fast moving opponents. The Darkwalker has all those elements, but is a tripod vehicle rather than treaded. This allows it to climb far more effectively that the Goliath, as well as crouch and creep up on enemies. It’s our best example of the “equal but different” philosophy we embraced from the outset.
PALGN: It’s been confirmed there will be a new multiplayer mode called Unreal Warfare which consists of several elements that differ from the more familiar game modes in previous instalments. Can you give us an explanation of how the new mode will work?
JM: Warfare takes the best parts of the Onslaught gametype, adds a elements of the Assault gametype and throws in a bunch of brand new features. Each team has a Power Core that they need to protect, all the while trying to destroy the enemies. On many maps you’ll be able to pull that off by fulfilling in-mission objectives. These missions could trigger a missile strike from offshore or flood the core causing it to take damage, or what have you. Add hoverboards, deployables, Power Orbs, and a whole new Necris vehicle team and you’ve got some primo over-the-top spectacle!
PALGN: What was it like developing the game for multiple platforms?
JM: It’s a huge challenge since you practically need to treat each as their own, separate game. At the same time there are a lot of advantages, not the least of which is the prospect of selling a similar number of units on each platform.
This particular screen looks a lot like War of the Worlds.
PALGN: Will the PlayStation 3 version utilise the motion sensing capabilities of the Sixaxis controller?
JM: Definitely. The hoverboard benefits from it the most and it’s very natural to rock the controlled back and forth to avoid weapon fire. The alternate fire of the Redeemer is a guided missile and the Sixaxis makes and ideal input device for getting a nuclear “hole-in-one”.
PALGN: It’s becoming a trend to see extra content being made available online through various networks such as the Xbox Live Marketplace. Are there any plans to release extra content for Unreal Tournament III?
JM: Epic and UT has always released bonus packs after launch and UT3 will be no different. You can definitely plan on seeing new content after ship.
PALGN: Will there be any major differences between the console and PC versions?
JM: Not in any way most people will notice. Two tweaks were slightly slowing down the on-foot speed of the players and marginally increasing their collision cylinder. A controller can very nimbly handle UT3s incredible speed and typically gotchas (like being shot from behind and not getting around in time) just aren’t a problem for us.
PALGN: Will the game support cross platform play at all?
JM: We’re still on the fence. We’re not 100% sure this is a feature people want and it will require a lot of testing.
PALGN: Thanks for your time, it’s much appreciated!
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PALGN would like to thank Jeff Morris and Epic Games for taking the time to answer these questions. Unreal Tournament III is currently scheduled for a release later this year on the PlayStation 3, and PC with the Xbox 360 version expected sometime in early 2008.
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