14 DAY TRIAL // The Unreal series was once the most important product for developer Epic Games but it has been overshadowed by the introduction and success of Gears of War during the last few years.
But the team is apparently thinking about how Unreal could be rebooted and one of the most unusual possibilities includes making the game similar to Bethesda’s Skyrim, an open-world title where exploration is just as important as combat.
Cliff Bleszinski, who is one of the leading developers at Epic Games, said on Reddit that, “Sure, there would be shooting involved but exploration would almost be more important. Get back to that sense of wonder that the first game had.”
The developer revealed that he was a big fan of Skyrim and could see some of its mechanics work well within the Unreal universe.
Cliff Bleszinski also talked about the multiplayer-oriented Unreal Tournament and added, “Shooters and their sequels are a tricky beast. Often you wind up upsetting your core whenever you make a sequel because sometimes you change things the users didn’t want changed, or the users are so very in love with their memory of the original game that there’s nothing you can do to live up to the first game.”
The statements from Bleszinski should not be taken as a sign that Epic Games is in any way ready to work on a new game in the Unreal series.
At the moment the company is hard at work on Unreal Engine 4, the new technology that is suited for the PC and for the next generation of consoles from Microsoft and Sony.
The team is also developing Fortnite, a cooperative shooter that will use Unreal Engine 4 and which is designed to show off the central elements of the new tech.
Both products should be launched in 2013.