14 DAY TRIAL // Epic Games might no longer own the big Gears of War franchise at the moment, but the company seems to be determined to remain relevant in the development space and is currently working on an entirely new intellectual property which will power a big Unreal Engine 4 title in the coming years.
The information comes from Animation Bootcamp: Animation Prototyping for Games panel that took place during the Game Developers Conference, which was attended by Polygon.
Lead animator Jay Hosfelt was the main speaker and he explained exactly how Epic Games was using a new design philosophy in order to prototype and then create a new game without having a publishing partner.
The developer has not given concrete details about the coming experience and there is no info on when it might be launched or on what platforms.
But the concept art and the character models that were shown during the GDC presentation were very similar to those used when Epic Games revealed the Samaritan tech demo.
It was first shown during the 2011 of the same event and was designed to serve as a proof of concept and show gamers and other teams how a next-gen title would look.
The demo only used a 3.5 version of the Unreal Engine and was first introduced at a time when neither Microsoft nor Sony made official announcements about the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4.
When Samaritan was first shown, many fans of the company said that it looked like a cool initial idea for a game, but Epic explained that it would not use the character or the setting for any future product.
Jay Hosfelt did not mention the name of the tech demo and said that he was only showing early designs for a future title.
The lead animator explains that at the moment his company is using a fast prototyping process for character models, using the power of the new Unreal Engine 4, in order to test out different ideas and finally settle on a design that will go through the asset creation process.
He explains that the new process allows his studio to move from idea to playable state in one week for some elements, while the same sequences required 12 weeks when Gears of War 3 was in development.
At the moment, Epic Games is confirmed to work on an Unreal Engine 4 game called Fortnite.