An Epic Rein

Epic Games' VP talks Unreal Engine, Unreal Tournament III, Gears of War and more.
4/23/2008 8:27 PM | 0 Comments | Page 3 of 5

Crispy Gamer: Are they always going to be exclusive, or are you going to add them later to PS3 and PC?

Rein: Don't know. For now they're exclusive. [laughs]

Crispy Gamer: Are the user mods going to be downloadable through Xbox Live?

Rein: That answer is, sure, if we put them on there. We're still working with Microsoft in trying to figure out how to get mods on the platform. Worst-case scenario, we'll go mine the mods and work with our partners to get some mods up there, but we're still hopeful that if we don't have it for launch that we'll have some way of user exchanging of mods. It's not a for sure thing, but I don't want to promise it. We're hopeful about it. We've had some very good recent conversations with Microsoft on the topic. John Schappert is apparently a big fan of mods, so he's helping us navigate the right channels and try to get them comfortable in having it.

It's coming late and hot, so I'm not sure we'll have it at launch, but I've always said, worst-case scenario this version will benefit from mods. Whether that means you'll be able to exchange them yourself, like we can on PlayStation 3, I don't know. Definitely what John said when I talked to him was he would love to have a way to do it over Xbox Live, but you know that doing content through Xbox Live usually requires a certification process, so we'll have to wait and see. [laughs] Even at this late hour, I'm cautiously optimistic.

Crispy Gamer: What about 360 versus PC gaming? Is that at all possible or no?

Rein: No. The problem with that is the same problem we had if we'd tried to do it on PS3: Just keeping the versions in sync when you can put out a PC version every five minutes if you wanted to, whereas [for consoles] you've got to go through certain processes. It creates so much of a burden, that in the end with a company the size of ours we just don't have the resources for that.

Crispy Gamer: You guys have only made one single-player version of Unreal with the original version of Unreal. Do you want to go back and do that sometime again? You handed off the reins for Unreal 2; do you envision Unreal just being a multiplayer shooter?

Rein: No, I think one day Unreal will come back. We still love the franchise. It's a great world in which to build stories, obviously. One day, I don't know, 10 years? Five years? Who knows when? We're not done with Unreal as a single-player game. It might not be done in our careers, who knows? [laughs] I don't think the last chapter of that story has been written, because we like Unreal, and it's a nice sci-fi world in which to build things, as you can see in UT.

Crispy Gamer: What do you think of people using Unreal Engine 3 to build Machinima?

Rein: I think it's really cool. You know, basically the Gears of War commercial -- the Mad World Commercial -- was professionally produced Machinima. That just shows you how far you can go with it, right? As the hardware gets better and better, we're seeing unbelievable stuff from Nvidia these days on graphics cards. As the hardware gets better and better, the Machinima sooner or later is going to be cinematic quality. The Mad World commercial was a great example of that. The Digital Domain guys that were working on it have a new commercial now, so that's pretty cool.