This is an idea I’ve been kicking around in the back of my mind for ages now, something I’d really like to do. The original thought was to make a “high def” version of the first Unreal, or Return to Na Pali, similar in vein to how Black Mesa did Half Life. But I feel like those games wouldn’t lend themselves to a verb batim remake so much. I’m very much inspired by the original Unreal, Return to Na Pali, and the mods like Operation Na Pali and Xidia. I think with the talent, skills, and work ethic of mod developers these days, matched with an ever-increasing ease of use of the devleopment tools provided by Epic Games, a truely spectacular single player campaign could be built in the Unreal universe that would pay homage to the oldschool single player games while offering a mind-stimulating storyline.
Of course I’d want to hit the books- or the intertubes, as it were, to make the storyline fit in with the Unreal canon while using the lore to tell an interesting story. What really happened to Lauren? What is the true story behind Xan? What provoked the miner riots that ultimately lead up to Liandri starting the tournament? What if there was a connection between those riots and the Human Skaarj war, all benefiting the weapons corporations at the top? Who are the mysterious Mercenaries? These are just some questions that could be the basis of a crazy storyline. The necessity for me, of course, is that it would have to tell a very human story, from the eyes of player- ie the player learns things as the character learns things, and things aren’t always told to you, they are “shown” to you.
Right now all I have is some ideas, some models, and raw ambition. I’d like to sit down with story writers to completely flesh out an idea, before bringing on mappers designers and artists to write the design doc and make the dream come alive. I feel like coders aren’t going to be needed quite so much as artists and other content developers- but you never know.
To be honest, I’m still not sure if I really want to go through with this- but I wanted to write here and see if people were interested in the idea, and what thoughts they had about it. In my mind, I’m seeing an epic storyline that contends with the likes of Halo… or Dune… or Half Life. But all set in the unique Unreal universe, filled with all its dark motifs, greedy corportations, and raunchy humor. It’d be a blast.
Last thing I can share is just a few “High def” UT99 weapons I had been working on a year ago, possibly for use in this project. Yeah, I’d probably wanna revisit most of these…
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17002839/UT99HD/ShockRifle20.jpg
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17002839/UT99HD/ShockRifle21.jpg
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17002839/UT99HD/Enforcer2.jpg
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17002839/UT99HD/FlakCannon3.jpg
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17002839/UT99HD/PulseGun2.jpg
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17002839/UT99HD/Ripper2.jpg
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17002839/UT99HD/Translocator2.jpg