Friday, June 14th 2024
Gears of War: E-Day To Feature Ray Traced Lighting, Reflections, and Shadows
Few days ago at the Xbox Games Showcase, Microsoft has pulled a rather neat surprise, announcing Gears of War: E-Day, which will be developed by The Coalition in Unreal Engine 5. Microsoft did not go into a lot of details, reveling just a few story details about this prequel to the first Gears of War and releasing the official announce trailer. Thankfully, Microsoft and the developer now shared a bit more story and technical details, also confirming that the game will support ray traced lighting, reflections, and shadows.
In an extensive blog over at the Xbox Wire, Microsoft and The Coalition talk about the story behind the Gears of War: E-Day, which will follow younger versions of the original heroes, Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago, going back to where it all started with the fight against the Locust invasion. The Creative Director Matt Searcy and Brand Director Nicole Fawcette were keen to note that the developer is working hard to recreate and improve the third-person action, storytelling, and all other things we expect from Gears of War game.
"It's going to feel like a new Gears game, because that's what it is," Searcy says. "It's us revisiting the tone and the feeling of what makes Gears great, but we're tapping into new techniques, new processes, and new technology that's going to make the gameplay feel better than ever. It's going to be awesome, a game that feels both truly new, and authentically Gears."
In addition, Kate Rayner, Studio Technical Director at The Coalition, revealed a bit more details about the technical side of the game and the advancements that Unreal Engine 5 will bring to the game. According to the Rayner, the game will include over 100 times more environment and character details, compared to the Gears 5. He also confirmed that the game will feature hardware raytraced lighting, reflections, and shadows, as well as "next-generation destruction and gore, and cutting-edge animation technology". As it is based on Unreal Engine 5, the game is expected to use Lumen as well as Nanite, key technologies from UA5 engine. In addition, the developer was keen to note that the game's trailer was an in-engine trailer, and it looks pretty impressive.
Unfortunately, we still do not have a precise date of launch but hopefully, Microsoft and The Coalition will share more details soon.
Source:
Xbox Wire
In an extensive blog over at the Xbox Wire, Microsoft and The Coalition talk about the story behind the Gears of War: E-Day, which will follow younger versions of the original heroes, Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago, going back to where it all started with the fight against the Locust invasion. The Creative Director Matt Searcy and Brand Director Nicole Fawcette were keen to note that the developer is working hard to recreate and improve the third-person action, storytelling, and all other things we expect from Gears of War game.
In addition, Kate Rayner, Studio Technical Director at The Coalition, revealed a bit more details about the technical side of the game and the advancements that Unreal Engine 5 will bring to the game. According to the Rayner, the game will include over 100 times more environment and character details, compared to the Gears 5. He also confirmed that the game will feature hardware raytraced lighting, reflections, and shadows, as well as "next-generation destruction and gore, and cutting-edge animation technology". As it is based on Unreal Engine 5, the game is expected to use Lumen as well as Nanite, key technologies from UA5 engine. In addition, the developer was keen to note that the game's trailer was an in-engine trailer, and it looks pretty impressive.
Unfortunately, we still do not have a precise date of launch but hopefully, Microsoft and The Coalition will share more details soon.
19 Comments on Gears of War: E-Day To Feature Ray Traced Lighting, Reflections, and Shadows
Hardware ray-traced lighting and reflections likely refers to Hardware Lumen, which no other console game has used yet to my knowledge. Every UE5 release so far has stuck to Software Lumen exclusively on consoles, and most don't even give you the option to do HW Lumen on PC. Epic has been trying to optimize HW Lumen for use on consoles and maybe with Gears E-Day they'll finally get there. (HW Lumen is similar to normal SW Lumen but with more samples per pixel, better reflections, and of course, HW accelerated)
Gears of Wars games have always been kind of a showcase of Unreal Engine - not the cutting edge of things but the reasonably new stuff that can viably be used in an AAA title. Outside console marketing push this is mostly related to the new game using state of the art UE5.
That's kind of a deal breaker.
Ah, so 30 FPS, then. That's a shame.
I'm glad they are going back to E day even though I enjoyed Gears 4/5 the story was going a bit off the rails still impressive what they did on basically only slightly better than a radeon HD 7770 equipped Xbox one just significantly more vram.Who cares what it runs like on consoles a 5070 will likely be 2x faster than the series X when this releases.
With whatever the top end chip being 3x to 4x a series X or more.
Their PC ports have been pretty good other than them not liking Pascal cards due to how they handle Async compute.
Kidding.
I don't care how many fancy traceable rays they give in a game, if the game sucks then it's just wasted time, resources and energy. Also, I don't spend my time trying to stare at my reflection in a game and I'm not trying to tail a suspect like you see in the movies as the protagonist uses the reflections off a window to see which way the bad guy goes. In these games I'm moving fast, ducking for cover, shooting and not:
Honestly, I feel the whole ray tracing thing is just a waste.
It could be the first game with hardware lumen on console at least in inengine cutscenes they all ready did that in the Matrix Demo even gears 5 the cinematics ran at 30fps at much higher fidelity on console.
Mayne they'll do a split 60/30 again but given how weak consoles are at this point who knows.
Just look at Hellblade 2. Their use of VSMs were almost perfect. I saw Ray traced reflections and shadow way worst that what was on that game.