An indie game developer has added Superman's power set to Unreal Engine 5's CitySample. The explorable city was featured in The Matrix Awakens last year, a playable experience that showcased the power of the new Unreal Engine 5 as well as promoting 2021's The Matrix Resurrections movie.
Unreal Engine 5 officially launched earlier this week after a year of early access, and with its launch came a State Of Unreal presentation showcased a staggering amount of developers such as Tomb Raider's Crystal Dynamics using Epic's new game engine for their upcoming projects. Unreal Engine 5 has shown off its industry-leading features such as Lumen and Nanite which allow for dynamic, real-time lighting, in incredibly detailed scenes, which combined with their photoscan-based character creator Metahuman, can create photorealistic scenes for virtual productions and gaming whilst saving memory space and rendering time, making it an obvious pick for developers. These features were showcased in a promotional Matrix tie-in last year that showed a fully explorable, highly detailed city, and photorealistic character models of Matrix actors Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss that alternated between their appearances in the 2021 movie The Matrix Resurrections, and their appearance in the 1999 original movie, The Matrix.
Upon releasing The Matrix Awakens, many developers have used the assets and game engine to explore and come up with their own ideas for a city-based open-world game. Indie game developer Volod tweeted their vision for a Superman game, using the base Unreal Engine mannequin to showcase the popular superhero's powers in the demo environment. In their initial tweet, Volod showed what is perhaps Superman's most iconic power, flight, as the mannequin wove effortlessly between the city's skyscrapers. Things got even more interesting in a follow-up tweet that showed how the character model interacted with other objects in the engine, using Unreal Engine's appropriately named Chaos physics engine to crash land onto a car and cause it to spin into the air. Fan responses to Volod's tweets were positive but brought up a sore spot for many DC fans: the lack of a modern Superman open-world game.
Although Superman has been a key character in NetherRealm's Injustice series, which saw Superman and some fellow Justice League members facing off against Batman and his team of heroes, and is playable in the LEGO Batman series for younger players, many fans have long pointed out the high potential in a Superman-focused open-world game in the same vein as the Batman: Arkham series. At one point rumors circulated that Batman: Arkham developers Rocksteady were working on this but WB Games rejected the game, and Rocksteady developed Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League instead, which will feature Superman in an antagonistic role.
Volod's clips show an impressive vision for a modern Superman game on Unreal Engine 5 and the fan response further shows that DC fans would be delighted if WB did decide to make their own official title. For now, fans desperate to play an official Superman-led open-world game will have to make do with the 2005 movie tie-in game, Superman Returns.
Source: Volod/Twitter