If Gears 6 looks remotely like this Unreal Engine 5 demo, we’ll be ecstatic

techradar.com:

Gears of War developer The Coalition is back with a new Unreal Engine 5 tech demo, giving us a fresh look at what Gears 6 could offer –and it’s rather exciting indeed. 

Called ‘The Cavern,’ the tech demo builds upon The Coalition’s July ‘Alpha Point’ demonstration and uses the same character model we previously saw but inside a different environment.

Lasting for a minute (the footage begins at 0:47), The Cavern demo showcases movie quality assets that feature tens of millions of polygons that can be rendered in real-time. This results in a massive 100x leap forward in graphic detail, according to The Coalition. Featuring incredibly realistic visuals, we find the unnamed character holding a light crystal, as he faces down a fearsome enemy. Swap that crystal for a gun and it wouldn’t look out of place in a Gears sequel. 

It certainly looks impressive, but that’s not all. During an interview with Xbox Wire(opens in new tab), studio technical director Kate Rayner elaborated on The Coalition’s work with Unreal Engine 5. Advising that’s been ongoing for over a year – something we previously knew thanks to the Alpha Point demo – Rayner confirmed The Cavern was the team’s “first-ever cinematic in UE5.”

Asked about her initial impressions of Epic’s latest engine, Rayner said: “First, it was very exciting to get access, everyone at The Coalition was jumping in. That’s when we began the work to create Alpha Point. The biggest surprise to me was how finished the engine was, and how easy it was to bring UE4 content into UE5 seamlessly.” As for transitioning from Unreal Engine 4 to 5, Rayner calls this process “very smooth,” telling Xbox Wire “it only took us about two weeks to get the team switched over.”

Naturally, the questions didn’t