Unreal Tournament 2007 Officially Announced

Midway has officially announced the next Unreal Tournament title, naming it UT 2007. Additionally, Gamespot reports on the Conquest mode expected to be a focus of the next title. From the article: "The idea behind conquest is to create huge, expansive levels that take advantage of the engine's new content-streaming technology and use onslaught-style instant transport to jump to hot spots on the map where the action is. Epic apparently feels that one of the greatest strengths of onslaught was the way it could accommodate large groups of players in vehicles but also drive them to congregate around specific areas with the control point system, rather than have them wandering around the map aimlessly."

Comments

Re:EA of FPS?

[TheRealFreakish]

I'd also like to see more interesting weapons and vehicals. Every FPS has the same handful of weapons that every other FPS has. It would be neat to have something crazy and interesting that doesn't also screw up the gameplay.

I'm not sure I'd agree with that. Pretty much every new version of UT has brought us at least one or two interesting new weapons. Maybe some of the other FPS games (all the tactical shooters, world war 2 games, CS clones) have stale weapons, but they've done pretty well with UT*.

For instance...

• Unreal: the Ripper, the Bio Rifle, even the shock combo was a neat new thing (though it didn't really come into play until..
• UT99: The redeemer and THE TRANSLOCATOR (one of the best ideas for a FPS to date). And the shock combo came into major use.
• UT2k3: Should never be spoken of.
• UT2k4: Spider mines, sticky mines, a reason to use the new link gun.

As for vehicles? Well 2k4's the first to have them and there's a decent variety. I love the fact that you can bail out of one of the vehicles in 2k7 and have it keep going to detonate on impact...sweet.

I'm hoping Epic really means it when they say they're going for gameplay over graphics this time around..because I would love to have a game as great as UT99 come along again.

Re:EA of FPS?

[Khuffie]

I heard that they were intending to be the EA of FPS games. They wanted to release a new version of Unreal every year. But 2004-2007 is three years, so . . . I guess they nixed that idea? Let me be the first to say...Thank God! Im really glad they didnt up and release a new UT game this year. One year between a game isn't anywhere near enough for an online FPS to mature with new levels, mods and such. I love UT2k4 and I shuddered when I heard them say they were going to release one every year. Thishis game will be released in 2006, although my best guess is towards the christmas season, so that's a 2.5 year period between UT2k4, which is a decent period. It's one of the few games I actually bought for my pc, and really am looking forward to the next installment!

Re:Planetside/Tribes?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think what you're saying about larger levels is correct, but it's highly ironic given that the developers seem to be saying that they want to bring back the close-quarters gameplay of the original UT.

I was reading an article about it the other day, and in the interview the developers were saying that they felt the gameplay in UT2003/2004 got too fast and that there is too much distance activity. They were explaining that they believe that one desirable characteristic of the original UT is that gameplay required more strategy of long-range movement and more physically close combat. They want to bring back that aspect of gameplay in UT2007.

This, however, is very ironic, seeing as how they have created a trend toward larger and larger maps. Unless they change something in a way I don't anticipate, I can only imagine that a gametype such as Conquest will only require more distance in combat. The vehicles in UT2004 certainly did this, enabling one to fire at competitors from the sky at large distance with homing missles. This is very different from anything in the original UT.

So I'm not sure how they are going to reconcile the desire to bring back one-on-one close combat while still making larger and larger, vast maps and sprawling gametypes. I'm not saying I don't like the idea of a Conquest gametype, just that they seem to be saying one thing about gameplay feel and doing another.

It's interesting to think about the Domination gametype in this regard. The original UT Domination gametype offered tremendous close-quarters, fast-paced gameplay. Supposedly it inspired the Onslaught gametype at least partially. But Onslaught is very different from Domination in gameplay, with large maps--large relative to the original Domination--and long-term change. The original Domination was dropped, leaving Double Domination, which isn't nearly as interesting as either the original Domination or newer Onslaught gametypes.

I guess what I'm saying is that, while I think the larger, more strategic, long-term gameplay of Onslaught and Conquest are certainly welcome, I hope that they put more attention into close-quarters gameplay as well. I would amend what the developers are saying, to say that it's not just that the original UT had strategy of movement, and close-quarters combat, but strategy of movement over relatively short distances, and close-quarters combat. They seem to be saying they will focus more on short-range gameplay, but we have to wait and see.

I play mostly Invasion as it is, though, so maybe that's the only thing I should be really worried about.

FF

[Given M. Sur]

Hopefully when this comes out more servers will turn friendly fire on. I doubt it though, unless they made that the default, as I can never find any UT2004 servers with FF.

FF forces better tactics than simply aiming towards groups of people and spraying.

I'll still probably get it and play it a little either way, but I would be extremely happy if FF was turned on by default.

As others mentioned mech-type vehicles would be pretty cool too.