First off before we get into part two I just wanted to take the time to tell those of you who wrote in about the first part, thank you. The article has been read over 8,000 times in the two weeks since it has been up, making it the 3rd most read article of all time here. On to part two..

After doing some research on Unreal itself, I stumbled across an incredible article on those beginning days of the game. Gamespot wrote an extensive article about its origins. The article itself is from 1998 and the original writer is no longer part of that company to show you how old it is. I, HIGHLY, recommend reading this article before you go any further.

Now that you have read that you can see why I am going to change some things around for this part of the article. They covers just about everything I could want to dig up on the game itself. So what I have decided to do for this part is to touch base on things in the game that captured not only my imagination but all of my time as well. I've often wondered what didn't make it into the original game. Recently I had a chance to talk to Cliffy B about this subject and I got some very, very interesting responses, but before we get into that let's look at what made Unreal great.


One of the first things that you see when you started up the game was the now legendary castle flyby. To me they couldn't have picked a better way to start the game. All of the elements of what made the game 'Unreal' looking are right there. The reflective marble floor, the ground breaking skylines, realistic water, fog and of course the moody music.

The graphics engine brought many new things to the gaming world. High resolution textures, better volumetric fog, multiple skyboxes (more realistic than other games), and the best lighting to date in a video game. But besides the incredible graphics there were ground breaking in other areas as well. The Dev Team introduced two things that would forever change the indusrty: dodging and alt-fire. While Unreal wasn't the first of it's kind, it was definitely the best.


When it first came out there was some criticism of the indoor maps, while the outdoor maps were definitely praised by most gamers. Admit it, the first time you stepped out of the Vortex Rikers and took a look around, you were impressed. I remember spending 15 minutes just walking around the top of the map to see what cool little nuances the mapper, 'Pancho' Eekels put in and then spending another 5 minutes trying to find a spot where I could cliff dive to the bottom. Earlier games like Duke Nukem had cool levels, but they were tiny in comparison to the ones in Unreal.


Now that we have talked about all of the good things that the game brought lets take a look at some of the problems. Besides the delay of the game there were serious problems with the Netcode. This made online Deathmatch a pain in the butt, not to mention how hard it was trying to play a decent Co-op game with your friend. However, finding and solving these problems would pave the way for the future success of Unreal Tournament. In the end both the problems and delays didn't damper the success of the game.

As I mentioned earlier I had a chance to ask Cliff what were somethings that didn't make the final cut of the game. Here is his reply.

"Unreal was going to have "morph stations" in which you could turn into many of the monsters that wound up populating the world. Similar to the "posession" element, you'd be able to hit a station and completely change your locomotion.

The game was going to have a Nail Gun in it until we heard about Quake 1 having one. I remember going to Home Depot and lovingly looking at the various power tools and wondering how I could nag James into incorporating some more hot Black and Decker action into the game.

The "stinger" weapon was originally going to have splash damage (shattering Tarydium would hurt...) as well as the ability to embed itself into its victims. Victims would quickly become volatile and would glow; if they fell more than a foot or so it would trigger an explosion, killing them. You'd essentially turn your foe into a walking Meth Lab.

We were going to have more "spider" physics in the game. Foes that could walk up and down walls seamlessly.

The Nali originally looked like humanoid tribesman. The more "alien" look was adopted after much grousing.

The Translocator was originally going to go somewhere in Unreal 1. James even modeled the thing out at one point - it looked like a little cylinder device. Luckily we got to build it in Tournament!

Unreal 1 was originally going to have many "Skaarj Crypt" levels that were cut from the final game. Some made it into later releases. These sections would allude to more of the Skaarj mythos and touch upon some of their ancient tribal history and their beliefs. (They are, after all, sophisticated savages)."

There were some definitely cool ideas that didn't make it in. However like the netcode problems, some of these ideas would make it into future Unreal games.

What was in store next for the Devs? Well it was a little game called Unreal Tournament...