When it comes to PC gaming, Epic Games has been triumphant throughout the 90′s and early 2000′s. While many gamers today may only know the studio for its amped-up shooters and widely-used game engines, the name “Epic MegaGames” still strikes a chord with gaming enthusiasts who recall a simpler time.
While gaming has changed significantly in the past decade, it appears that Epic has dared to go back to its roots with Fortnite, which will not only be the first game to run on Unreal Engine 4 — it will also be PC-exclusive.
During what was arguably the golden age of PC gaming, Epic stood out with landmark series like Jill of the Jungle, Epic Pinball, Unreal Tournament and more. Epic’s own rockstar developer, Cliff Bleszinksi, got his start creating the atmospheric Dare to Dream in 1993, and ground-breaking run-and-gun platformer Jazz Jackrabbit a year later.
Since then, Epic appeared to have all but left its early days behind by aiming towards the shooter genre and favoring console systems over PC. During a San Diego Comic-Con panel today, however, Cliffy B himself spoke of the studio’s upcoming co-op survival sandbox title, and praised PCs as being part of Epic’s “heritage.” On the topic of Fortnite, he stated, “this is a PC-designed game, it’s shipping exclusively for the PC.” According to Bleszinksi, there is no need to wait for the next generation.
“Next-gen’s here. It’s been here. It’s a high-end PC.”
Unlike previous Epic Games titles, Fortnite will bring players together to survive, rather than have them frag each other for glory. Players will have to create bunkers and various types of defences during the day, in order to survive onslaughts of monsters at night. Needless to say, in the face of such an FPS-saturated market, Fortnite certainly appears to be a breath of fresh air, both for us and for Epic. Bleszinski seems to welcome the change.
“We’ve had like six years of Gears and we’ve perfected the art of killing. Fortnite is serving as a fresh change of pace for us.”
Ranters, are you supportive of Epic’s “back-to-basics” change of pace? Epic certainly touts its upcoming title as being a game for everyone, but is it for you?
Fortnite is set to release in 2013, exclusively for the PC.
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Source: Joystiq
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IDK about this game. It’s very… unappealing to me.
so this is the huge “next-gen” graphics. I’m disappointed a bit, it looks like TF2 with a slightly better textures
Just because they use the engine doesn’t mean the graphic will be better. Graphics is a very small part of engines. Also those aren’t screenshots.
And why exactly does this game need the Unreal 4 engine???
Honestly, it’s obvious this is nowhere near finished and I think it was dumb for them to release these screens because it looks terrible…
Probably to use features the unreal 3 engine didn’t have
Well, so far I see nothing that the Unreal 3 engine cannot do…
The engine has set limitations when you make it there is very little you can change after you make it without rewriting the engine
WHOO!EPIC!
I smell sarcasm in the air… lol
PC only, I’ll be damned. I was sure this would be another Xbox exclusive. Anyway, not very interested yet, but I’ll be paying attention when they give some more details and show some actual gameplay.
They went from Gears of War to this. Wow.
Waiting on proper screenshots (which will probably come later in the development). From the description, it sounds like a co-op zombie themed tower defense game. Essentially Dungeon Defenders with the undead.