T I M E S T A M P S -Unreal 1 Story: 2:08 -Return to Na Pali Story: 10:42 -Unreal 2 Story: 13:36 -Unreal 1 Presentation: 23:49 -Return to Na Pali Presentation: 26:47 -Unreal 2 Presentation: 27:56 -Unreal 1 Gameplay: 32:02 -Return to Na Pali Gameplay: 39:02 -Unreal 2 Gameplay: 41:09 -Unreal 1 Level Design: 49:29 -Return to Na Pali Level Design: 56:16 -Unreal 2 Level Design: 57:57 -The Ideal Sequel: 1:01:19
The mercenary doesn't want to live in Na Pali. They crashed there, as the Vortex Riker and ISV Kran. The logs say that the planet has a very strong magnetic force (or something like that) that makes almost impossible to leave. Tarydium is used as a rich energy source, thats why the Skaarj are interested on the planet. If you take the time, those text logs can make the story very interesting, as do the levels through environmental storytelling. Thank you for the Review. Unreal deserves more attention.
I was hoping someone knew more about this sorta thing. I actually thought I was pretty thorough about reading the text logs, but I guess I missed a good chunk of them. (Although I do have to question why the Skaarj made a gun that uses an extremely valuable energy source as ammunition. Feels like a good way to burn money.)
@@HQ_Default From what I have heard, in the lore, the Stinger is actually a mining tool, something like a drill or a hammer, and it just so happens that, with minor tweaks, it can be made to shoot small things, and among them, the taridium crystals happen to be the most effective, and also somewhat abudant in places where the stinger itself is found.
@@Delfigamer1 oh thats awesome! really nice info =o very supprised ... i really thought stinger was kinda wierd it terms of comparasion with the other weapons ... now makes a bit more sense... maybe all the weapons are tools ? like ASMD to clear the way or blast mining ? i don't know the lore too well but there is weapons seems more realistic than others...
@@MsTatakai No, most of the other weaponry are actual firearms. Looking at the in-game weapon descriptions (available on the internet). The Dispersion Pistol is a standard-issue sidearm of the prison guards on Vortex Rikers (the ship at the very start of the game). The Razorjack is produced and brought to the planet by Skaarj. The only other possible DIY-junkbox of a weapon is the Biorifle, which is basically a big tank of green explosive shit with an exhaust valve (and the green explosive shit is just a byproduct of the tarydium refinement process, another cheap and locally abundant material).
From what I know, Unreal was supposed to have hub levels but the game went through so many changes over the years it ended up with more linear progression
@Seamus O'Dork There's a few design documents of Unreal on the web and they mention how they wanted to make big open hub levels unrealsp.fandom.com/wiki/Unreal_Bible
They had trouble making it work. You can actually see the remains of this in one of the leaked betas, where NyLeve's Falls is combined with Sacred Passage, so when you finish Rrajigar Mines all enemies you've already killed respawn
Actually there was an attempt to make one quite big hub level. You can spawn there using console command "open gateway". The map is pretty much fully scripted with everything working, except portals don't do a single thing there.
I played Unreal for about 8 years almost daily. The majority of the praise I have for this game is in the multiplayer. Every other shooter at the time you could basically walk and jump. This game added a strafe jump and was, in my eyes, revolutionary. With practice you could actually dodge incoming fire and with even more practice get about the maps quicker. Guns having alternate firing modes was also a really nice touch. I had barely touched the single player until I went and played it co-op, via a user created mod, with online mates. Giving people access to Unreal Editor (the game engine editor) was also such an amazing move. There was so many user created maps and mods. Yes, Return to Na-Pali wasn't entirely well received in the community and even worse than that Unreal 2. There was also Unreal Gold (like a rerelease special edition) which was really buggy, as they tried updating a few things, which made its compatibility with the original release a bit janky. I think they lucked out with the balance and feel of the gameplay on Unreal. Everything that came after just didn't feel right. Minus, of course, the amazing engine which still is going from strength to strength to this day. The fact there was outdoor environments, unlike everything else which were primarily indoor dungeons, was ground breaking. I was amazed to see OldUnreal dot com is still kind of active (the best resource site for getting it running properly on modern computers) and is still run by Smirftch who seems to be working on a patch to keep it running. Definitely a site worth checking if anyone is feeling nostalgic or feels like dusting off their CD to give it another go. The game slowly died a death with the release of UT and eventually they removed the multiplayer server browser hosts. OldUnreal started hosting a browser resource server, but, if someone bought the game in a sale or bargain bin and didn't know about that site the chances of connecting to/finding a multiplayer server were zero. I'll never forget this game, the amount of money I got stung for playing online via dial-up in the early days before affordable broadband, and, a lot of the players I spent a good amount of play time with. KWAK ;)
This was fantastic man. Your delivery and script were on point. Its unbelieveable how few people talk about unreal 1. Thanks for making a game dungeon quality video on it. I would dig some more longform content like this.
Coming back again to retrospect on Unreal. Thank you for this in-depth look. I have lots of nostalgia fro Unreal and wanted to replay it recently (I even streamed it) but I kinda lost interest and had better things to do. I still hold the game in high regard and wish it was more widely recognized, especially since it's the debut of the ubiquitous Unreal Engine!
Great video! I just wanted to add that in the original Unreal, the Razorjack's altfire is guided - the projectile will turn the same direction as your view while in flight. It's very tricky to be effective with, but shooting around a corner is quite doable. Also the Eightball Launcher can fire in a tight circular spread if you also hold the other fire button while loading rounds. This works in the Unreal Tournament games too for their respective rocket launchers.
First of all, WOW dissing Sunspire.. that is one of the levels that was so good, I was so lost in it with ammo running low, dark places full of crawlies, a vertical tower full of twists and turns, dead ends and elevators.. I kept finding new places without making actual progress and looping back on myself. This map is just great. Unreal was one of the games that made a lasting impression on me. It just was so full of awesome moments and felt a lot more "real" than stuff like Quake2 at the time. Once Unreal was released Quake collected dust. UT also blew Q3 out of the water for me.
I find it interesting that your entire paragraph explaining what you liked about Sunspire is _EXACTLY_ what made me hate it so much. I guess ultimately game design tends to come down to personal preference. Aimless wandering is one of my least favorite things to do in games, because to me, it feels like I'm not playing the game anymore. It feels like I've hit a roadblock that I need to cross before I can start actually playing again. But hey, if you can get enjoyment out of that where I couldn't, more power to ya.
@@HQ_Default That was interesting I had the same thought. Backtracking in the dark over and over doesn't sound that fun, but when you're immersed in the game world and the atmosphere is great and you're exploring - I guess it can be!
Sunspire level is one of the best in the game, I remember the first time I played...I was completly lost and it was a very confusing level but with time and revisiting the level you can realize how good it is
Really really good review! thanks for this! I totally have to agree with that elevator thing in The Sunspire. I'm going to change the triggering behavior in my Redux version of Unreal. Also Unreal 2 was a flop for me too. It's somehow a good game but it has nothing to do with Unreal.
I can give you guys the notes for the video if you want some additional insight. There were a few things in certain levels that bugged me that I didn't get a chance to talk about in this video.
Oh yes please! That will be very helpful! I aim to make all trigger behaviors better so the player won’t get lost while playing the game. I analyzed a lot of letsplays to figure out where players got stuck and it happened always on the same positions because they triggered accidentally one trigger twice and closed the door wich opens the new area to make further progress in the game. If you like you can send me an email with your notes at my email address. I don’t know if is save to post it as comment because of annoying bots but you can find it at my RU-vid channel under channel informations.
Hey HQDefault. Thank you very much for showing up in the stream yesterday! And thank you again for sharing this notes! Those will help me making the communication between the level and the player better and I can work on the things which are unclear.Have a good Sunday and thanks ;)
I miss my dad too. He should me this single expansion custom campaign that I can no longer find but it was in UT99 with UT99 graphics and models along with some custom textures. The campaign was huge and you were a new prisoner that escaped his cell and crash landed into another planet…. Fuck it was a crazy ass modded DLC
Devs like me would probably rework it in UE5, but first of all - the time and the effort. Secondly - copyright. Thirdly - official devs won't remake it, because they're too much into Fortnite cash, which is a shame, because who the F cares about Fortcrap
Watch a lot of these long reviews on RU-vid. I'm surprised how much I enjoyed this one really hope you continue to pump out more of the same quality this was great.
Really well made. Never heard of unreal before (despite loving half life and some other games from the same period) and this video was a really nice introduction.
Warp to now and the chances of us getting any new Unreal content are almost nothing because Epic unlisted EVERYTHING related to the original games. It’s so bizarre that they did that. You’d think they’d just keep them up so that more people could buy them. Those idiots turn piracy into a moral obligation for the sake of preservation. I really liked your ideas for what a potential reboot or third game could be like. Unreal has such a unique setting that it’s a shame we didn’t get much out of it. I definitely NEED to play the first game so I can experience it. Same goes for other old games like Turok, Duke Nukem, and others like it. In the video you mentioned that people compared Unreal 2 to Halo. I can kind of see why, but at the same time it seems more close to Unreal 1 where you had those returning enemies and can carry the entire weapon arsenal at once. Now that the Halos are on Steam you should really try them out. They’re a lot of fun. The Master Chief Collection regularly goes for sale at 60% off and you can buy them each individually so you can exclude the ones you don’t want. Good luck on any other videos you make. This was entertaining.
Dispersion pistol alt fire has splash, useful to break several boxes at once or clear out that thing on the ceiling just around the corner. Razor jack alt fire allows control of razors, which is also... situational. Double-tap dodge was introduced after UT games, so any decent UT player would actually be fine with it, extremely useful feature. Sunspire is one of my favorites. Yes, long. Yes, couple of tricky places. Really dense unreal atmosphere there, and those useless rooms in the dark have some useful supplies for high difficulty levels. Unlike Bluff, which is somewhat redundant after Vandora's Temple, Chizra's Temple and villages. Or it is the music, somewhat not so engaging as Spire, Haven, Surfacing or Dark Arena. As for sequel, it would require enormous amount of resources to make a really Unreal game now. Well, community already made a kind of remaster with all those patches and hi-res textures
Great video! Even though it also borrows ideas from many other games and is a different setting, Hedon feels to me like a worthy successor to Unreal 1. There's similar atmosphere and the huge non-linear sometimes open maps with environmental storytelling and focus on exploration. Brandon made much of the soundtrack and van den Bos even composed one track. The Fragfire gun is inspired by the Flak Cannon. Spike gun feels like the Stinger. There's natural, tribal, rural agricultural, classical and medieval, industrial levels and a sci-fi one. Most locations somehow feel convincing, like they're not just game levels, but someone actually worked and lived there. And I don't think any shooter captures the beauty of nature with so few polygons or makes you feel small quite like Hedon and Unreal 1 do. edit: Hah! And Hedon addresses your complaint about melee weapons, not just by having multiple well made melee options, but even a special melee-only difficulty.
You should check out single player mods for Unreal. There are a number of full expansion size single player campaigns available. Operation Na pali, Deja vu etc
The best parts of RtNP, to me, are the levels cut from the original game that were reused. The new maps, like Gala's Peak, had potential to bring new environments to the game seem extremely rushed and underwhelming. Nowadays, my preferred way of replaying the expansion is through a mod for UT99 called RTNP: Ultimate Edition that extends the campaign by 10 new maps, 9 of which come from the beta version (for example: Soledad, a crypt-themed map with unique atmosphere and awesome music track, Temple of J'rath - a Skaarj temple, and Cryox - a crash-landed Mercenary ship).
After 22 years I have to admit that Unreal was only a great graphic engine demo. Maps were very beautiful but the game itself didn’t help to understand why levels were connected and the plot is useless. Music and level design was simply amazing.
By the way, Unreal engine 2 could do big maps without a problem. Just look at the Onslaught and Assault maps in Unreal Tournament 2004, and the custom maps made for the game by fans.
At the time I knew of this game and wanted to try it, but for some reason never got to. When you look at the releases in 1997 and 1998 it's like a cornucopia of iconic games for me.
For the game to have a long single player campaign with big open areas to explore as well as a sweet multiplayer mode that features bots is rare to see nowadays, and basically unheard of at the time the game was released. It's a complete package. Return To Na Pali is good and way better than Unreal 2: The Awakening, but I feel missed the point of Unreal. It's less linear than Unreal 2: The Awakening and Call of Duty, but a bit linear compared to the main campaign. The new weapons I feel were out of place. A basic assault rifle? A standard rocket launcher?? A grenade launcher??? Those last two weapons are something you would find in Quake, not in a game called Unreal. The addition of extra cutscenes I feel were also out of place in Unreal. Having more story was also unnecessary. Return To Na Pali might have probably been the bases for Unreal 2: The Awakening, and it shows in certain aspects. As I said, it's way better than U2. For me, Unreal is better than Half-Life.
Yeah, no cutscenes. They don't belong in Single Player Unreal. Unreal is all about putting the player IN the character and keeping you there for the duration. Hell, I think even the final sequence of the game should have been done inside of a cockpit.
The giant spider part is when I stopped playing Unreal 2 and never picked it up again. For some reason I never got into Unreal (probably because Half-Life came out) but it was a beautiful game for 1998. It was the first time someone had beaten id at their own game in regards to technology. I did play a ton of Unreal Tournament though and preferred it over Quake 3.
True sequel is Operation Na Pali, a single player mod for UT99. I also liked Sunspire a lot but disliked ISV Kran totally. A remake is not possible, because Zeitgeist. When Unreal came out there were not many imersive 3D Games out so it was sth. very special. Now there are so many great games... Unreal is what it was. R.I.P. Trivia: Skaarj are a reboot of a character from street fighter or other simular punch up game for the SNES... I'm not sure bc was never into those games.
i agree with you that unreal 2 in it,s released state is bad but here,s the reason the game turned out the way it did. the studio behind the game legend entertainment were having trouble developing the game due to unreal engine 2. despite being intended to be used for both single and multiplayer games unreal engine 2 only excelled at the latter which made development for unreal 2 slow and inefficient. legend needed more time to work on the game to release it as a finished game but the publisher infrogames wanted unreal 2 to release at the same time as unreal tournament 2003 so legend was forced to rush the game to completion which resulted in scrapping a huge of the game,s intended content and story basically leaving unreal 2 in a barren and unfinished state. to sum it up due to both an uncaring publisher and a flawed game engine unreal 2 was doomed from the beginning of it,s development
That's really a shame. In which case I gotta hand it to Epic for being able to scrounge what they had together into a competent product. Despite my issues with it, I think for a rushed game it wasn't that bad, especially if the engine was giving them trouble.
@@HQ_Default i find it strange that infrogames is not talked about often in discussions about gaming. from everything i have heard about infrogames they are a scummy publisher and had a negative impact on almost every game they published which is comparable to the likes of modern ea or activision which sucks because all of the games unreal 2 included could have been successful or at least got a cult following if they had a better publisher then infrogames
@@grailw9221 Not to mention the fact that a release of two games from the same universe, SP and MP does not make any sense at all. And UT2003 was also redone and heavily upgraded with UT2004 after that. So actually both games could have needed more time, but only the MP got it.
Epic have now delistid this masterpeice sadly, you cannot leagaly purchse it if you don't already own it. I strongly recommend playing it by getting a copy and then using the OldUnreal community patch. Still impresses to this day, the atmosphere. art direction and AI is exsptional.
Why did you only cover unreal and unreal 2? Great video but UC UC2 and UT3 all have applicable content for your outlined goal as it is expla8ned in the videos opening.
I believe it was stated that this is about what makes a great single-player Unreal campaign, and UT campaigns are more or less a bunch of botmatches strung together to familiarize the players with what's in the game, not story-driven campaigns. UT3 tried that but the story felt quite nonsensical and unnecessarily serious to me. UT'99 and 2k4 didn't take themselves too seriously and that worked in their favor IMO.
It's a good game with quite the variety of weapons... but the level design is questionable. The old shooters made you search for keys to unlock doors, or had different objectives in each level that you had to complete in order to progress to the next level. Both styles worked very well because they gave you a clear idea what you need to do to complete the stage... My problem with Unreal's level design is not the complexity or the size of the stages (i like that)... it's the lack of mission objectives and goals, which sometimes makes the levels a confusing mess. It kinda makes me mad that most people actually believe Unreal to have better level design than Quake 2 and Half-life - now that's an f'n joke... and not a good one!
The only good thing about this game is the soundtrack, even the visuals have dated. I don't know of any other game that can make spaceship interiors look the same as castle interiors, it's NUTS!
You forget that Unreal showed us huge detailed worlds that were never seen before. Do you remember the level with flying isles? It showed an Avatar-like world 11 years before the movie! Levels were designed only for stupify gamers and not for playability. That’s why you felt lost, gameplay was put in second place, it was kinda game engine showdown.
Oh believe me, I'd love to. I'm just waiting until I learn a bit more about making videos so that that video will have the production quality it deserves.
Very unlikely but picture this if Square Enix did a remake of the original unreal I would not be opposed to that as good as the Final Fantasy 7 remake was and even some of the music reminded me a little bit of unreal I think they would knock it out of the park if they took their time with it and told a good story that would insane probably never going to happen but just a thought
@@dylanbarnett6099 I wouldn't recomend such a dream because to reach the ending of the game you either have to wait 6 years after the initial release and/or pay 400+ bucks in total. Unreal is ALREADY long enough in its initial 15+ hours campaign (plus the 6+ hours for the expansion pack) and to be fair, it does not need a remake at all. The graphics are chunky but beautifull to look at (specially the sky) and the gameplay and IA are top notch even for today's stardarts. Unreal 2 on the other hand, needs a complete REBOOT of the concept because that game is by all intends and porpuses a clusterfuck, and sadly the game that actually killed the Unreal single player jandra.
@@PointReflex this, 100%. The only time I want a remake/reboot/whatever of a game is when there's unrealised potential, i.e it could've been great but it was held back by the tech of the time, budget, etc etc. If a game still runs well and plays well, just play it. If anything the OG presentation is a warm blanket of charm and nostalgia that would only be ruined by rebuilding it in UE4 with lens flare and bloom.
Not at all. I was half-joking when I pointed out that it was the same guy, it's just something that rips me out of the game for a brief moment but it's really not a big deal. I mean acting is his job after all. The man has to eat. He can't just do one gig and then never do anything else because some jabroni on the internet might recognize his voice.
@@HQ_Default You're review is 100% spot on. I still play Unreal once in a while but not Unreal 2 because it's a real awful game. However I love the looks of the last level. Thank you so much for this video.
