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The following is a meta-article, which explains a concept which usually falls out of one of the wiki's categorizations, yet it's still important to explain something. |
One way to see how influential is the Unreal series across the history of gaming is to see which things the series inspired into other media. Here we're going to mention these influences.
Weapons[]
There are four weapons in the series which seems to be the most referenced often in other media: the ASMD Shock Rifle, the Flak Cannon, the Razorjack/Ripper/Ripjack family and the Redeemer.
Shock Rifle[]
The weapon itself relying highly on the two fire modes of a beam and a ball which can be hit with the aforementioned beam in order to generate an explosion became quite influential:
- Borderlands 3 has the ASMD as a Maliwan-manufactured Sniper Rifle, which works exactly as it did in the games, the only difference being that you need to zoom in order to shoot the bolt. Unlike other weapons of the manufacturer, in addition, it only spawns with the element of Shock, further referencing the original family of weapons. Considering that the game itself was meant to be an Epic Games Store exclusive, it's hardly surprising.
- Deep Rock Galactic: The Experimental Plasma Charger is inspired by the Shock Rifle, with a charged sphere being shot with the primary fire in order to cause a massive explosion to scorch whole hordes.
- Gunfire Reborn: The Thunderstrike weapon has an alternate fire that makes it play similarly to the Shock Rifle.
- Nexuiz/Xonotic: The Electro gun allows you to shoot a ball with the alternate fire and hit it with the weapon's primary fire, basically emulating the Shock Rifle, but with the ball bouncing on objects instead of travelling through the air.
- POSTAL: Brain Damaged: The Brain Fucker Gun 69000 is a mixture of the Lightning Gun from Quake, BFG 9000 from Doom 3, and the ASMD Shock Rifle from Unreal Tournament. Alt-fire shoots a floating brain blast that you can also shoot for an earlier explosion. Additionally, in the weapon's codex entry in-game it directly references it: "You can also use it like ASMD (wink wink!)."
- Warframe: The Quanta takes after the Shock Rifle, firing slow-moving energy cubes that can be detonated with the primary fire mode.
Flak Cannon[]
- Gunfire Reborn: The Porcupine has an alternate fire that makes it play similarly to the Flak Cannon.
- Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast: The Flechette Weapon is basically the Flak Cannon in all but name.
- Nexuiz/Xonotic: The Mortar's primary fire shots projectiles which can be summed up as Flak Shells.
- Nightmare Reaper: The Scrap Cannon fires fragments on its primary fire, and a shell on its secondary fire, making it a straight reference to the weapon.
- Nuclear Throne: The Flak Cannon works almost exactly like their Unreal counterpart, being a shotgun weapon that fires a sphere of multi-hit death.
- Russian Overkill: The Hotrod's secondary and tertiary fire shoot a spray of flak and a shrapnel bomb, respectively, just like the Flak Cannon.
- Serious Sam Bogus Detour: The Scrap Cannon weapon is based on the Flak Cannon.
- SYNTHETIK: The flak cannon functions identically to its Unreal counterpart.
- Warframe:
- The Drakgoon shrapnel cannon is extremely similar to the Flak Cannon.
- A later update added the Zarr, which is even closer to the original Flak Cannon.
Redeemer[]
- Twice in the case of Borderlands's Torgue-manufactured Rocket Launcher Redemption: not only it has the caption "Monster Kill!", but the name "Redemption" sounds similar to Redeemer.
- Nuclear Throne: The Nuke Launcher functions like the Redeemer Missile, being a weapon that fires a remotely controllable nuclear rocket.
- Russian Overkill:
- The Deathhead is literally the Redeemer; it even uses the same model, and even allows you to fire it guided or unguided.
- Speaking of the Redeemer, the Quick-Nuke consumable borrows its sprite from the UT2004 version, and the missile launched even sounds like the Redeemer's in flight. Its actor is even labelled as "Redeemer".
Razorjack/Ripper/Ripjack[]
- Quake II: The Reckoning: The Ion Ripper is a Razorjack expy, the only differences being the obvious lack of an Alternate Fire and that the ricocheting projectiles are made of cells rather than blades.
- Ruiner: The Predator rifle fires energized buzzsaws that bounce off walls.
- SYNTHETIK: The Ripjack is named after a similar weapon in Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict.
- ULTRAKILL: The Alternate version of the Nailgun found in 4-4 is a sawblade launcher that fires bouncing buzzsaws.
- Warframe: The Miter blade launcher both references the Razorjack, being a gun that fires out slow-moving sawblades.
Other weapons[]
- The game Zombie Shooter 1 starts you off with a pair of Enforcer lookalikes. The player's character even fires them sideways with surprising accuracy and a respectable fire rate.
- Duke Nukem Forever: The Impregnader is a weapon that works exactly like the Bio Rifle.
- Nuclear Throne: The Ion Cannon works almost exactly like its 2003/2004 counterpart, being a massive beam strike.
- Overwatch: One of Sombra's abilities is a teleportation device which is shoot in a wide arc, bounces on walls and gets her to otherwise unreachable places. It's called the Translocator.
- Quake IV:
- The Blaster can fire either single, extremely weak shots or more powerful charged shots in a manner similar to the Dispersion Pistol.
- An upgrade for the Rocket Launcher allows it to fire up to three rockets at the same time like in 2003 and 2004.
- Russian Overkill:
- Power Overwhelming's original design was that of the Minigun from the first game, with its two overlapping tri-barrels.
- Charging up the Mutilator's secondary, or loading up the Erasus's casinginator fire, has the same sound as charging the Impact Hammer.
- The Violator's charging sound uses the Shield Gun's sound effect.
- Serious Sam II: The redesigned pistol looks like a toy version of the Dispersion Pistol (more specifically, the version from Unreal II: The Awakening).
- Serious Sam Bogus Detour: The Ooze Gun weapon is based on the Bio Rifle.
- Shadow Warrior (2013): The high-tier upgrade for the Yari Type-28 Rocket Launcher allows it to load up to three rockets and shoot them at the same time, much like the Unreal Engine 2 games' version of the Rocket Launcher.
- Warframe: The Stug goo-launching pistol is extremely similar to the GES BioRifle.
Announcer lines[]
Although Unreal cannot be said to invent spoken announcer lines, the combo streaks and kill streaks became so iconic, they found their way into other media.
- In Borderlands 2, Gaige's dialogue lines include the game's combo and kill streaks.
- The Warcraft 3 custom map Defense of the Ancients borrows UT combo and kill streaks as announcements.
- Dungeon Fighter Online: DFO Global's 3rd anniversary brings a minigame where you make sandwiches by catching falling ingredients. If you do well enough, words like "Unstoppable!!" and "Dominating!!" show up on the screen.
- League of Legends: The in-game chat displays kill streaks using Unreal Tournament lines, such as "Killing Spree!" "Dominating!" and "Godlike!"
- Magicka: The achievement for killing 20 enemies with one spell or Magick (harder than it sounds), is named "MU-MU-MU-MULTIKILL!".
- Orcs Must Die!: The achievement for getting a 25 enemy kill-streak is "MMMMONSTER KILL!".
- Quake Champions: There are awards for getting the first frag, for killing 5 enemies without dying, and for a headshot with the Railgun called "First Blood", "Killing Spree" and "Headshot".
- Rise of the Triad 2013: There's an achievement named "Holy Shit" for running the game on maximum graphic settings, whose icon is the Unreal Engine logo, a reference to an Easter Egg in Unreal Tournament 2004 where jacking up all of its graphic settings to the max will make the announcer say "Holy shit!" In addition, this will play an audio clip of Thi saying "Holy Shit!"
Gametypes[]
While UT cannot claim originality when it comes to certain gametypes, it's no wonder that the series did influence their popularity:
- Nexuiz and Xonotic include Domination, a non-vehicle version of Onslaught, and a gamemode called Keepaway, which is the Mutant gametype from Unreal Tournament 2004 without the Bottom Feeder feature.
- OpenArena includes Last Man Standing (Lives mode only), Domination and Double Domination as gametypes.
- Quake Live includes Domination as a gamemode.
- S4 League: Touchdown mode is best likened to Unreal Tournament 2004's Bombing Run mode as a Capture the Flag meets Association Football gamemode.
Maps[]
- The 2001 leaked beta of Duke Nukem Forever has a map that's Deck 16 in all but name.
- OpenArena:
- The hydronex* (Hydrocapture) maps are loose adaptations of CTF-Hydro16.
- pxlfan (The Big Fan of Death!) takes inspiration from the map DmDeathFan.
- oasago2 (Sago's Castle) takes inspiration from a third-party map for Unreal Tournament 2004, CTF-TFC-Solemn. The same is true for am_spacecont and am_thornish, taking place in remake of other UT third-party maps, DM-1on1-Contact and CTF-Thorns*.
- Quake Champions: Doom Edition: The game contains the following maps:
- Unreal Tournament: "Deck", "Arcane Temple", "Morpheus", "Fractal Reactor", "w00tabulous" (after third-party map CTF-w00tabulous) and "Unreal Movement Training" (after the BunnyTrack map BT-DomicileCB).
- Unreal Tournament 2004: "Rankin", "Deck 17", "Lea" (after the third-party map DM-1on1-Lea) and "Achilles" (after the third-party map DM-CBP2-Achilles).
- Unreal Tournament 4: "Menelkir's Domain" (DM-Underland), "QWER" (DM-ASDF), "Unreal Place" (DM-NickTest1), "Mythic" (after the third-party map DM-Mythic) and "Erase" (after the third-party map DM-Erase).
- Splitgate: The map "Foregone Destruction", showcased on July 2021, is a direct homage to Facing Worlds.[1]
Other[]
- Asterix & Obelix XXL 2: Mission: Las Vegum: In WCW, there are several posters advertising an "Arena Tournament", made with the same logo and font as Unreal Tournament.
- Blood 2: The Chosen has a section ending in a deadend where a poster with a Skaarj can be seen, outright saying "I <3 SKAARJ".
- Doom Eternal: One of the books that can be found in the Fortress of Doom is called "Liandri: A Brief History of Interplanetary Industry".
- Fortnite:
- Save the World: One of the lead survivors is Malcolm, his bio is even taken from 2003.
- Battle Royale: One of the rooms has pieces of artwork taken from the original Unreal Tournament, including a poster of Facing Worlds.
- In Chapter 6 Season 1, on November 30th, 2024, many items and costumes were made available as part of the UT set:
- Samael, donning his Black Legion Armor.[2]
- Garog, in his Interloper skin.[3]
- A backpack called "Nanoblack Sample" with the logo of the Liandri Mining Corporation.[4]
- A pickaxe called "Skaarj Razik", with Garog employing it in the showcase video.[5]
- A backpack called "Mining Robot Head".[6]
- A skin for the Assault Rifle called "Shock Rifle".[7]
- Hard Reset: Fletcher's Personal Shield partially reduces incoming damage but loses effectiveness as it depletes, in a similar manner to Dalton's shield and the Shield Packs of 2003 and 2004.
- Monday Night Combat: The Gunner's armor resembles some forms of Juggernaut power armor.
- Nexuiz:
- The game implements a mutator system, even called as such, which includes the Instagib mutator.
- Xonotic also adds a Relic mutator which acts like the one in Unreal Tournament, randomly placing some mutator-specific powerups which can give you different combat bonuses.
- The message for weapon suicide is "You killed your own dumb self."
- Pariah: The Shroud are shown to be a pale, hairless, corpse-like human group that figured out a way to reanimate the dead, used it to become a separate species and recruit followers, and then made an unsuccessful power play, like the Necris.
- Quake Champions: The character Clutch is a Xan Kriegor expy: a former mining robot turned into a killing machine with superiority complex. In addition, a later update gave it the ability to dodge in all four directions.
- Quake Champions: Doom Edition: Brock is a playable heavyweight champion. His sprites have him carrying the Flak Cannon. He has no abilities, but uses the UT movement physics (High acceleration and ground friction, is able to use the dodging and elevator jumping maneuvers) and his passives are named "Keg O' Health" (overstacks his health up to 199 and his armor up to 150, both without degeneration over time; hourglasses grant extra health) and "Iron Guard" (Heavy Armor pickups grant +150 HP with overstack, plus they absorb 100% of all damage until depleted, making it the equivalent of the Shield Belt).
- Serious Sam II: During the first level of Planet Kleer, Sam says after NETRICSA suggests him to pick up the Rocket Launcher: "I love picking big guns. It feels so Unreal." The thing here is that the subtitles capitalize the word Unreal, and the level this line comes from is even called "Unreal Wasteland".
- SYNTHETIK: The Liandry Rail Gun is named for the Liandri Mining Corporation.
- Thing Thing 3: The final boss's laser attack uses the UT2004 Flak Cannon's primary fire sound, albeit slowed down a bit.
- Vector Thrust: The design of the L1WAC, mutators such as Instagib and Volatile Unit, and the command menu, were said to be inspired by Unreal Tournament.
Gallery[]
External links[]
- Referenced By: Unreal @ TVTropes
- ↑ Park, Morgan (Jul 8, 2021). "Splitgate's newest map is an homage to the Unreal Tournament classic Facing Worlds". PC Gamer. Retrieved Jan 9, 2025.
- ↑ "Samael - Fortnite Skin". Fortnite. Retrieved Dec 1, 2024.
- ↑ "Garog - Fortnite Skin". Fortnite. Retrieved Dec 1, 2024.
- ↑ "Nanoblack Sample - Fortnite Backpack". Fortnite. Retrieved Dec 1, 2024.
- ↑ "Skaarj Razik - Fortnite Pickaxe". Fortnite. Retrieved Dec 1, 2024.
- ↑ "Mining Robot Head - Fortnite Backpack". Fortnite. Retrieved Dec 4, 2024.
- ↑ "Shock Rifle - Fortnite Wrap". Fortnite. Retrieved Dec 4, 2024.