Unreal Warfare

Cut content
This article covers content which was scrapped from the Unreal series. These items might have been considered at some point, as there is proof of them in betas or screenshots, but for some reason were not featured in any Unreal game.

Overview

Gallery

Further information: Gears of War @ Gears of War Wiki

Unreal Warfare is a cancelled game from Epic Games.

Synopsis[]

Overview[]

Development history[]

Unreal Warfare was in development since at least the year 2000, and being aimed towards the Xbox console primarily. The first bits were seen in the Unreal 2000 Technology Demo, along with Digital Extremes and Legend Entertainment.^[1]

The game featured several cinematics that were used for engine demonstrations, in a similar way to those from Unreal Tournament 3.

The 2002 Unreal Engine demonstration features content mostly seen in the early 2003 leaked demo. The maps were supposed to be more complex and with more things to do and side things such as Assault bits sprinkled in, but this wasn't fully implemented in the demo, just seen mostly in script files.

That was the case before the reboot in 2004, under an early version of the Unreal Engine 3, when the game was turned into a single-player only game called Warfare (dropping the Unreal from the name), before changing their mind and making it both single-player and multiplayer and changing it to what would become Gears of War, also incorporating some earlier Unreal 3 ideas into it. This is despite the game itself being the reason behind the creation of the Unreal Engine 2, back then called the "Unreal Warfare Engine", initially being "Unreal Engine 1.5" in a way.

Games that spawned out of the whole Unreal Warfare phase or were influenced by it in some ways, positively or negatively include the aforementioned Gears of War, Unreal Tournament 2003 (barely) and the Epic Bonus Pack, Unreal Tournament 2004, Pariah, Devastation (in an indirect way), Unreal II: The Awakening and UT2007/UT3.

Game content[]

Gamemodes[]

The game's single-player portion went through several changes. At first, it was still a multiplayer game and the campaign/ladder was done in similar pseudo-single-player way like Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict or the aforementioned UT3, at most a pseudo-single-player. The developers also toyed with the idea of Gladiator-like matches being a key component at one point, and a focus on vehicles and mechas.

The 2003 demo contained the Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag gametypes. At some point, CTF and its maps had to be cut from the game due to it crashing the game, like the map that had the crashing bridge and the other tech base level with water seen in the 2002 video.

Characters[]

At one point during development, the game introduced a class-based system similar to Team Fortress. There were many player classes, each with their strengths and weaknesses, split in two teams (the COG and the Geist) and they could all pick up weapons and items from fallen enemies. Players needed to choose a faction, and each would have many differences with the other.

As for the teams themselves, the COG (human faction) and Geist (the alien faction which ultimately evolved into the Locust; in the UW version they are basically like technological Necris, almost Borg-like). As for the differences, for example, they would have carried different weapons and featured different abilities.

Weapons[]

Some of the weapons were meant to feature both variants, but weren't fully implemented, so not all of them were exclusive to one side in practice:

Assault Rifle
- Came in both COG and Geist variants.
- It had different attachments depending on the class: the most used were the scope and the explosive ammo swap/grenade launching attachment. It also had silencer and flashlight attachments.
Pulse Rifle
- Came in both COG and Geist variants, though the Geist version has the same model with different effects/inside effect skin swap.
- Combined the ASMD, the Dispersion Pistol, and the cut Stunner into one gun, making it basically a hitscan dispersion pistol with a charged alt-fire.
Gatling Gun
- Came in both COG and Geist variants.
- It has a Minigun primary fire, and a Rocket Launcher alt-fire (rumored to be based on old Unreal concepts) and an unused melee buzzsaw/spin for the Geist.
- Its third person mesh differed, with only the COG variant getting a first person mesh.
COG Pistol (Similar to the one seen in Tekwar)
COG Engineer Gun
COG Medic Gun
- Described as a healing/repairing version of the Thunderbolt from Quake.
COG Pulse Gun:
- Reloadable pulsegun with different alt-fire that instead fires a projectile similar to the Plasma Thunderbolt variant from Quake Mission Pack No. 2: Dissolution of Eternity.
- Had its own mesh, but the hand skin was messed up, so it used temporarily the gatling gun mesh in demos.
Geist Sniper Rifle
- Uses the same scope as the UT2004 version, shares it with scope from the Assault Rifle.
Geist Grenade Launcher
- Can be switched into firing rockets, producing a Flak Cannon/UMS Rocket Launcher combo. It also contained a bouncy grenade variant.

Items[]

The Engineer class would have deployed devices:

Trip Mines
Decapitator
Ammo depot/resupplier
Jets (For the Heavy classes)

As for regular items, these were reported to appear:

Vehicles[]

The game also had about a dozen of vehicles, including the Bulldog and another vehicle of unknown name previewed in other version(s) and videos, like the Karma preview video. Among the reported vehicles, the following appear:

DropShip (most complex vehicle, since it requires a specific setup, has gatling guns as weapons too)
Armadillo
COG Chopper
Geist APC
Lynx
Bulldog
HoverBike

Monsters and creatures[]

The game featured a number of fauna pawns, similar to the Unreal Championship Alpha, such as Flappy, a dinosaur-like creature seen in a 2001 video showing Cliff Bleszinski's canyon map.

For some reason, it also contained a creature based on the Skaarj Pupae as well. The monster is even coded and might share some code with the Invasion mode Pupae. That is, coincidentally the same bonus pack that contains all the maps that use UW content.

Aside from Flappy and the Pupae, it also had a new type of flocking birds like migrating birds and circling birds and wandering birds (different formation/behavior), the birds in questions being very bat-like. In fact the model is called "BatFish".

And flyingbugs and crawlingbugs. fishschool (reuses unreal models)

Soundtrack[]

Unreal Warfare Soundtrack - Action Theme

Unreal Warfare Soundtrack - GDC 2002 Ambience

Unreal Warfare Soundtrack - Anticipation -1

Unreal Warfare Soundtrack - COG Base Idle -2

Unreal Warfare Soundtrack - Anticipation -3

Unreal Warfare Soundtrack - Anticipation -2

Unreal Warfare Soundtrack - GDC 2002 Theme

Credits[]

Feng Zhu
Cliff Bleszinski
Alan Willard
Shane Caudle
and more...

Trivia[]

Discarded assets of the game often ended up in other games:
- Unreal Tournament 2003 and especially the first BonusPack, have the Bulldog vehicle, several maps such as DOM-Junkyard (being a straight port from Unreal Warfare, the same is true for the Unreal Tournament 2004 maps DM-Junkyard and AS-Junkyard) and other content. DM-IronDeity also uses some assets from UW.
- Unreal Tournament 2004 also featured a lot of (Unreal) Warfare cut content aside the aforementioned maps. A part of AS-Convoy is composed of recycled resources from UW, while ONS-Primeval started as TDM-Forest in UW.
- Both Unreal Warfare and Unreal II: The Awakening ended up influencing each other on many aspects during development. Both had a lot of military stuff/ideas overlapping, from the highly-criticised slow player movement coming from the "realistic" approach Unreal Warfare to the heavy Liandri Angels sharing animations with the Unreal Warfare heavy classes as well, the ones in the mecha suits. This is the reason why Legend made the player speed configurable in the config of the patched version.
- The design of the Geist inspired the Shroud in Digital Extremes's Pariah and also partially the Necris in UT3.
The early Unreal Engine 3 version of the game in the year 2004, on version 469 (the version count did reset with UE3), coincidentally the same number as the OldUnreal patch for Unreal Tournament, had two main maps, the COG city square(Embry Square) and Aspho Fields. Aspho Fields would end up being cut from Gears of War but, in turn, became part of the lore and even spawning a book of the same name, similar to how the Striders were repurposed as background lore for Unreal II: The Awakening. There were some new and different weapons, with most of them not having their own model yet, among them an unfinished Shotgun, RPG and Plasma Cannon. Most of these guns ended up in GOW in some form. Aspho Fields also became temporarily repurposed as UT2007 map. This makes it yet another bizarre case of recycled content, which got dropped yet again and the Necris directly taking place of the Geist here... The map can be even played in the UT pre-alpha on UW469, which was part of the same leak of content. The temporary Skaarj Pupae were replaced by the Geist wretches in this version which evolved into the Locust wretch. They have model but no AI in UW469.
The packages named "sg" that appear in UW but also in the Tournament games seem to actually come from the codename SoldierGame, an alleged Unreal Warfare working title. This first appears in the Unreal Tournament Bonus Pack 4 as SGTech1. Those textures can be seen used also in the 2000 Tech Demo presentation.

External links and references[]

↑ Callaham, John (Mar 10, 2002). "Mark Rein interview". HomeLAN Fed. Archived from the original on Mar 08, 2005. Retrieved Jul 11, 2025.