With the news of Unreal Tournament 2003 also comes news that Unreal 2 has been delayed. At least, according to sources at Infogrames who talked to Computer & Video Games. Previously Infogrames said a delay was just a rumor, but supposedly it's for real now. February/March 2003 is the new date, up from late this year. Not too surprising if it's true, but I'd rather hear from Epic or Legend instead.

Infogrames sent out an Unreal 2 fact sheet with a list of features in the sequel that Legend Entertainment is developing. Six screenshots have been released as well, but unfortunately these are not new unless you didn't read any of the recent Unreal 2 articles.

Key Features
- Innovative Game Play - Unreal 2: The Awakening combines intense, pulse-pounding action with the magic of exploration and discovery and RPG-style character interaction
- Devastating Arsenal - Fifteen flesh-chewing instruments of destruction are available, ranging from familiar alien-bashing favorites like the Rocket Launcher and Combat Assault Rifle to all new exotic alien variants like the Leech Gun and the hunter/seeker Takkra
- A Large Bestiary of Creatures - The fearsome Skaarj return along with 24 all-new enemies, each hell-bent on eradicating the player and his compadres ...

There are some Unreal 2 impressions on GameSpot tonight, based on checking out the game at a recent Infogrames press event. Eight new screenshots are included.

A new set of Unreal 2 screenshots appeared on Well Rounded Entertainment recently (story), showing more from the game but unfortunately in a rather low resolution. We now have these shots in their original 1600x1200 format.

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Well Rounded Entertainment has posted six new screenshots from Legend's upcoming Unreal 2: The Awakening, showing more from this first person shooter due out this Christmas.

The Infogrames press release officially announcing the release dates and new Unreal Tournament name we already knew about is now up at Blues News. As mentioned here before, Unreal Tournament is now Unreal Tournament 2003 and will ship this summer. Unreal 2 will follow late this year. The press release does mention the following about UT2003 ' "UT2003" takes players into more than 30 action packed arenas, with over 50 highly individualized characters and an intimidating arsenal of weaponry'.

There was quite the pissyfit a little while ago when it was announced that Unreal2 would be shipping without multiplayer. Well the UnrealOps guys spotted this post by CliffyB who came out from behind the bushes to give a quick reasoning: (Thanks Mick)

U2's mp was dropped because, frankly, making a truly next generation single player FPS experience is a ton of work and the game needs to ship sometime this century. The team is focusing on a great SP experience. You think the mod community won't figure out all sorts of crazy stuff with the game within days of release? They will. UT2 will fulfill all of your multiplayer needs.

Also in case you missed it last night, check out this Unreal naming change stuff. Yearly editions?

Gamespot is reporting that both upcoming PC Unreal games will undergo name changes. On Monday, Infogrames should announce that Unreal 2 is now Unreal Episode 2 and Unreal Tournament 2 is Unreal Tournament 2003. This will be done to clear up some confusion over differences between the two games. Additionally, Infogrames should reveal plans for a yearly version of Unreal Tournament.

Blues News received an Epic Games update from Mark Rein. In it, Mark explains about the naming convention of the Unreal engine and talks about a new lipsync tool.

As promised, HomeLAN Fed has posted the Mark Rein interview. Epic's VP discusses the Unreal franchise, answers questions about Unreal Tournament 2, Unreal 2 (pretty big news about the multiplayer part), the continued development of the Unreal engine, the Unreal Performance Test, and what's up with Epic's own game, among other things. Pretty informative read.

When Unreal Tournament 2 is released I think you're going to see mod makers taking to this engine like never before and I think you'll also see the engine being used for a lot more things outside of gaming. UT2 has 100 to 200 times the detail (on-screen poly counts) of the original game but, if you have the hardware to run it, there's nothing stopping you from creating content that's 1000 times the detail of UT, 2000 times or even more than that. That kind of hardware should be on store shelves and in consumers' hands before the end of 2002! So now all those interesting non-gaming uses that requires huge polygons counts have a game and a set of tools on which they can go to town. When the game gets released we'll not only release most of our tools along with it but we'll also release some of the documentation on the Unreal Developer Network. This not only has implications for Unreal Tournament 2 but also for Unreal 2 which is coming a few months later.

Over at Voodoo Extreme is a post by Mark Rein, who explains why Unreal 2 has been delayed. As mentioned yesterday, Unreal 2 is now due around Christmas time instead of May / June which many people expected. Mark Rein says "Unreal2 will stand up to any FPS game no matter who makes it or what tech it uses. I'm not saying that to disparage anyone else's game or tech - there will be lots of great FPS games this year that we'll all play and enjoy - but Unreal2 will answer to no one".

HomeLAN Fed managed to get release dates for the next Unreal games out of Mark Rein, as part of an interview they will publish soon. According to Rein, Unreal Tournament 2 should be released before the end of June, while Unreal 2 should be released before Christmas. The Mark Rein interview will go up on Sunday, where he'll talk more about the games, the Unreal Performance Test, and Epic's plans for trade shows.

Hypothermia has posted an interview with Unreal 2 programmer Aaron Leiby. He answers some questions about the game, and says in fact that the game will suck. That's always a bummer! Topics discussed include the pressure on the team, what Aaron does when he isn't programming 3D stuff, new engine features, what kind of replayability will Unreal 2 have and other things, even not related to the game.

- Replay value. . . are we looking at the basic single player campaign, when it's over...it's over, move on to multiplayer?? or will Unreal 2 have multiple endings or other ways to enhance the games replay value??
- That’s a hard one to say. In general, I’m not a big fan of replayability in singleplayer environments. When I get to the end of a game, I want the satisfaction that I got as much out of it as humanly possible, not a nagging feeling that I may have missed something three missions back that would have lead to a different ending. ...

There is a new Unreal 2 preview on GameSpot, based on a visit to the Legend studios in Virginia. There isn't really a whole lot of new info here, but the author describes the plot of the game, the dialogue system that's in the game, a GOLEM system for NPCs, what the various enviroments look like, engine improvements, weapons and the multiplayer side of things. No new screenshots are included.

BonusWeb has posted a set of Unreal 2 screenshots, which seems to be a mix of old and new screenshots from Legend's upcoming FPS game.

A few days ago we reported about a post by Legend's Matthias Worch who commented on the fact that a recent Unreal 2 screenshot would not be real. He said that it was unaltered engine work. However, Matt did not know the whole truth. A statement we received from Epic's Mark Rein

I wanted to issue a correction about the Unreal2 "Loading..." page in CGW. On Friday it came to my attention that there was a thread on Shacknews where people were questioning the legitimacy of the image used in the CGW "Loading" page. Matthias Worch made a statement saying that it was 100% real. Unbeknownst to Matthias, it had been modified by hand-drawing shadows into the screenshot after it had been taken. Player shadows weren't working at the time so I gave the go-ahead to add them and release the modified image to CGW for their "Loading" page. This is something I am 100% responsible for and in retrospect I should not have done it - I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to our fans and gamers in general for doing this. This is not something you would expect from Epic Games and I want people to know that I was responsible for it. I have included the original screen shot on which the image was based (before shadows were added) as well as some screen shots taken this weekend using the current version of the game in which shadows are working.

Mark Rein,
Epic Games Inc.

The recent Unreal2 screenshots that came out a couple of days ago got quite a bit of criticism for looking photoshopped or "too good" if you can imagine that. Matt from Legend Entertainment made a quick post clarifying that the screenshots were staged, but they are 100% authentic within the engine shots.

And here we go with the "it's fake" posts again. This shots was done 100% in the engine. The models are real. The geometry is real. The lighting is real. The particle effects (that includes the rocket streak and explosion with the lenseflare) are real. If you want to find something fake it's that we posed the shot (it was for a CGW double page, after all) - the overall composition was sketched out before and models were placed in the editor. But then we went into the game (on a P3/1Ghz with GeForce2), let the bots fight and pressed the screenshots key. THAT WAS IT :)

I know that some people won't believe it, and well, there's nothing we can do about it but tell them to wait for the game. And to be honest I've seen too many fake screenshots in my lifetime to not understand that people are suspicious. But this shot is real :) And no, we usually don't pose stuff, too much work, pretty much all other shots are simply taken by playing the game and hammering the screenshot key.

The Unreal 2 website has been updated, offering a new screenshot from the game which was featured in a recent issue of the Computer Gaming World magazine. Thanks VE.

Though ToTheGame had to remove Unreal 2 screenshots yesterday at the request of Infogrames, today Jim.be's Gamepower has posted new Unreal 2 shots. Some you might've seen, others not, and they come with the same watermark as yesterday's Unreal Tournament 2 shots. Here is gallery 1, and gallery 2.

There's a mix of new and familiar screenshots from Legend's Unreal 2 on ToTheGame. Thanks VE.