Epic Games‘ Unreal Engine has officially released The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience, a tech demo showcasing the future of interactive storytelling and entertainment.
The game reveals shockingly ultra-realistic visuals and open-world environments utilizing cutting-edge technology from UE5 such as World Partition, which automatically divides large maps into grids and streams, Nanite, which renders the city environment in unprecedented detail down to the nuts and bolts, Lumen, which simulates light bouncing off surfaces, MetaHuman Creator which populates the world with thousands of next-gen digital humans, and Chaos, which delivers cinematic-quality explosions and destruction in real-time down to the movement of cloth and hair.
The trailer above begins with an introduction from Neo, played by Keanu Reeves, and Trinity, played by Carrie-Anne Moss who are set to appear in The Matrix: Resurrections film premiering later this month. The duo begins with mind-bending questions, challenging the concept of reality. “20 years ago we asked ourselves how long it would be before faces and bodies could be changed as easily as we change clothes,” said Moss. “We wondered What would our identity mean in a completely digital world,” Reeves continued. “What would reality mean when a world we can build feels as real as our own. The video goes on to show scenes from the game and offers first looks at gameplay footage.
The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience is now available on Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. Head over to the unrealengine.com/wakeup website for more information.
In other gaming news, Meta’s VR playground Horizon Worlds is free to access in the U.S. and Canada.
