Want a glimpse at what interactive storytelling and entertainment created with Unreal Engine 5 could look like in the future? The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience is a new tech demo that showcases what’s now possible when you combine UE5 with PlayStation 5.

Part cinematic, part playable experience, the demo was created by members of the original The Matrix movie team including Lana Wachowski, James McTeigue, and John Gaeta in collaboration with teams across both Epic Games and partners.

The cinematic element features digital replicas of Keanu Reeves and Carrie Anne-Moss as incredibly realistic digital humans. Then, the demo morphs into an interactive experience of car chases and fast-paced third-person shooter action.

These sequences are completely dynamic—the world responds to you in a fully unscripted way. That’s down to Chaos, Unreal Engine’s high-performance physics system that can deliver cinematic-quality levels of destruction in real time and simulate the movement of cloth, hair, vehicles, and more.

The team used Sequencer to script the car chase in the demo. They were able to use the simulated universe to explore different creative options for the cinematic content, with crew members driving cars around the virtual city to capture exciting shots. This process mirrored the way live-action movie makers will scout a city to find the best streets to tell their story—but without the physical constraints of the real world.

The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience is designed to take full advantage of PS5’s technology— including the super-fast SSD drive, CPU, GPU, alongside console ray tracing.

To do that, we’ve built a vast, 16 kilometres square open world city, comprised of seven thousand buildings made of thousands of modular pieces, each of those constructed of millions of triangles and enhanced with props, signage, debris, and more. There are 1,248 simulated intersections, 45,073 parked cars (of which 38,146 are drivable), over 260 km of roads, and 512 km of sidewalk.

This huge, dynamic environment is incredibly rich, complex, and photoreal. It’s made up of billions of polygons that are streamed by Nanite, UE5’s virtualized micropolygon geometry system, and processed by PS5’s powerful CPU and GPU to deliver an incredibly high level of detail and visual fidelity. A powerful procedural audio generation system simulates the noise of being in a busy city, heightening the sense of presence in the environment. 

The result is an interactive experience that is immensely powerful, immersive, and photorealistic. Packed with believable characters and driveable vehicles, you can explore the city on foot, hop in a vehicle, or fly around with a drone’s-eye view. 

Hey PlayStation Nation, it’s exciting to introduce you to a game called Rumbleverse, an all-new, free-to-play, 40-person Brawler Royale coming to PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. I’m Keeman45, the community manager from Iron Galaxy, here to represent all the developers who’ve been working to create this social, competitive experience.

The setting for Rumbleverse is Grapital City, a place that was built as a monument to the glorious traditions of melee combat. Every citizen of this island lives for the fight and dreams of becoming a champion, and you can become one of them. In this game, you’ll create a unique character to be shot out of a cannon to experience the Rumble. Dash through the city streets in search of upgrades to level up the way you fight and battle all challengers to be the last player standing – either alone or as a member of a tag-team.

Rumbleverse is what we call a Brawler Royale. If you’ve ever played a battle royale game, you’re in for some surprises. This is a chance for you to put down the long-range weapons and get up close and personal with your opponents. In Grapital City, almost anything can be a weapon and there is no structure you cannot climb. There is chaos around every corner. You can leap from rooftop to rooftop. You can suplex an opponent from the heights of the tallest skyscraper to the streets below.

There is a lot to talk about between now and the launch of Rumbleverse on PS4 and PS5 February 15, 2022. We can’t wait to show you more. Tomorrow, we’ll be playing games with some of our favorite content creators, so you can see the action in real time. 

We’re looking forward to getting to know the community that forms around this new experience, and we hope you’ll be included!

In Forspoken, Frey—a modern young woman from New York City—is magically transported to Athia, a once beautiful and peaceful land that has been beset by a corrupting force known as the Break. No one, aside from Frey, strangely enough, is safe from the corruption, which transforms whatever it touches into a twisted, and often bloodthirsty, facsimile of itself.

We’ve shown how the Break affects the animals and creatures of Athia in our previous trailers, and there’s no doubt that Frey has her work cut out for her when it comes to taking them on. Today, however, I wanted to dive deeper into the true big bads that stand in Frey’s way: the Tantas.

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The Tantas are the former rulers of Athia. Each embodies a different virtue and possesses a unique strength. They were once beloved by the people of Athia, who enjoyed lives of plenty under their guidance. However, without warning, the former protectors mysteriously became oppressors, becoming aggressive and hateful. As the most powerful sorceresses in Athia, they pose a dangerous threat to Frey.

Being who she is, when Frey first arrives in Athia, she has very little interest in the Tantas. But after being accused of trespassing on her territory by Tanta Sila, Frey becomes an enemy in their eyes. Unfortunately for Frey, there’s no going back home to New York without defeating them first.

We’re excited to unveil the second and very wicked Tanta who stands in Frey’s way: Tanta Prav. Played by The Walking Dead’s Pollyanna McIntosh, you can see Tanta Prav in action in the latest trailer for Forspoken, which premiered at The Game Awards earlier tonight.

Nailing the design concept of the Tantas was key to establishing Forspoken’s entire look, feel, and tone. The art director on Forspoken, Yuuki Matsuzawa, played a critical role in conceiving the concept of the Tantas at the beginning of the project, which has remained consistent throughout development. The Tantas were a central theme of the game, so it’s not a stretch to say that all the art in Forspoken was designed around them—their virtues and their corruption, their beautiful, yet terrifying, appearances.

Concept art for Tanta Sila

Tanta Sila is the “Tanta of Strength” who once commanded Athian troops to protect the land f

Hey everyone! I’m Phil Crifo, game director on Tchia. We just released a really cool gameplay trailer during The Game Awards and we’re excited to dive deeper into our Soul Jumping mechanic.

Soul Jumping allows Tchia to take control of animals and objects around the world, opening fun and emergent exploration and combat gameplay opportunities. In this blog I’ll elaborate a bit on how this mechanic evolved over the course of development and how it works in the final game.

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The Basics of Soul Jumping 

Soul Jumping in Tchia is straightforward, you press a button and Tchia enters a sort of trance — in this mode, time is slowed down considerably, allowing you to aim precisely. Objects and animals you can Soul Jump to are highlighted in green. Aim, press the Soul Jump button, Tchia is warped to the target… You’re in!

Notice how Tchia’s tiaré flower transfers onto animals’ ears while you’re controlling them.

Tchia discovers her Soul Jumping abilities early on in the game, but that doesn’t mean she has full control over her powers from the start. At first, you’ll be able to take control of things for a short amount of time only, but as you progress through the game, you will discover special challenges that, once completed, will grant you an additional slot on your Soul Meter, allowing you to use your abilities more extensively and start experimenting with complex combos.

Usages and Abilities

Once you’re controlling an animal or an object, you’ll notice Tchia’s Soul Meter slowly draining depending on what you do. This allows us to balance locomotion and abilities. For example, simply rolling around as a coconut will drain your meter very slowly, while covering long distances with a bird will be a bit more taxing.

Animals have very diverse abilities. Some are unique actions, for example dogs are able to dig up buried treasures and crabs can destroy locks and chains with their crazy pinchers. Other animals offer locomotion advantages such as flying or being able to swim super fast and deep, very useful for exploration.

Hey again, this is Chad from Studio MDHR! The last time I had a chance to write something for the PlayStation Blog, we were announcing Cuphead’s surprise launch on PlayStation 4. Since that time, we have been heads down on the continued development of our game’s upcoming expansion, The Delicious Last Course, and I’m thrilled to be able to announce a bonafide release date: this next adventure will be coming to PlayStation 4 on June 30, 2022!! 

I’m so proud of our amazing team and I can’t wait for PlayStation players to get their hands on The Delicious Last Course. When we originally announced this expansion, we cheekily chose to name the game with a title that shortened to “DLC”, and while this isn’t a sequel, I can confidently say The Delicious Last Course has taken on a life of its own during development, and that it isn’t just your bog standard game expansion. On that note, let’s talk a little bit about what the game is, and what you can expect.

The Delicious Last Course sees Cuphead and Mugman setting sail for “D.L.C. Isle”, an untamed and previously undiscovered island off the coast of the main Inkwell Isles. In true Cuphead fashion, however, they find that the island is host to a new cast of fearsome, larger than life bosses, all of whom are tied to a quest they must undertake on behalf of the jubilant and jolly Chef Saltbaker. What this quest is and where it will take our intrepid heroes is something we want to keep secret for just a little longer, but it’s fair to say that it might be our brave little cups’ most challenging adventure yet.

Luckily, Ms. Chalice is there for more than just moral support. Fans of the original Cuphead will recognize her as The Legendary Chalice, but in this new form, Ms. Chalice packs a wallop of her own, including unique abilities that will help you overcome some of the biggest bosses we’ve ever designed! Be sure to keep an eye out for grumpy shopkeep Porkrind as well, who’s never one to pass up an opportunity for commerce and might just have all new weapons and magical charms for you to experiment with. In fact, if you take a closer look at the trailer we debuted at this year’s Game Awards, you might just spot a few.

Major announcements like this are always a chance to reflect on a game’s development, and something I’m really excited for Cuphead fans to see with The Delicious Last Course is the way our team has really honed their craft during development. From our designers to concept artists to animators and engineers, everyone spent the development of this game challenging themselves to innovate, and we have pushed to make The Delicious Last Course a true high watermark of everything we do at Studio MDHR. There are individual phases of single bosses in this game that contain more attacks and frames of animation than entire bosses from the original Cuphead.