Unreal (1998 video game)

Did You Know?

• Two novels titled Hard Crash and Prophet's Power were published, expanding on the story; Prophet's Power is a prequel to Hard Crash.
• A book called Escape to Na Pali: A Journey to the Unreal was published on June 23, 2014, written by Kaitlin Tremblay and Alan Williamson.
• In 2024, the game officially became freeware with Epic Games’ blessing.

Plot

The player controls Prisoner 849 aboard the prison spacecraft Vortex Rikers, which is pulled to an uncharted planet before reaching its destination and crash-lands on the lip of a canyon on the planet Na Pali. Na Pali is home to the Nali, a primitive tribal race of four-armed humanoids subjugated by the Skaarj, a race of savage reptilian humanoids with an army of genetically engineered Brutes and enslaved Krall warriors. Skaarj troops board the downed ship and kill the remaining survivors, but Prisoner 849 finds a weapon and escapes.

The planet is rich in Tarydium, a light blue crystalline mineral with high energy yield that motivated the Skaarj invasion. Prisoner 849 travels through mines, meets Nali slaves, and passes through Nali ruins, a water temple, and a massive arena where a Titan must be killed. The player finds remains of other humans with electronic journals detailing their last days, but never meets another live human aside from a wounded crew member who dies immediately.

Development

Unreal was jointly developed by Epic MegaGames and Digital Extremes, mostly funded with proceeds from Epic Pinball. Originally the game was to feature a large status bar and centered weapons like Doom and Quake. Various levels were cut, some reappearing in the Return to Na Pali expansion pack. A dragon monster was cut, and the Quadshot weapon model remains in-game with no functional code. The rifle could at one point fire three shots at once, wrongly stated as alternate fire in the Unreal manual. The player character was initially to be female, but as female playable characters became more common, the team allowed selection of male or female. In late 1996 GT Interactive secured exclusive global publishing rights. A Nintendo 64DD port was started, and a Dreamcast port was demoed but canceled due to GT Interactive's financial struggles.

Reception

Unreal launched in the U.S. at number three on PC Data's weekly sales chart for late May 1998, with an average price of $50, before jumping to first place the following week as its price dropped to $40. It ended May as the second-best-selling computer game in the country, trailing StarCraft, and the two titles traded the top two spots through June. The game ranked fifteenth in U.S. sales for the first half of 1998. By the end of July, domestic sales had passed 120,000 copies, and in early August, publisher GT Interactive announced global sales of 500,000 units.

Unreal finished 1998 as the thirteenth-best-selling computer game in the U.S., moving 291,300 units and earning $10.96 million. Worldwide, it sold over one million copies by September 1999 and reached 1.5 million by November 2002. Critics applauded its graphics, gameplay, music, atmosphere, enemy AI, and multiplayer bot support, but found the online multiplayer mode plagued by lag. Macworld's Michael Gowan said the game revived a stale genre, and Next Generation gave the PC version a perfect five-star rating, calling it the best action game for the platform.