Epic Unveils Ambitious Plans at State of Unreal Event, Including Amy Hennig's New Marvel Game

The Game Developers Conference in San Francisco played host to Epic's annual State of Unreal event, which brought exciting announcements for both gamers and developers. The highlight of the event was undoubtedly the first glimpse of Amy Hennig's highly anticipated Marvel game, 1943: Rise of Hydra, a narrative-driven action-adventure set in World War II featuring Captain America and Black Panther. Hennig showcased the game's impressive Unreal Engine effects, including a Nanite adaptive tessellation feature that enables real-time environment effects with minimal geometry. Additionally, she demonstrated new heterogeneous particle effects, such as a fire in a barrel with flames illuminating plumes of smoke that cast shadows on the environment. Epic VP of Engineering Simon Tourangeau also unveiled several new rendering technologies in the upcoming Unreal Engine 5.4, including motion matching technology for smoother character animation transitions. This feature has been utilized in Fortnite since December, and to mark its addition to Unreal Engine, Epic is releasing over 500 motion-captured animations compatible with the MetaHuman rig, available free to all developers. The event provided brief looks at several games leveraging various Unreal Engine features, including Funcom's Dune Awakening, Zynga's Star Wars Hunters, and Chrono Studio's Chrono Odyssey. Furthermore, Epic Games Store GM Steve Allison shared plans for the Epic Games Store's mobile launch, targeting iOS and Android releases by the end of the year, with a selection of third-party partners and existing programs like the Epic First Run Program. The show's final segment focused on new additions to Unreal Editor for Fortnite, such as a first-person camera view, Lego Fortnite physics and destruction engine integration, and the inclusion of Fall Guys and Rocket Racing assets. Epic's Fortnite ecosystem EVP, Saks Persson, announced that a Fortnite Battle Royale season developed entirely in UEFN would be released before the end of 2025. The UEFN experience diversity is also set to expand, with a demo of a UEFN project called Talisman showcasing custom assets, a restyled user interface, and MetaHumans as NPCs, inspired by '70s sci-fi films. Moreover, UEFN is expanding with the addition of Lego tools and templates, allowing creators to build their own Lego-branded experiences. To publish and monetize projects, creators must be at least 18 years old, and all Lego-branded experiences must be suitable for a 10+ rating.