Does Unreal actually exist or is GT Interactive just playing games?
While a few gaming sites display screen shots and carry breathless descriptions of the wonders to come, and would-be players salivate, there is no sign that this oft-delayed title will come to market soon.
Why does Unreal elicit excitement? Essentially, it's a first-person shooter in the style of Quake II. But GT Interactive boasts it will be more, much more, than gamers have ever experienced. Unreal will feature an artificial intelligence engine to enable monsters to fight back (or run away) with much greater realism than anything on the market now. The graphics will employ more color and "amazing" lighting effects. An easy-to-use level editor will allow gamers to design their own scenarios.
But a visit to the purchase area on the game's elaborate Web site will find the eager GT beavers reluctantly admitting, "While we would love to sell you a copy of Unreal, we can't. You see, the game is still deep in production."
Writes one Wired News reader, "I guess this doesn't really qualify as much for vaporware as it does for delayware, since they would have to be incredibly, incredibly stupid not to release it now, after the double-page ads in gaming magazines, the site, and the hype, but I guess stranger things have happened."
GT Interactive's Allyne Mills concedes that the Unreal bun has been in the oven about 18 months. She predicts a release in the first half of 1998 - even farther out than the recent first-quarter estimates still reported on many gaming Web sites.
"Rather than rush the game to release," Mills says, the game's developers are waiting until its "groundbreaking" features are fully developed. In a saturated market, it will be crucial that the game stands out. But with each passing month, Unreal increasingly lives up to its name.
