author: Zuzanna Domeradzka
Looks Like Mass Effect 5 is Using Unreal Engine 5 to Make Beautiful Faces
Perhaps in the new Mass Effect game we won't experience such comical facial animations as in Andromeda - this is due to the MetaHuman tool, which BioWare probably uses.
Many fans of the Mass Effect series were disappointed with the fourth installment, Andromeda. Criticism was leveled not only at the game's plot and characters, but also at the facial animations, which at launch cried out for vengeance. Fortunately, there are many indications that in the next part of the series they will look better.
On Twitter/X, Chris Evans, director of character technology at Epic Games, published a post in which he asked about whether anyone is creating game characters using the MetaHuman tool in Unreal Engine 5. He got a telling reply from Michael Gamble of BioWare, the director of the new part of Mass Effect. He reacted with a gif featuring a certain representative of the Salarian race.
So most likely this means that the fifth Mass Effect will use MetaHuman, which is bundled with Unreal Engine 4 and 5. That the game is being developed on the engine from Epic Games is was known for some time now - which, by the way, may please fans, as Andromeda, like for example Dragon Age: Inquisition, was created on the developers' tricky Frostbite engine.
What is MetaHuman, anyway? It's an advanced, yet relatively simple to use application, which for now is in early access. With its help, it is possible to create beautiful and realistic characters in games, as the tool uses scans of real people. In addition, in MetaHuman it is possible to animate the faces of characters, which, combined with the motion capture technique, is expected to provide amazing effects. Only projects developed on Unreal Engine 4 or 5 are compatible with the application.
It remains to be hoped that if the new Mass Effect uses it, the game's characters will indeed look very good (in motion, too). At the same time, it is worth noting that we will have to wait a long time for the effects. "ME5" doesn't even have an approximate release date, and the only major footage from the game is the teaser from 2020.
