In the last video update of the year, Ashes of Creation's Creative Director Steven Sharif showcased one of the largest changes coming to the MMORPG: migrating the MMO from Unreal Engine 4 to the latest iteration, Unreal Engine 5.
Look, Ashes of Creation already looked beautiful, even in its current Alpha One state. In our time with the MMO earlier this year, Shank raved about the "spectacular scenery," consistently needing to stop and take screenshots due to how beautiful the MMO was.
Well, that's now been jacked up with Unreal Engine 5's upgraded technology. The video, set in a snowy land to hearld in the holiday season, is beautiful to behold. Snow flurries fly throughout the scene, giving a realistic look to the storm. However, the lighting really impresses, with moments such as the frozen river Sharif crosses seeing specular lighting bounce realistically off the ice, or when the developer is showing off UE5's Lumen inside of one of the various caves in the world.
Via Sharif in the video:
"Lumen, which is one of the global illumination features that UE5 offers is likely going to be most noticeable in dungeons as its going to do a better job than the skylight, which historically was exclusively used for world indirect illumination everywhere. Lumen actually provides a pretty realistic approach to lighting ultilizing dynamic global illumination [which] makes the world come alive."
While the video itself also highlights updates to player locomotion, as well as showcases a bit of combat as Sharif explores the landscape., the blog post also talks about how this update can actually speed up development.
"We want to express that at the forefront, this will take us time to fix bugs and get all the kinks out, but this has already been underway. As you can see in our update, we already have gameplay to show you as we have begun the transition! In the long run, UE5 is going to allow us to develop at a much faster pace with some really nice tools for our development team. "
The latest development update also touches on environment and character art, as much more, which you can watch in the embed below.
