The free new Matrix “game” is a fascinating roadtrip to the uncanny valley
The Matrix Awakens uses the Unreal Engine 5 to semi-convincingly blur the line between reality and digital fantasy
Aux News Laurence Fishburne
Last night, Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss popped up as part of the annual cavalcade of commercials, trailers, and very occasional game awards known as The Game Awards, showing off a new teaser for their upcoming film The Matrix: Resurrections. (It was a pretty wild one, too, with Yahya Abdul-Mateen II’s Morpheus playing footage of Laurence Fishburne’s Morpheus from the original movie, in an apparent attempt to get Neo to remember his former Machine-battling life.)
The other reason Moss (quietly detached) and Reeves (giddy in that way he gets when asked to say especially dopey things) called in to the TGAs, though, was to promote The Matrix Awakens, a free new video game-ish tie-in for the film. And, after spending two hours with Awakens last night, we can attest: This is a very weird, very Matrix-y piece of side content.
The…game?…starts with some regular video footage, carrying over the self-referential themes as perpetually confused hacker Thomas Anderson addresses the audience about the nature of virtual worlds…before handing the reins over to actor Keanu Reeves. He and Moss then chat a bit more about making The Matrix, before transitioning into digital approximations of their 1999-era selves that are good enough to consistently trick the eye—a theme throughout the Awakens experience. Then, with a wry comment from Moss/Trinity about needing to give the audience some “sexy action” to enjoy to break up all the damn existential speechifying, Awakens tosses you into a sequence where you, as a Zion operative, help Neo and Trinity fend off an attack by Agents.
All well and good, and kind of fun, in a “This is a very simplistic rail shooter” sort of way. It’s what happens next, though, that sees Awakens get kind of Matrix-ish and nuts. First, the camera pulls back to show off the city you’ve been shooting your way through, listing off a whole bunch of features that Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 5 (short version: new gaming tech that Awakens is “powered by”) is using to make the whole thing seem real. It’d be a neat ending for a fun little tech demo, all told.
Except that then, Awakens drops you right back into the city, now with complete freedom to run, drive, and fly throughout the whole massive, many-virtual square miles thing. There’s not a lot to do, besides hunt down a few secrets and plaques that describe some of the technical accomplishments on display. The real point is just to get your jaw dropping over and over again, from looking at cars that are actually capable of tricking your (or, at least, our) brain into thinking you’re looking at actual cars, to flying up into the sky and seeing thousands of buildings, vehicles, and people all simulating seamlessly at once.
On the one hand, this is just a straight-up brag: “Here’s Unreal 5, here’s what it can do when we let it off the leash.” (Take it as read that this thing is only available on the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X.) The deeper purpose, though, is presumably to make it clear how much closer we’re getting to designing virtual worlds that have at least a shot at tricking our brains into thinking they’re real, if only for a few moments. (Certainly, it’s a better sales pitch for a “metaverse” than anything Facebook is doing, as Reeves himself would presumably, laughingly agree.) Matrix Awakens isn’t a game, and it’s only sort of a toy. But it’s a hell of a way to bake your noodle for an hour or two.
25 Comments
The real mind-blowing thing is that the whole intro “video” mentioned here is apparently CGI models being rendered in real time. So the Keanu Reeves talking to you is just another game model. Crazy
No it’s not. Everything with actor Keanu Reeves and Carrie Ann Moss is video (after the impressive recreation of the first movie’s opening scene), sometimes superimposed into digital scenes like the bullet time sequence (which is clearly a game model). There’s a vast gulf between the video character and the game characters.
I’m seeing conflicting information out there, but that makes more sense. Ars Technica was saying the Keanu Reeves section was totally digital, and I’ve seen people picking apart Keanu in that scene, but he looked photo-real to me in a way he doesn’t once he’s replaced with is younger facsimile, so it does seem more realistic that it was filmed.I tried to fact check check it this morning, since I was seeing people talk about how “obvious” it was that he was fake in the white room section, and at the time everything I could find said that he was digital. Polygon’s article suggests otherwise now, though.
lmao
It is totally digital. That guy is wrong. You can just got the unreal engine website and confirm that. Plus it’s obvious. As good as it is it’s not a perfect render.
In the scene inside the screen old Keanu first appears as real, then real footage with Morpheus from the first movie, then switches to digital next to his digital younger self and digital Morpheus, then real again in the mirror, then digital when he transforms into digital Carrie, who is digital throughout the whole thing. The roof bullet time scene is all digital, old Keanu included. (Edit: it switches to movie footage after digital old Keanu passes by the camera) I’m surprised some people don’t notice the uncanny valley.
That is fully correct. DF talks about how well they were able to seamlessly integrate video into this and by the confusion many people have about it they are totally right.
Yeah, I saw the video afterwards and they pointed out Morpheus is just a 2D billboard in that digital scene lol.
Digital Foundry confirms that almost everything in the beginning is real-time rendering, not video
Yes, every close up of Keanu’s face is video. The walking around is RT rendering.
You can see a very stark fidelity loss once real time rendered Keanu is walking around in the bullet time scene. That is the proper “game” character model.
The close ups, except for the very first one, are all real time renders. Just watch the Digital Foundry video, they talk about the whole thing in depth, and they interviewed the developers.
No, they are not. I watched the DF video several times, they are quite clear about Keanu’s close ups being video, including the mirror. As I said, there’s a vast gulf between the real time characters, the meta-humans and the video.
Nope. Go to the unreal engine site. Everything is rendered off of mocaps of Reeves and Moss. Which you can cleary see. It’s good but it’s not perfect. Especially in the facial hair and wrinkles.
We’ve officially left the uncanny valley behind. Welcome to the unkeanu valley.
Unwhoa…
Pretty amazing how far video game graphics have progressed in the twenty years since the Atari 2600 came out.*
*Yes, this is 100% accurate and no I’m not old, you’re old, shut up, leave me alone.
You really need to see what the upcoming Atari 93600 can do.
I’ll add this to my list of “games that don’t actually look any better than Castlevania 4.”
LGR put out a video of 3D Lemmings Winterland just yesterday — a great example of what the typical 3D game was like back when Doom and Duke Nukem were state of the art:The pixels!!
Take it as read that this thing is only available on the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series XLol come on dude you can’t write a full article about a video game (or ~video game-like experience~ or however WB is describing this) and wait until the last paragraph to parenthetically mention that it’s only available on PS5 and Xbox Series X. When a new video game that people rave about the graphics for comes out, I sure take it as read that it’s available for PC!
I’m guessing the only reason it isn’t available on PC is because of the vast differences in hardware. Epic knows the best way to show off their engine is to run it on consoles with standardized specs so they can optimize everything.
It doesn’t really change the huge difference between Keanu/Carrie and the playable character though. The two motion captured actors look photorealistic most of the time while the playable character fell into the uncanny valley pretty hard.
Video game hardware is too expensive these days because people are buying it up to mine fake internet currency, which seems like it might have been a plot point in an early draft of The Matrix that was cut out for being “too stupid.”
See, I’m more interested in that movie clip and they really seem to be retconning a lot of the two sequels that reduced the world to “The City” when the original film referred to a global simulation.
The problem with next gen is that they don’t actually make graphics for video games anymore they just scan everything and then upload the scan into the computer so basically the art form of video gaming is being lost slowly. However there’s still a lot of good games that use actual artwork but the trend overall is to just scan everything make digital photos and turn them into game backgrounds which basically makes the game the more boring and less original.