Unreal (Video Game)



Unreal is a First-Person Shooter game made by Epic Games and Digital Extremes which was released in 1998. It's the first game in the Unreal series.

In the game, you are a prisoner being escorted to a planetary prison on a prison vessel, the Vortex Rikers. Then said ship crashes on an unknown planet. You wake up sometime later and escape from the wrecked vessel. However, the planet proves to be anything but safe as you find that the peaceful natives, the four-armed Nali, are subjugated by an extremely violent and technologically advanced insectoid-reptile race: the Skaarj. The Nali texts bring up various references to a messiah finally ridding the planet of the Skaarj.

Unreal stuck out from a lot of other FPS games at the time by being more like an adventure game, with less of a focus on combat and action set-pieces (although there are still plenty) and generally very non-linear levels with the onus on you to find out the backstory of the planet and various races on it, as well as having groundbreaking graphics and an excellent soundtrack. It saw a lot of critical acclaim; however, it was somewhat overshadowed by the release of Half Life a few months later and the release of Unreal Tournament a year later.

Unreal also had a subsequent Expansion Pack called Unreal: Return to Na Pali, which starts after the events of the original game. You are recruited by the UMS, who gives you more equipment in order to go back to Na Pali and find a crashed ship.

As Epic Games decided to focus on the Tournament side of the franchise, the rights for a sequel were given to another company Legend Entertainment. As one might expect, the game saw a large change from the original.

Gameplay tropes

 * Abnormal Ammo:
 * The Stinger uses shards of Tarydium crystals meant for mining rock.
 * The Razorjack uses rotating spiked blades.
 * The Biorifle uses the most abnormal ammo of all: toxic, unstable Tarydium sludge that gets shot in big blobs.
 * Artificial Gill: The SCUBA Gear, available whenever the player must proceed underwater. They have a limited air supply that runs out pretty quickly. The expansion pack features a new one that not only lasts longer, but also recharges whenever surfaced.
 * Blatant Item Placement: In general, the game tries to keep this believable, with equipment found on dead bodies, in armories, put in boxes by confused Nali, etc. It gets noticeable in the rushed final levels however, where you get the (almost) Infinite Flashlight right before, and a pair of infinite jump boots just as . In Return to Na Pali, the UMS weapons are inside of crates. Some of those crates were thrown with so little aim that they hit hard some of Nali villagers.
 * Body Armor as Hit Points: Played almost completely straight. Most armor absorbs a constant, high percentage of damage, which is subtracted from the armor's strength instead. Dying with armor is possible only if you were already near death when picking it up; in all other cases, it effectively acts as extra health. The shield belt is this trope completely played straight as always takes damage instead of your health.
 * Deflector Shields: The player can use "shield belts" which absorb damage until depleted.
 * Difficult but Awesome: The Razorjack: it is frequently dismissed as it seems slow (not to mention that the player can accidentally behead himself with it, due to the blades' bouncing), and yet once landing headshots with it is mastered it can kill most non-boss enemies with little ammo expenditure, and each pack of ammo is worth a lot (and quite frequent), making it a borderline Game Breaker.
 * Dummied Out: If you know how to use the Level Editor, you will notice that there's a lot of content which didn't made the cut for the final game.
 * The QuadShot, for instance, was supposed to be a quad-barrel pump shotgun with the ability to load all four barrels before discharging. It was probably decided to cut it for game balancing reasons: as becomes evident if you install a Game Mod that restores it, four shotgun barrels worth of hitscan pellets are a guaranteed one-shot kill against anything short of bosses. It got replaced with the less unbalanced and more setting-friendly Flak Cannon.
 * There are a couple monsters who appear nowhere in the finished game but can still be placed with the level editor or spawned with the console. All of the monsters are fully functional, making the reason for their removal unclear.
 * Evolving Weapon: The Dispersion Pistol, with many upgrades across the maps. At first, it's just an Emergency Weapon, but damage increases massively with each upgrade, but so does ammo consumption, and the ammo regenerates very slowly. Better make your shots count on the higher levels.
 * Flechette Storm: The Stinger.
 * Gangsta Style: The alt fire mode for the Automag, with a near 100% corresponding drop in accuracy. Most shots not in melee range will miss.
 * Gatling Good: The Minigun, obviously, though its Gatling-ness is rather unusual compared to standard rotary cannons.
 * Hit Scan: The Automag, the Sniper rifle, the Shock rifle and the Minigun. Also the Assault Rifle in Return to Na Pali.
 * More Dakka: The Minigun.
 * Nerf: In the earlier versions, when you paired the Dispersion Pistol (no matter its upgrade level) with an Energy Amplifier, the resulting bolt was a one-shot kill against anything but the boss... including the stone titan, whose inability to move fast made for ridiculously easy fights. The developers eventually figured out this was undesirable, and a patch vastly reduced the amplified Pistol's power.
 * Painfully-Slow Projectile:
 * The Dispersion pistol. After a few upgrades, you can charge a full-power bolt that would one-shot any non-boss enemy, but good luck hitting anything with it.
 * The Bio rifle has this by design, as it's more of a toxic-substance vacuum switched to reverse than an actual weapon. It's actually more of a mine-layer than a rifle.
 * Quad Damage: The Energy Amplifier.
 * Secondary Fire: Every weapon, except the "Sniper" Rifle, which originally had one (mentioned in the manual, no less), but got changed to a poor man's zoom very late in the game's development process. In some cases (like the Flak Cannon), this mode is the more effective one.
 * Sorting Algorithm of Weapon Effectiveness: Weapons fall into two categories: those that trigger the AI's auto dodge, and those that don't. The ones that don't are far more effective (depending on the enemy).
 * Use Item: The game features a cyclable inventory.

Single-player tropes
""Your first priority is to keep your already-battered body in one piece. Failure to achieve this will render any secondary objectives somewhat irrelevant.""
 * Air Vent Passageway: How you get off the Vortex Rikers prison deck in the first level of the first game. If you look closely, you can just about make out a Skaarj watching you through the fog from the other end of the tunnel, but he vanishes as an explosion rocks the corridor. The Air Vent Passageway also turns up a couple more times in various levels throughout the series, such as ISV Kran, and in the Expansion Pack, the UMS Prometheus, and the Foundry Tarydium plant... in the latter, the vent nearly collapses into lava with you still inside!
 * Alien Blood: The Mercenaries have green blood. Notably, this isn't a form of violence censorship... your blood, as well as that of other enemies, is quite red.
 * Alien Sky: Some of the most breathtaking skies ever seen in a videogame, especially for the time.
 * All Up to You: Inverted; your only goal is to survive.

""Access denied. The intruder must be eliminated. All Warmasters are being routed to this area upon arrival from the Source.""
 * Apocalyptic Log: Many of the translator messages are these, especially the ones you find aboard the Vortex Rikers and the ISV Kran.
 * Artificial Brilliance: The Skaarj will change their tactics depending on how much health they have left, how many allies they have backing them up, and what weapons are being used against them. For example, if you are using projectiles, they will dodge the shots flying at them, whereas if you use a hitscan weapon, they will jump out of the firing line before you can pull the trigger.
 * Artificial Limbs: The Mercenaries' arm cannons.
 * Authority Equals Asskicking: The Skaarj and Krall Elite, also.
 * Badass Army: The Skaarj.
 * Beast of Battle: The Titans.
 * Bee People: The Skaarj fit the description of the trope, sans the "Bee" aspect. Only the Pupae and the Queen have any insectoid traits.
 * Bigger on the Inside: For levels set inside the Vortex Rikers, ISV Kran, and Terraniux: done subtly though, as you rarely see the whole ship up close in any one level to gauge their true size, and they look suitably huge from outside. More blatant in the case of, where the final core area consists of wide-open spaces. Averted with the UMS Prometheus, where you move in and out of the ship over the course of the same levels.
 * Bittersweet Ending:
 * In the main game,.
 * The expansion pack continues the plot . And then, the remaining Unreal games just made it all worse...
 * Blade on a Stick: Wielded by the Krall. Their staffs can also shoot energy bolts, just for good measure.
 * Boss in Mook Clothing: Brute Behemoths, Skaarj Berserkers and Skaarj Lords.
 * Degraded Boss: After your first encounters, you'll start to see these more often.

""It has been 0 days since our last accident""
 * Call a Rabbit a Smeerp: Nali names for many things: for example starships are "thunderbirds" or "metal chariots", Skaarj are "the demons from the stars" (or just "sky demons"), while humans are "two-armed soft skins". Inverted with the Nali Cow and, appropriately enough, the Nali Rabbit (which looks more like a kiwi). In the level "Temple of Chizra", they put an eightball gun on an altar and call it the "stick of six fires".
 * Cargo Cult: The Nali are a simple, agricultural race that can't quite figure out how the Skaarj could be doing what they do without magical assistance, and therefore immediately label them as demons from the skies. The Nali do have some advanced technology, but it's implied they are relics from a long-past era, whose scientific workings are impenetrable to the race's naive minds. They see such objects as holy relics, and put them on sacred pedestals, accessing which involves holy rituals.
 * The Chosen One: One of the Nali diaries specifically mentions a savior princess, which does raise questions if you're playing as a male character, although it should be noted that the original plan for the game contained only a female Player Character, with male options being added later. And not only does the Nali depiction of the lightning goddess Vandora look human (apart from the four arms), she has the exact same hair and face as Sonya, minus the respirator mask.
 * Collapsing Lair: As . Possibly justified by the damage that the escaped prisoners will be wreaking after 849 turned off all the force-fields.
 * Convection, Schmonvection: Several times, you're forced to move through lava-filled areas, such as the mines and the Warlord's lair. Only stepping on the lava itself will cook you.
 * Conveyor Belt O' Doom: Foundry Tarydium Plant, in Return to Na Pali.

""I'm glad I made it out of there. I'm used to being bitten, hacked, shot, stabbed or blown up, but in there I could have been crushed, sliced, diced, or... skewered! Whoever built that place must have been a real sadist.""
 * Cool Starship: The Vortex Rikers prison vessel, the ISV-Kran, and, of course, the Skaarj Mothership. From Return to Na Pali, there's also the UMS Bodega Bay and the UMS Prometheus.
 * Deadly Rotary Fan: Found in the Deathmatch level DmDeathFan.
 * Death of a Thousand Cuts: Due to the ability of the AI to dodge nearly everything you throw at it (Skaarj especially), in many cases Cherry Tapping something to death with the Automag is the most effective solution.
 * Defensive Feint Trap: Injured Skaarj and Krall will sometimes retreat to lure you into an ambush.
 * Deflector Shields: The Mercenaries have one which grants temporary invulnerability, and the Skaarj trooper class have an arm-mounted version.
 * Doomed Hometown: Many Nali villages on the first Unreal game as well. In fact, the entire planet Na Pali can count as a whole Doomed Planet, since even after the events of Return to Na Pali,.
 * Downer Ending: The level "Bluff Eversmoking" definitely ends badly..
 * Elaborate Underground Base: Outpost 3J. Judging by the interior bearing no resemblance to the ship's external shape, and the length of the tunnel that, there's also one of these under the Skaarj Mothership (the various teleporters presumably take you in and out of it). Well, either that or the Skaarj have TARDIS technology.
 * Electronic Speech Impediment: A good indication of just how screwed the Vortex Rikers is, the computer voice starts playing up.
 * Elite Mooks: The aptly-named Krall Elite and Mercenary Elite.
 * Empire with a Dark Secret: Locations such as Dark Arena, Velora Temple and Nali Castle, as well as some Lost Technology including very deadly weapons, suggest a darker, more violent side to the Nali's past, the effects of which possibly led them to become the spiritual, pacifist race they are.
 * Enemy Civil War:
 * Can happen if a monster accidentally shoots another in the back.
 * Skaarj Berserkers, Pack Hunters and Titans will fight just about anybody. Berserkers will gladly attack other Skaarj if you're not in their line of sight.
 * The Skaarj and the Mercenaries aren't of the same race and don't get along, judging by the Skaarj scout standing over a dead Mercenary and trying to find a way into the Terraniux when you reach the ship. It's mentioned in passing in a few logs, as well.
 * The Mercenary prisoners in the Skaarj mothership. One assumes that the Skaarj were looking to eliminate the Mercs along with everyone else who crashed on Na Pali to protect the secret of their presence on the planet.
 * There's also "Cellars at Dasa", where a bunch of Krall (who normally have teamwork as their hat) jump out and start fighting a Titan.
 * A Skaarj scientist finds out the downside of supercharging test subjects with tarydium in the Mothership Lab.
 * Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The Mercenaries.
 * Everything's Better with Spinning: One of the Skaarj melee moves is a Spin Attack. The Krall will sometimes twirl their staffs before firing, or when idle.
 * Everything Trying to Kill You: Some of the wildlife wandering around Na Pali is harmless, but if you look at their scripting in the Level Editor, even they are set to "Attitude to Player: Hate". This is lampshaded by the Prisoner 849 in the intermission at the end of "Velora Pass" in Return to Na Pali:

""Jailer Hrang of the Red Hand Tribe: We have captured a Terran girl. Some of my soldiers want to try and take liberties with her. I guess that's OK as long as they watch those boots! She kicked my in the hrangos last time.""
 * Evil All Along: in Return to Na Pali.
 * Faceless Goons: The Mercenaries, and the UMS space marines in Return to Na Pali.
 * Floating Continent: Multiple floating islands, one of which ("Na Pali Haven") you actually get to visit.
 * Foreshadowing:
 * The translator messages often make reference to future levels, even ones some distance down the line.
 * The Sunspire you visit about halfway through the game is a massively tall structure clearly visible in many other levels' skyboxes.
 * You get to see a Skaarj at the Vortex Rikers before you get to fight one in the third level, "Rrajigar Mine".
 * You get to collect ammo for the Automag at the Vortex Rikers before getting the weapon proper at "NyLeve's Falls".
 * You get to collect ammo for the Stinger at NyLeve's Falls before you get access to the weapon proper in "Rrajigar Mine".
 * If you look closely enough, you can get ASMD Cores before getting access to the ASMD itself at "Depths of Rrajigar" or "Chizra - Nali Water God".
 * Frictionless Ice:
 * The multi-player map DM-Tundra has an area, where you find the Shock Rifle in a frozen lake.
 * The level "Gala's Peak", from Return to Na Pali, features this in a bridge, though you can keep from accidentally falling off a ledge by crouching.
 * Getting Crap Past the Radar:
 * In "Bluff Eversmoking", there's a log with one:

""I am in DEEP SHIT. If captain Duk'choroth comes and finds out, I'll be de-hrango'd for sure!""
 * Later, by the same author:

""Bridge Foreman Khan Vhranna: I've about had it with Grok Vhul'rath. He's such a pompous son-of-a-Bulrach. If he makes us fix the drawbridge one more time in the rain, I'm going to bust his face in.""
 * And then subverted: later on, a Nali diary describing the same incident reveals that "hrangos" are teeth, not testicles.
 * Another log, in "Dasa Mountain Pass", shows that even Kralls don't want to work together:

""It has been 0 days since our last accident.""
 * Grimy Water: The Terraniux levels had several areas full of greeny water.
 * The Guards Must Be Crazy: The Krall can occasionally be seen sleeping, talking or playing dice while on duty.
 * Hand Cannon: The Brutes dual-wield rocket launchers as pistols.
 * Hive Queen:.
 * Improvised Weapon: Many of the weapons in the game, like the Stinger, were not weapons to begin with and adapted into such.
 * It's All Upstairs From Here: The Sunspire.
 * Its Pronounced Tropay: The "j" in Skaarj is silent, although we only find this out in the expansion pack as no-one in the original game says the word aloud.
 * Kick the Dog: Every sentient enemy in the game seems to utterly hate the ultra-pacifistic, wouldn't-hurt-a-fly Nali, and will beat them up, torture or just plain murder them for the hell of it. The player can do it too, and there's a situation in Chizra's temple where you have the option of murdering a Nali priest to get the superhealth he's levitating over..
 * King Mook: The large, psychotic Skaarjs with glowing "pseudoinvisibility" effects fought near the end. . They were all part of an experiment to mutate Skaarj with tarydium so they would have natural energy shields. Unfortunately it had the side effect of sending them into Unstoppable Rage, so they were locked up. ... Return to Na Pali has an unusually large, 15 foot tall Skaarj Lord with double the normal amount of health as a surprise boss at the end of the level.
 * Last Breath Bullet: The warlords attempt to do this to the player as part of their death animation. Similarly, if a Skaarj warrior is decapitated, he will swipe blindly at the air with his claws before falling down.
 * Late to the Party: Happens repeatedly. Though you sometimes hear other survivors being killed, the closest thing you see to another living human is a body being thrown across a corridor by a Brute. Or possibly, who spasms and dies as you approach.
 * Lethal Lava Land: The level where you fight against a Warlord for the first time.
 * Lightning Bruiser: All types of Skaarj.
 * Locked Out of the Fight: In the first level... which is just as well as you have no weapon at the time.
 * Mega Corp: Inuit, the company that owned the ISV Kran.
 * Mercy Kill: Putting crucified Nali out of their misery is occasionally rewarded.
 * Misguided Missile:.
 * Mission Pack Sequel: Return to Na Pali starts where Unreal left.
 * Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Nice job.
 * Non-Action Guy: The Nali as an entire race are this. Although you find several dead Nali with weapons next to them, and some Skaarj logs make reference to "rebellious activity", which suggest that at least some of them are actively fighting back. The novel Prophet's Power based on the game develops this idea further.
 * Noodle Incident: To this day, the reasons of his/her imprisonment are still unknown.
 * No OSHA Compliance:

""Try to keep track of how many bullets are left in a clip. Attempting to change clips with a pissed off Skaarj in your face is not advised.""
 * Not Quite Dead: Possibly,, assuming the one in Return to Na Pali is the same one you "killed" aboard the Skaarj Mothership.
 * Offscreen Teleportation: Some of the enemy spawners indeed only spawn enemies when you're not looking into the particular spawner. Bodies of slain enemies only disappear when your back is turned.
 * Oh Crap: Your first encounter with a Skaarj..
 * One Bullet Clips: Notably averted by the Automag (oddly, the only gun in the game that needs to periodically stop firing to reload). You don't have a reload key, so the Automag simply gets reloaded when it's out of bullets. If you hear the telltale "click", that signals the clip is down to five rounds, and you know there's a big fight coming, this forces you to change weapons to force a reload.

""Vigilance is the guardian of honor.""
 * Painfully-Slow Projectile:
 * The Dispersion Pistol. After a few upgrades you can charge a full-power bolt that would one-shot any non-boss enemy... if they didn't have the disagreeable tendency to, you know, move.
 * The Bio Rifle has this by design, as it's more of a toxic-substance vacuum switched to reverse than an actual weapon. It's actually more of a mine-layer than a rifle, though the arc is workable in close quarters. Just don't get too close, as the splash damage will affect you.
 * The Razorjack fires saw discs, but its slow rate of fire ensures that nearly all enemies will autododge it from far away. The secondary fire allows the disc to be guided, but makes the disc even slower.
 * Gasbag fireballs and Titan rocks. The latter are especially jarring, but necessary to make the Titan beatable at all, as they're otherwise One-Hit Kill against the player.
 * Other weapons vary, but most can be dodged if your reflexes are fast enough. The Skaarj are also aware of this trope and will dodge most of your straight-flight projectiles.
 * The ASMD's secondary fire launches a projectile so slow that it can be hit with a shot from its primary fire in order to cause a shockwave.
 * Playing Possum: Skaarj do this on occasion. However,.
 * Powered Armour: The Mercenaries and Skaarj Troopers in Unreal, and the UMS space marines in Return to Na Pali.
 * Prison Ship: You start out on a crashed prison transport named "Vortex Rikers".
 * Proud Warrior Race Guy: Arguably, the Skaarj:

""Franco tried to go toe-to-toe with this thing. At least he died quickly.""
 * Scenery Porn: The game that started it all. The first level fools you into thinking it's just another shooter in enclosed spaces with prettier graphics (for the time). The second level... doesn't. If you played the game without first reading reviews of it, the surprise was mindblowing. Lush vegetation, colorful moving skies, animals hopping and flying about, and the sheer size of all the scenery was something completely unseen for the day, along with some perfectly fitting music to set the mood. It remained exclusive to Unreal for a while too.
 * Shaggy Dog Story: Despite the Prisoner 849 rampaging across the planet, and , along with various references to being the Nali's Savior, the Tournament games, which, according to Word of God, are set several years after, still reference the Skaarj hunting Nali. Not to mention that.
 * Space Elevator:
 * An anti-gravitational, cable-less elevator carries people to the floating islands from the Sunspire. It's presumably high stratosphere rather than space, but then again it's not perfectly clear how orbits work in Na Pali.
 * The Sunspire elevator can be spotted on the Spire Valley level, this time on the bottom of a lake with a log beside it suggesting two humans tried to use it during a storm.
 * Star Scraper: The Sunspire is an incredibly tall building, so tall, it's visible in the sky in other levels. Its purpose is to serve as a starting point for the Space Elevator that brings people up to the floating islands.
 * Stock Scream: In the first level, many screams sound like you've heard them numerous times. The air vent filled with green fog is especially flooded with them.
 * Storming the Castle: The last levels of the original game requires you to.
 * Super Window Jump: A Skaarj gets the drop on you this way in.
 * Tech Fu: The Mercenaries, who wear Powered Armour, wield a rocket-launcher/minigun combo on one arm and sport personal Deflector Shields.
 * Arguably, the player, who's helpless without the guns and pickups found within the game. Poor Prisoner 849 isn't really going to get very far in a fist fight against Brutes, Skaarj, Mercenaries or a Titan. Next to a sketch of a Brute in the Unreal manual:

""Shipping Log: Grorq of the Red Hand Tribe. I am really getting sick with the way the Skaarj are treating us. Constantly bossing us around and making us watch over their pathetic Nali Slaves. My troops are getting sick of this situation.""
 * Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: The Kralls aren't happy of working alongside of the Skaarj, as a log shows up in the Bluff Eversmoking level:


 * Tele Frag: The expansion features a level with no exit... until an enemy is teleported into a wall.
 * There Was a Door: The Brutes are fond of this..
 * The Un-Reveal: What exactly is the "Talon Project", the top-secret data you are sent to retrieve from the UMS Prometheus in Return to Na Pali? Who knows because.
 * Useless Useful Stealth: Played straight and averted. The invisibility power-up is great for sneaking past Titans (although some of the Titans you face in the game are part of unavoidable boss battles, natch) but never seems to work on more intelligent enemies like Skaarj.
 * Video Game Caring Potential: The Nali. The fact that keeping them alive usually results in them leading you a valuable item (or sometimes a shortcut) doesn't hurt either.
 * We Will Meet Again: Your first encounter with, where . It's possible that he survived that too though, as you fight another on the final level in Return to Na Pali, just before the end.
 * Wolverine Claws (with occasional Energy Balls): The weapon of choice for the Skaarj warrior class.

Character tropes
"Shirtless guy with Bald of Awesome (Kurgan) Tattooed Crook (Carter) Smoker with Nice Hat (Ash) Husky Russkie (Ivan) Guy with Badass Mustache (Kristoph) Roguish guy with badass beard (Dante) Scary Black Man (Dregor) Red-haired guy with celtic war paint (Krige) Guy with bionic eye (Bane) Action Girl (Gina) Blonde Action Girl (Tamika) Action Girl with eye-framing tattoo (Nikita) Red-haired Badass Spaniard (Raquel) Heroic Albino (Drace) Dark-haired girl with cool respirator (Sonya) Girl in the iron bionic mask (Dimitra) Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette (Katryn)"
 * Artificial Limbs:
 * Kurgan has a bionic leg.
 * Dimitra seems to have most of her face covered in a bionic mask.
 * Cool Mask: Sonya wears a respirator.
 * Featureless Protagonist: In Return to Na Pali, the intermission voice changes depending on the character you choose. You can choose to be:


 * The Hero
 * Anti-Hero
 * Heroic Mime: Return to Na Pali at least have the Intermission cutscenes.

Miscellaneous tropes

 * Captain Obvious: The first game holds the Guinness World Record for "First Game to be Created Using the Unreal Engine."
 * Lemony Narrator: The manual, as several of the quotes on this page demonstrate.
 * Muzzle Flashlight: Many projectiles glow, but the Dispersion Pistol is the weapon best suited to it because it regenerates its ammo.
 * Scenery Porn: Unreal pioneered it for video games in its era. And because of the standard set by this game, a whole lot of the fan map packs also qualify. Go ahead, browse some reviews.
 * Shout-Out: Check the page.
 * Updated Rerelease: Unreal Gold, which is basically the same game in the Unreal Tournament revision of Unreal Engine 1 and bundled with Return to Na Pali.