Dragon Age Inquisition in UNREAL ENGINE 5: The Crow Fens - A UE5 Cinematic

Channel:

L.Torres

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Published on July 22, 2021 4:22:08 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iq5GNvfuVjg

Game:

Dragon Age: Inquisition (2014)

Duration: 1:06

32,254 views

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So here’s something a bit more adventurous – I’d always loved the environments in Dragon Age: Inquisition, so I thought I give it a go to create some cinematics from the concept art and level screenshots of the original game – this time with the full power of Unreal Engine 5. (As an aside: wouldn't it be great if Bioware was allowed to go back to Unreal for Dragon Age 4? I mean, c'mon! EA, cut them some slack!)

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Please NOTE: I am not affiliated with Bioware in any way. This is a FANMADE cinematic tech DEMO inspired by Dragon Age Inquisition - it does not use any assets from the game itself, and as such, does not - and is not supposed to - match up one-to-one to the original.

In full fairness, Dragon Age: Inquisition came out in 2014, so obviously the technology for video game real-time graphics has developed substantially since then – and not to mention that it used an entirely different game engine (Frostbite 3). With that said, obviously the lighting, models etc… aren’t going to match up 100%, and with Nanite and Lumen – the whole look of the original scene isn’t exactly the same – but it wasn’t supposed to be. The aim for this little project was just to re-imagine what DA:I could have looked like with today’s graphical capabilities – to capture the mood and the essence of Bioware’s environment level design.

This entire scene was a part of the narrow canyon section in the Exalted Plains (The Crow Fens) – on the way to fight the Gamordan Stormrider. I loved the dramatic mood of that marsh level - although fighting that dragon in particular was a PAIN. Lighting breathing dragon + water filled swamp? Yeesh.

I think I’ll work my way through some different levels as time allows – so hit that subscribe button and stay tuned!

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For the more technical side of things, almost all of this scene was kitbashed together using full quality Nanite Quixel Megascans assets – with the exception of the trees (done in Blender Sapling Gen), the animated water and the mountain in the background. Nanite is great – this level of complexity would never have been possible in UE4 – although as a caveat, at nearly 1GB per model – this scene is HUGE. If this any indication, future games done in UE5 are certainly going to be hard on the SSDs.

This scene was 100% dynamic – no light bakes. Just Lumen working its magic. The most difficult part of this whole thing was the reflections however – a planar reflection was used although it had to be constantly adjusted depending on the angle of the camera which was a bit of a pain. This is an area where I think ray-traced reflections are still king.

For more information about Nanite and Lumen, check out these great videos by Willam Facuher - who goes into more in-depth detail about how these features work - and what limitations they currently have.

Nanite: Everything You Should Know: https://youtu.be/P65cADzsP8Q

Things to Know About Lumen: https://youtu.be/CFKNoeUPQGQ

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