Train2Game students may remember Epic’s impressive Unreal ‘Samaritan’ tech demo posted last month, and now the studio say that increasingly lifelike characters are what’s needed to further progress of games.

That’s according to Epic’s CEO and technical director Tim Sweeney, who was speaking to Game Informer about the Samaritan demo.

“I’m most excited about the ability for more realistic characters and movie-quality environments to enhance the player’s emotional attachment to the game world. In the beginning, games only delivered fun, engaging challenges – Donkey Kong’s graphics were sufficient for that. Doom was, to me, the first game with sufficient realism to deliver a genuinely scary experience,” he said

Game Designers are those responsible for creating realistic characters, while Artist & Animators produce the environments.

And despite the realistic graphics of current games, the Epic CEO says more work needs to be done “Game Developers have much further to go in delivering truly dramatic interpersonal experiences,” he said.

“Alyx in Half-Life 2 offered a glimpse into this possibility; I think increasingly lifelike characters are key to further progress.”

Epic Co-founder and Vice President Mark Rein also spoke about the Samaritan demo last month, and you can read the comments here on the Train2Game blog.

So Train2Game, do games need improved characters to advance? What is it about Half-Life 2’s Alyx Vance that makes her so believable? And what other characters do you think are the most life like?

Leave your comments here on the Train2Game blog, or on the Train2Game forum.

[Source: CVG]