Thanks to a YouTuber, The Matrix Awakens tech demo is now finally playable on PC without any knowledge of the Unreal Engine 5.
Last December, The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience caused quite a stir. The playable tech demo shows in an impressive way how real NextGen titles could look – a big step towards what is generally understood by (cinematically) photorealistic. To illustrate this with an example:
Neo actor Keanu Reeves appears in The Matrix Awakens both as a real person and as an animated character. Both swap places again and again, but there is hardly any difference. The freely explorable megacity from the Matrix universe does not detract from this: we have not yet encountered more realistic buildings and streets in any game or tech demo. If you’ve never seen this before, take a look at the following video:
The Matrix Awakens: Now even without engine experience on the PC
There is a catch, however: The Matrix Awakens is available for Microsoft’s and Sony’s Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 consoles as a complete package that you simply download and start like a normal game. To enjoy the tech demo on the PC, however, you have had to take a not exactly straightforward diversions via the installation of the underlying Unreal Engine 5, including the creation of your own project, and so on. This requires at least a basic knowledge of Epic’s game engine.
But the emphasis is on so far
Because YouTuber Xenthorx has now turned the so-called City Sample
, which is available for free download in the Epic Marketplace, into a user-friendly package. You can download it here, you just have to execute the file CitySample.exe
and you will start directly into the megacity from Matrix.
Bring a little patience!
If you want to jump straight into the 18 gigabyte download, which is even based on the still unreleased version 5.1 of the new Unreal Engine and is supposed to improve performance: You may not get through right away and Google Drive will tell you to try again later. Apparently the tech demo is quite popular and a lot of users are downloading it at the same time.
In the video above, the creator of the packed version of The Matrix Awakens Xenthorox shows you how the whole thing plays and what options are available to you:
Have you really got the urge for The Matrix Awakens now? Will you download it right away, or have you already tried it out? Feel free to let us know in the comments!
