In a new interview, Bloober Team’s head of production Kacper Michalski revealed how Unreal Engine 5 is changing how they are making Layers of Fears, the third game in the Layers of Fear series.

Kacper first explained that Layers of Fears is actually a new idea deviating from the previous two games:

“Layers of Fears is a new concept. It is a horror reimagined that combines the original series with totally new content. In the latest trailer, shown during Gamescom, the lighthouse has appeared – this is something new and players will find out how it binds everything together.”

Now Kacper then revealed that Unreal Engine 5 has particularly been helpful for Bloober Team to make games for the current generation of consoles.

“It’s no surprise that with every new project, we strive to outdo ourselves. We never settle on just “good enough” – anything at any time can always be better and so it is for our games as well! We try to fully exploit all the possibilities that UE5 (Unreal Engine 5) is giving us. It’s a game-changer in terms of the dynamic lighting system. It creates beautifully lit environments and a dark gripping atmosphere. It’s important for immersive horror stories like Layers of Fears.”

“UE5 (Unreal Engine 5) runs smoother and looks amazing, with some truly ingenious features being introduced like Lumen and Nanite. It’s cutting-edge technology.”

Lumen is Unreal Engine 5’s global illumination and reflection system, by way of ray tracing. Without getting too deep into technical details, this is a universal solution for indoor and outdoor environments, and presumably works on PCs and consoles alike, regardless of the graphics card used or if the platform has a GPU at all.

Nanite is Unreal Engine 5’s virtualized geometry system. In plain terms, it’s the system by which Unreal makes high quality graphics. Nanite is built in such a way that it simplifies the process developers use to build game environments and worlds. Of course, it also builds these assets at the scale expected for gaming at 4K.

Bloober Team first revealed Layers of Fears at last year’s Summer Game Fest. While the first two Layers of Fear games revealed around a painter and an actor respectively, Layers of Fears will be focused on the perspective of the painter’s wife. In spite of the new gameplay design idea behind it, Layers of Fears will built upon and tie together the narrative of all three games.

Layers of Fears will be released in 2023 on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC via Steam.

Source: Lords of Gaming