Emprise du Lion – A UE5 Cinematic: Dragon Age Inquisition in Unreal Engine 5

For those new – this is the continuation of my ‘Thedas Magic Mystery World Tour’ – where I’m recreating short little cinematics from the game Dragon Age: Inquisition in Unreal Engine 5 – using some of the exciting new features such as Nanite and Lumen. Partly as a technical show-piece – partly because it’s just a more fun way of learning the ins and outs of UE5 – and I’m just a big fan of the Dragon Age series!

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Today we go further afield: Emprise du Lion! Home of ice, snow and more red lyrium than you can shake a stick at! There’s a brittle beauty to this map and I loved playing through it - the three dragons in a row in the end – a bit less so – but nonetheless, a gorgeous environment and one of my favourites from the game. This part in particular is in the frozen Elfsblood River – near the first camp and to the right.

Tower was modelled and (very quickly) textured in Blender, as were the mountains and some of the trees and rocks. Quixel Megasans assets were used for some of the more high-poly meshes in the foreground - all Nanite of course. In this one, I’m actually not using any reflection capture actors – 100% lumen scene here – including the reflections. There’s still some issues – with reflection pop-ins and some occasional wobbly-ness – but overall, pretty decent results…

Also dipping my toes into Niagara for the falling snow particle system – and gotta say, I’m impressed. It’s much more user-friendly than Cascade and very flexible – not to mention quick to get a good result.