The Hinterlands Pt.2 - A UE5 Cinematic - Dragon Age Inquisition in Unreal Engine 5

Part two of the Hinterlands and part 3 overall of my 'Thedas Magic Mystery World Tour' where I'm recreating realtime cinematics from Dragon Age Inquisition in Unreal Engine 5, utilizing brand new features such as Nanite and Lumen to bring a new dimension to old environments.

NOTE: I am not affiliated with Bioware in any way. This is a FANMADE cinematic tech DEMO.

As always, this is not intended to be a direct one-to-one recreation of the original environment art style - but more of a technical demonstration. The constant issue that cropped up was the often almost cartoon-y vibe that the original environments sometimes had, which made the inevitably more realistic UE5 version look kind of ... off ... if using the original as a reference. But in the end, I just interpreted the scene as best that I could with the assets I had on hand or could model to fit the feel of the environment.

This one was perhaps the most complex one I've made to date. A lot of moving parts here - and a lot of speed bumps - but then again, that's part of the reason for this demo series - to push the boundaries of what UE5 can do.

For example, I ran into an issue with the cloth sim for the flag - while it would simulate fine when in-viewport and when playing the level, sequencer just didn't seem to want to play it, so I ended up just running the sim in Blender and exporting as an Alembic with geometry cache - which ended up working fine - so yeah, teething pains like that can certainly add some headaches - especially when you have no idea if it's a bug or just a limitation of the software. Also, the reflections are still kind of ... eh. Hopefully that's something that will get fixed with the final release.