By Crom This Conan Exiles News Is Unreal
In the video below I give my first reactions to the news announced on April 23 that Funcom will be releasing on May 5 Conan Exiles Enhanced, with the original Conan Exiles game completely rebuilt in Unreal Engine 5. I did this over the announcement trailer, so it is under four minutes long and I missed a bunch of new features. So, this article is to add to that video with items mentioned in the accompanying blog post of the big announcement.
First, a little background. Conan Exiles was released on May 5, 2018, built on Unreal Engine 4. It is a survival sandbox game based on the lore of the Conan stories and novels from Robert E. Howard and many of his officially licensed follow-on writers and even movie makers — specifically the movie written and directed by John Milius and starring Arnold Schwarzeneggar. One example of the last influence is the Wheel of Pain that Conan grows up pushing in the movie. That is a movie-only creation but is almost necessary to properly play Conan Exiles.
A few weeks ago, Funcom announced on its Discord servers that it was looking for a very select group of content creators to beta test a secret thing for Conan Exiles, under a very strict non-disclosure agreement. There was a great deal of speculation about what it could be, but almost no one thought it was going to be a complete rebuild of the game.
What I covered in the video below is the change in visuals, with upgrades to pretty much everything in the game. If you played the game, everything will be basically where it always was, and armor and weapons and creatures will have the same designs, but the look of all of those things will get a massive upgrade in visual quality. I also talked about the fact that the two game maps, the original Exiled Lands and the DLC Isle of Siptah, will be able to be traversed by a single player, instead of having to create a brand-new game and character for each map, as is currently the case.
One huge announcement, for me the alt-o-holic anyway, is that you will be able to create up to three characters without having to start a different game, as is the case now. I use a mod that lets me do this now, but having it baked into the game is fantastic. And I mentioned that the UI had been completely overhauled, with new options and better-looking item icons.
The first thing I want to highlight that I didn’t mention seems to be inspired by Funcom’s other big game, Dune: Awakening. After the upgrade, you will be able to build or craft from material stored in your storage chests, not just from things in the crafting station, or on you or an active follower. Currently you need to take material out of the chests and place them in one of those three other locations I mentioned.
Another big bit of news, for me the mod-o-holic anyway, is that Funcom will continue to allow for extensive modifications to the game from third-party developers that make them for free. It will have what it calls “day one mod support” with a bunch of popular mods apparently given enough prior access to the new Mod Dev Kit that their mods will work right on launch day. I am both eager and apprehensive to see which of my nearly two dozen mods will be broken.
Hidden away in an info graphic is the news that the character creation will feature an “enhanced endowment slider” with an image of a male character wearing a loincloth with a very long black censor bar between his legs — a BBC, or big black censor if you will. Give the players what they want, I guess.
The blog post also lays out the minimum and recommended specs to play the game, which my system meets, thankfully. And I say specs because it will only be available for PC players via Steam. No plans in place for console or other PC store availability, but “we are considering” bringing the game to them in the future, the post asserts.
Check out the video below to see the trailer with my reactions voiced over it.
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