In The Matrix Awakens, a player recently produced a big 1km traffic congestion, which serves as a sombre reminder of what Cyberpunk 2077 may have been. Epic revealed The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience during last week’s The Game Awards 2021 webcast, following some initial leaks and conjecture. The Matrix Resurrections actors Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Mos featured in the free-to-download tech demo, which gives gamers a remarkable look at Unreal Engine 5’s possibilities.
Players who download The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience will be greeted by visually stunning recreations of Reeves and Moss reprising their roles as Neo and Trinity from The Matrix films, as well as discussions about the future of technology with recreations of classic scenes from the original Matrix film rendered in Unreal Engine 5. The Matrix Awakens then sends players on an exciting vehicle chase with hostile Agents before letting the tech demo’s anonymous resistance fighter traverse a large open-world city that rivals those of fully fleshed-out games. Easter eggs referencing reports that Neo and Trinity are coming to Fortnite have already been discovered, while others are simply thrilled to wreak havoc in the sandbox Epic created to showcase its promising new game engine.
Elalextamez, a Reddit member, recently published a video of their big 1km traffic delay, which was created by the player from The Matrix Awakens (via The Gamer). The multi-lane traffic jam was caused by a car stopping in the midst of a busy overpass, with the resulting backlash reaching for nearly a kilometer throughout The Matrix Awakens’ 16 square-kilometer virtual cities. The metropolis has been compared to the Night City of Cyberpunk 2077 by several commenters (which coincidentally also features the voice and likeness of Keanu Reeves as the rebellious rocker Johnny Silverhand). “This tech demo really demonstrates what Cyberpunk could have been,” Redditor mattchew1993 commented on the Reddit thread, pointing out that The Matrix Awakens feels like the game that Cyberpunk 2077 should have been.
During the extended production period for Cyberpunk 2077, developer CD Projekt Red made a lot of big promises, but a lot of them fell through. Fans were expecting a large and hyper-realistic world similar to the one seen in the Matrix demo, thanks to the developer’s marketing, but there was no shortage of tantalizing features that CDPR promoted for Cyberpunk 2077 that didn’t make the final cut when the game arrived last December. Even the things that did make it into Cyberpunk 2077, such as numerous backstories for V, pale in comparison to the comprehensive story pathways that CDPR promised before the game’s release. The reaction was exacerbated by the slew of game-crashing problems and malfunctions that afflicted Cyberpunk 2077 at its first release, with CD Projekt Red still trying to improve the game a year later.
If a recent wave of positive Cyberpunk Steam reviews is any indication, fans are warming up to the CDPR game. It may not be the groundbreaking post-modern sandbox that players were promised, nor is it the highly-detailed and visually stunning tech showcase similar to the Matrix demo, but fans seem to be warming up to the CDPR game. Perhaps in the future, a developer will be able to take the technology showcased in The Matrix Awakens and turn it into the game that CDPR hyped Cyberpunk 2077 to be in the years leading up to its now-infamous release.
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