Unreal Tournament 2003

Unreal Tournament 2003, initially developed as Unreal Tournament 2, was unofficially announced on December 3, 2001. It was officially announced by Infogrames (now Atari) on January 4, 2002. UT2003 was released to stores on September 30, 2002.

Prologue
Prologue

Over a century has passed since Liandri Corporation first began the Tournaments, and while the tradition lives on much has changed in the world around it…

Seventy years ago an invasion fleet appeared in human space, wiping out virtually all resistance before it could begin. Humanity, a race that had taken pride in its freedom suddenly found itself bound by the shackles of an ancient race vastly superior in numbers and technology.

The Empire quickly established a foothold among the worlds of its latest acquirement, using propaganda and brute force where necessary. Those who swore allegiance to the Emperor found that life wasn't so different under the new rule, and for some it even improved. But for those who would not kneel before their new rulers, death awaited them on the prison planets scattered across the sectors.

The Emperor and his counsel, at first repulsed by the idea of the tournaments, soon began to see the advantage of providing the populace with a form of entertainment that both enraptured the viewers and reminded them where disobedience would lead them.

Arena worlds were picked from the harshest of the prison planets, and the training began. People who had watched the Liandri Tournaments with savage glee found themselves on the arena floors fighting for their lives again and again, as the alien technology ripped them back from the brink of death until their minds finally collapsed under the strain.

Examples were made of the more vocal dissidents, each broken and remade in the image of the darkest nightmares, to show the scorn the Emperor felt for the weaklings who opposed him. Not all the participants took part unwillingly. A race of beings previously unknown slaughtered the new combatants with reckless abandon, taking pride in the ease at which they butchered the new meat. For all they cheered during each battle, every time another human died the spirit of the men and women who watched grew weaker.

Now that the Tournaments have become a fixture of the Empire's power, the aristocracy has begun to take part as well, in carefully orchestrated battles that pose no real danger to their lives. Unlike their prisoners, these Highborn can not use the resurrection technology so readily available, without losing their status as ones tainted by madness. To kill a Highborn is to kill him forever.

The only hope for mankind is that a champion will rise from the ashes of their civilization and succeed against all odds, to hold the Emperor's life in their hands.

History
Unreal Tournament 2003 began development as a PC port of the then existing Unreal Championship code for the original Xbox named Unreal Tournament 2. Initially, the game continued development alongside Unreal Championship and the two games were expected to be released around the same time in the summer of 2002. However, after E3 2002, it became clear to Epic and DE that they would be able to complete both UT2003 and Unreal Championship faster if each team was dedicated to one specific game, so Epic took over UT2003 allowing DE to focues on Unreal Championship.

Around this time in the summer of 2002, someone working for ATI, who had received a pre-release copy of UT2003 to demo their new hardware, leaked it onto many popular P2P programs.

Also around the time Epic took over the development of UT2003, Mark Rein began reporting that the demo would be out in "around two weeks". Every two weeks he would come back and say "it's going to be at least two more weeks". This led to a variety of jokes regarding Mark Rein and "two weeks". When the demo was actually nearing completion in mid-September, 2002, CliffyB set up a webcam that was pointed at a sign on the wall of Epic's office stating that the demo would be done in so much time, eventually coming down to hours.

Within a couple weeks of the demo being released, the game went gold to much displeasure from the fans who were expecting Epic to spend more time fixing bugs that were being reported before the game was released on September 30, 2002.

Demo
The demo for the game saw massive initial success. Most download records at the time were broken upon it's release.

The demo was released with two deathmatch maps Antalus and Asbestos, one CTF map Citadel, and a Bombing Run map Anubis.

There were many small changes made between the demo and the retail version of the game. One of the largest of these changes being modifications to the link gun.

Release Details
Unreal Tournament 2003 had only one release. It was published by Atari and released to stores on September 30, 2002.

Other Unreal Tournament games have been released in a variety of formats, however UT2003 was skipped over even for the Unreal Anthology since almost all of it's content was also included in UT2004.

Reception
While Unreal Tournament 2003 saw massive initial success, with the release of the demo actually slowing down the internet by up to 73%, it was not well received by fans of the series. The game did receive mostly high scores and positive reviews, however many fans of the series thought the new gameplay features detracted from the fun of the original game and stopped playing.

Critiques of the game mostly often included double jumping, dodge jumping, the inclusion of adrenaline and the overall reduction in damage and effectiveness of all of the weapons aside from hitscan. A few months after the release of the game, a fairly strong, small community rose up around the game and lasted until the release of Unreal Tournament 2004.

Music
Starsky Partridge (Digital Extremes) and Kevin Riepl (Epic Games) are credited for the creating the music contained in Unreal Tournament 2003
 * Tracks

Weapons

 * Translocator
 * Shield Gun
 * Assault Rifle
 * Bio Rifle
 * Shock Rifle
 * Link Gun
 * Minigun
 * Flak Cannon
 * Rocket Launcher
 * Lightning Gun
 * Ion Painter
 * Redeemer

Characters

 * Malcolm
 * Gorge

Gametypes

 * Deathmatch
 * Team Deathmatch
 * Capture The Flag
 * Double Domination
 * Bombing Run

Epic Bonus Pack
Released on March 11, 2003 (?) by Epic Games.

Included:
 * Three new gametypes, two new mutators, two additional features and ten new maps.

Gametypes

 * Mutant
 * Last Man Standing
 * Invasion

Mutators

 * Pint-sized Combo
 * Camouflage Combo

Additional Features

 * In-game OGG Player
 * Custom Announcer Voices

DE Bonus Pack
Released February 1st, 2003 (?) by Digital Extremes.

Included:
 * Six new maps

Trivia

 * Unreal Tournament 2003 was originally named Unreal Tournament 2 but the name was changed by Digital Extremes to give the game more of a sports theme feel.