Unreal is a first-person shooter video game developed by Epic MegaGames and Digital Extremes and published by GT Interactive in May 1998. It was powered by an original game engine that bears the game's name, and had been in development for over three years in founder Tim Sweeney's garage before the game was released. The game reached sales of 1.5 million units by 2002. Since the release of Unreal, the franchise has had one sequel and two different series based on the Unreal universe. One official bonus pack, the Epic-released Fusion Map Pack, can be downloaded free of charge. Unreal Mission Pack: Return to Na Pali, developed by Legend Entertainment, was released in June 1999, and added 17 new missions to the single player campaign of Unreal. Unreal and Return to Na Pali would later be bundled together as Unreal Gold. Additionally, the games were updated to run on the Unreal Tournament version of the game engine.
The player takes on the part of Prisoner 849, aboard the prison spacecraft Vortex Rikers. During transport to a moon-based prison, the ship is pulled to an uncharted planet before reaching its destination. The ship crash-lands on the lip of a canyon on the planet Na Pali, home of the Nali, a primitive tribal race of four-armed humanoids. The Nali and their planet have been subjugated by the Skaarj, a race of brutish yet technologically advanced reptilian humanoids. Skaarj troops board the downed Vortex Rikers and kill the remaining survivors, except for Prisoner 849 who manages to find a weapon and escape from the ship.
The planet Na Pali is rich in "Tarydium", a mineral that is found as light blue crystals, possessesing a high energy yield and are the reason the Skaarj have invaded. The ship has crashed near one of the many mines and processing facilities that the Skaarj have built. Prisoner 849 travels through the mines, meeting Nali slaves and eventually entering the ruins of Nali temples, villages and cities, where the extent of the Nalis' suffering and exploitation are made clear.
Throughout the game the player stumbles across the remains of other humans, often with electronic journals that detail their last days and hint at the cause of their demise. Usually the tales are of desperate struggles to hide from the Skaarj or other bloodthirsty inhabitants of the planet. The player never meets another live human aside from a wounded crew member on the bridge of the prison ship who gasps and dies immediately. Prisoner 849 is likely the only human alive on the planet Na Pali throughout the game.
Prisoner 849 continues to make their way through a series of alien installations, a second crashed human spaceship, and ancient Nali temples infested with Skaarj troops and their minions, eventually arriving at the Nali Castle. Inside the castle, the prisoner locates a teleporter that leads to the Skaarj Mothership. The mothership proves to be a vast labyrinth, but Prisoner 849 manages to find the ship's reactor and destroys it, plunging the vessel into darkness. After navigating the corridors in the dark, the player arrives at the Skaarj Queen's chamber and kills her. Prisoner 849 jumps into an escape pod as the mothership disintegrates. Although the prisoner survives the Skaarj, the escape pod is left to float into space with slim hopes of being found.
Expansion plot
The expansion, Return to Na Pali, developed by defunct Legend Entertainment, picks up not long after Unreal's ending; Prisoner 849 is found by a human warship, the UMS Bodega Bay. The Unified Military Services (UMS) conscripted the prisoner into service upon learning their identity, forcing the prisoner to return to Na Pali in order to locate the downed ship UMS Prometheus. There, the prisoner is to retrieve some weapons research. In return, the prisoner will receive a full pardon and transportation back to Earth, though the real plan is revealed to be maintaining the secrecy of the mission by killing the prisoner immediately after the information is secured.
Upon arriving at the Prometheus, Prisoner 849 finds the secret weapons log, but soon after, they find a working radio communicator nearby. The prisoner listens to a recently recorded and archived conversation between the Bodega Bay and a nearby space station, the UMS Starlight, exposing the military's treachery. As Prisoner 849 transmits the research log, a squad of marines beam on board Prometheus, intending to eliminate the prisoner who manages to escape into a nearby mine system.
Once again, Prisoner 849 is forced to traverse a series of alien facilities and Nali temples in an attempt to locate another way off the planet. Eventually the prisoner ends up at another Nali Castle, where a small space shuttle is stored. After fighting through Skaarj, the prisoner manages to take off in the spacecraft. However, the Bodega Bay is waiting in orbit, and launches a missile at the prisoner's ship. Enjoy and Thanks for watching .
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