Today’s 29GB download will get you ready for Friday’s big Geoff Keighley-fronted marketing extravaganza that is The Game Awards 2021. There, Neo and Trinity themselves will appear to show off this Unreal Engine 5-powered collaboration between Warner Bros. and Epic Games. “Created by members of the original movie team including Lana Wachowski along with Epic Games and partners, The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience is a wild ride into the reality-bending universe of The Matrix that features performances by Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss,” the game’s description states. “Get ready for a glimpse into the future of interactive storytelling and entertainment with UE5 in this free, boundary-pushing cinematic and real-time tech demo.” Now, the next question - when do Neo and Trinity appear in Fortnite? ORIGINAL STORY 3/12/21: Sci-fi movie trilogy The Matrix - in which Keanu Reaves wears a trench coat and gets cross with some machines - is, after nearly a two decade absence from cinemas, making a comeback later this month in Lana Wachowski’s The Matrix Resurrections, and it looks like there’ll be some kind of accompanying tie-in “experience” heading to PlayStation 5. As detailed by Reddit user the_andshrew on the GamingLeaksAndRumours subreddit, the new Matrix…thing was discovered listed in the PSN backend, where it was accompanied by an extremely minimal amount of useful information - primarily a couple of database entry numbers, an associated image, and word that it’ll be coming to PS5. To find anything else of note, we need to turn our attention to the aforementioned image, where a distant cityscape - presented in classic Matrix green - sits beneath a logo proclaiming the venture to be titled The Matrix Awakens, an “Unreal Engine 5 experience”. Unreal Engine 5’s prominent namecheck would suggest The Matrix Awakens is some kind of collaboration between Unreal Engine developer Epic Games and Matrix distributor Warner Bros, intended to do a spot of double lifting on the old marketing front - getting the Matrix in people’s minds for Resurrections’ imminent release and giving punters a first presumably interactive look at Unreal Engine 5, which has otherwise yet to appear in a shipped game. Epic, of course, recently released another interactive collaboration in the form of Kid A Mnesia Exhibition - a “fevered dream-space” and virtual art gallery created for PC and PlayStation 5 in conjunction with Radiohead - albeit one built in Unreal Engine 4. As for when we may learn more about The Matrix Awakens, whatever it ultimately proves to be, that’s currently unclear. But with The Matrix Resurrections due to hit cinemas on 22nd December this year, expect it to happen sooner rather than later - if only there was some sort of big video game announcement show happening between now and then!
