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#3
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#32026-10-25Character

A face in the grass

The grey test mannequin is gone. You now play a realistic survivor with a proper sprint, and footsteps follow him at every pace.

A man in his forties with short hair, an olive and sand coloured hoodie and dark cargo trousers stands in tall grass, pine forest behind him.
The survivorIn-engine · WIP · Greybox

Until now you walked around as the white test mannequin that comes with Unreal Engine. That is over. The survivor you play now is a realistic person: a weathered man in his forties, short hair, a hoodie and cargo trousers in muted colours.

A man in his forties with short hair, an olive and sand coloured hoodie and dark cargo trousers stands in tall grass, pine forest behind him.
The survivor2026-10-25In-engine · WIP · GreyboxThe survivor that replaces the test mannequin – a placeholder look; choosing your own face comes later.

A placeholder with a face

He is built from a MetaHuman, Epic’s system for realistic digital humans, and dressed in clothing from Epic’s free animation sample, recoloured to fit a world that has been falling apart for a while. He is still a placeholder: for now every survivor looks the same. Choosing your own face is something for later.

With a server full of players, every character has to be cheap to draw. He is built at a medium quality level: his hair is made of cards instead of individual strands, and he uses fewer levels of detail than a cinematic character would.

Running for real

Walking and jogging stay as before. When you sprint, he now breaks into a real sprint instead of a sped-up jog, and he stands still in a more natural pose. Footsteps follow the sprint too: faster, louder, on every surface.

The survivor sprints towards the camera through tall grass, motion blur on the grass; behind him flat concrete pads with labels such as “Wood”, “Gravel” and “Sand”.
Sprinting across the meadow2026-10-25In-engine · WIP · GreyboxSprinting across the test terrain. The labelled concrete pads behind him are test surfaces for footstep sounds.

The animations still run on the test mannequin underneath, which now stays invisible. The new body copies its movement every frame, so footsteps and falling when you die keep working as before.

Not yet

Animations for eating, drinking, picking things up and reaching into a crate are already made, but switched off. Played over the whole body, they froze the legs while you walked, and the hand reached into thin air when you stood at an angle to the crate. They come back once the upper body can move on its own and the hands find what they reach for.