Everspace 2 is getting a free Unreal Engine 5 upgrade to make future updates and expansions easier

Rockfish have announced that they're updating arcade dogfighter Everspace 2 to run on Unreal Engine 5. The engine rollover will arrive as part of or alongside the game's Incursions update in spring 2024, which includes tweaks and bugfixes as well as extra legendary items and a new game feature of some description. The idea is less to take advantage of UE5's various whizbangs and bellwhistles, like the new Nanite geometry system, than to grease the launch chutes for future Everspace 2 updates and expansions.

"Mainly we're looking at this as a way to help future-proof the game so we have less difficulty bringing updates and expansion content down the road," the developers wrote in a blog post. "We want to be able to support Everspace 2 for a long time." All fantastic news, providing they can overcome certain "growing pains". In a relatively rare show of candour, the developers have shared details of Everspace 2's extremely WIP Unreal Engine 5 version on Steam. My knowledge of physics is iffy, but I'm pretty sure lasers aren't supposed to work like that.

"Experienced Everspace 2 pilots know just how big the game is, and that there are many, MANY systems threaded throughout that create our game," the Steam post continues. "All these systems make for an incredible number of things that can go wrong when migrating to a major engine upgrade." The larger errors include miniaturised planets, phantom railguns that fly in parallel to your ship, squished character art in menu screens, Corsair RGB-esque space station lighting, and big gold outlines around bits of architecture. Here is a small gallery for posterity.

Less dramatic blemishes flagged up by the devs include missing and swapped sounds, moved quest markers, incorrect enemy and loot grouping, and broken missile trails. Personally, I would love to play a version of Everspace 2 with many of these glitches preserved. Having to feel your way through a mildly or massively broken simulation is one of gaming's most distinctive thrills, and hey, this is outer space. You can always blame the dodgy lighting on Einstein, or something.

It's also nice to read some thoughts about an Unreal Engine 5 update that don't devolve to enthusing about stuff like Nanite, though Rockfish are naturally careful to note that these are issues with the WIP build, not intrinsic problems with UE5 itself.

"Approach Everspace 2 like a single-player arcade space shooter with a 30 hour shelf life, rather than a Loot-Spewing Space Diablo you will play forever, and it's enormously entertaining stuff," Steve Hogarty wrote in our Everspace 2 review. "It's like playing Freelancer for the first time again, or Colony Wars: Red Sun on a chipped PlayStation with the lid propped open." The last line in particular fills me with what I would call Proustian nostalgia if Proust had written novels about photon torpedoes, rather than cakes dissolved in tea. Small wonder Everspace 2 is currently 20th on our list of the best PC space games.