EA recently announced a new IP in Black Panther but aside from the confirmation, we know very little information about the game. Now, thanks to job listings from the studio working on the upcoming title, we got a glimpse of what the game will be all about.
Based on the said job postings on LinkedIn, Black Panther will be an open-world RPG powered by Unreal Engine 5 – it’s the same engine EA is using for its Iron Man game.
The open position is for a Senior Game Designer for Cliffhanger Games, the new studio that’s working on Black Panther in collaboration with Marvel Games. The job posting mentions that the role will implement “encounters, systems, and activities across an open-world game.”
The studio is also looking for a Senior Software Engineer – Tools and Systems to work on the game. The posting states that Black Panther will be developed using Unreal Engine 5. “This engineer’s primary role will be to work closely with our art and design teams to create, extend and support our UE5 based content creation pipelines,” the job posting reads.
Another job listing for Cliffhanger Games is looking for Software Engineer – Gameplay (Narrative – Open Story). The role mentions that the game will be an action RPG with an “open story” and a unique dialogue system. The engineer’s primary role is to “flesh out the interconnected systems that will power our ‘Open Story’ Narrative design and Presentation system.”
It’s interesting EA is now using Unreal Engine 5 instead of the internally developed Frostbite engine. EA Sports titles like the upcoming EA Sports FC still use the Frostbite engine along with shooters like Battlefield 2042 and the recent Dead Space remake. But, the rest of the slate will use Unreal Engine 5. It’s believed that the Frostbite Engine has been causing issues mid-development. DICE reportedly only had 15-18 months developing Battlefield 2042 using the game engine which led to issues with the game at launch. BioWare also encountered issues using the game engine in the development of Anthem.
Immortals of Aveum is one of the most recent titles from EA to use Unreal Engine 5. The upcoming shooter is releasing next month on PC and current generation consoles.
EA has recently given focus to developing single-player titles after years of concentrating their efforts on multiplayer titles The success of the Star Wars Jedi games along with the Dead Space remake suggests that single-player games are still lucrative for developers. Hopefully, Black Panther will be on par in terms of quality with Insomniac’s Spider-Man games.
