Or would it seem so, since this game was made by Legend, one should expect lots of weapons of Terran origin such as pretty much standard assault rifle or shotgun and an interesting take on rocket/grenade launcher which can fire multiple types of projectiles, homing variant included.
The only guns left from the prequel are Dispersion Pistol and Sniper Rifle, albeit thoroughly redesigned with a sleek, modern look to them – the other tools of trade are completely new. On the fortunate side of things, the alternative fire is still there though most of the arsenal is revamped. Mechanically, the player moves at a vastly reduced pace despite his ability to perform the dodging maneuver, thus evading enemy attacks is harder than before. This, and the introduction of established characters makes for a radical departure from what made the first game so memorable. The gameplay is much more action oriented and the story is presented by cutscenes and spoken dialogue lines, with Translator Messages being absent. Rather than being stuck on a specific planet, Unreal II has the player visiting various worlds during the course of Dalton’s missions. Aiding him in this task are crew members of TCA Atlantis spaceship: Isaac – the weapons engineer, Ne’Ban – a weird alien assigned to you as a pilot and Aida – the first officer of your spacecraft who also briefs you on missions. His job is to search for pieces of an ancient artifact which is said to be a powerful weapon that can’t fall into wrong hands of either the dreaded Skaarj or greedy transgalactic corporations. This time around, the player’s avatar is Terran Colonial Authority Marshall John Dalton, a rather regular FPS dude donning a powered armor suit.
Apparently, the developers liked the idea of collecting alien artifacts, around which the game’s story revolves. This idea was completely ditched and there’s no direct connection between Unreal II and the previous game. The Unreal Bible design document reveals that the sequel initially had Prisoner 849 taking control of the Skaarj Mothership in order to escape Na Pali and travel to another planet, perhaps the homeworld of the Skaarj themselves. Instead, it was the job of Legend Entertainment, a company mostly known for text/point-and-click adventure games, but who were responsible for Return to Na Pali expansion pack for the original Unreal.
The proper sequel to Epic’s breakthrough hit wasn’t even developed by either them or Digital Extremes, as it was initially planned since these teams were busy with the Tournament game. With the market shifting towards competetive arena shooters it was inevitable that Unreal and Quake franchises would receive this kind of entries: Unreal Tournament and Quake III Arena respectively. The first Unreal game successfully broke iD Software’s dominant position in the first person shooter genre and have made a name for Epic Games as a serious developer.