GTA-Like Open World Game Shows Off Photorealistic Visuals in Debut Images

Liquid Swords, a Swedish studio established by former Avalanche Studios founder Christofer Sundberg, has shared the first in-game screenshots of its GTA-like open-world game, and they look stunning. When asked whether these were actual images, the official X account confirmed they were real.

The game is being developed with Unreal Engine 5, whereas Avalanche has historically used its own Apex engine for Just Cause, Mad Max, and Rage 2. Tech Director Fredrik Lönn explained the engine choice with the following statement:

Custom engines were historically the way forward, and that’s what my former team at Avalanche did over 18 years ago when development started on Just Cause 1. The landscape has changed since then, and now it’s quite the opposite. We decided to go with Unreal Engine 5. Unreal has been proven for high-quality AAA games, both by Epic themselves in the case of Fortnite and by other game studios worldwide shipping amazing games on Unreal. With Epic making improvements toward open-world development, we get full access to the source code, and the integrations with other software and pipelines are excellent.

Liquid Swords was founded in December 2020. Sundberg recalled why he created this new studio:

In December 2020, I set out on a journey to make a difference in the world of game development– which has been my professional and entertainment world since the early 90s. I want to make a difference to how games are made, how the teams work, and how the creative process evolves. Liquid Swords is the realization of an ambition to refocus the game-development process.

Around two years later, the studio announced it had received an…