PC.IGN has their own impressions of Unreal Tournament 2003 up now. They give us the skinny on the design objective of Digital Extremes, the AI team, the different characters available in the game, changes to the weapons, and what the maps are like.

GameHelper is another one of many sites attending the GDC in San Jose. They have some impressions of Unreal Tournament 2003 and the new Unreal Tech in general.

Gamespot has started their GDC coverage with a look at Unreal Tournament 2003. They talk a bit about the name change, plans for support after release, the unique characters, the new game modes, weapon balancing, improved collision detection, the graphics, and other things.

I see on Voodoo Extreme that Tiscali Games has a video from Unreal Tournament 2003, showing about five minutes of footage from the game. It's a 55mb download, there's a mirror at Filefront.

Planet Unreal has a news post up which confirms that Unreal Tournament 2 will ship with an Instagib mode. So yay or something.

Here's something to make your weekend, the first official screenshots along with an interview about Unreal Tournament 2 over at GS. Here's a bit about the singlerplayer and then a bit about the multiplayer:

Singleplayer: There are many refinements. The single-player is much different from its predecessor. You now are the captain of a persistent but evolving team. You play the single-player game, upgrade your team by hiring "free agents" or increasing the ability of your teammates. Imagine the possibilities when you play the game and can refine your team to your taste or style of play!
Multiplayer:
- Capture the flag
- Domination 2: This is a refinement of the one found in the original Unreal Tournament.
- Bombing run: A bomb will spawn in the middle of this mode's many maps. It is your team's goal to pick this up and deliver it to your opponent team's base
- Deathmatch
- Team Deathmatch

Unreal Tournament 2 was just confirmed recently after a bunch of info and screenshots came out.

It was hard to deny that Unreal Tournament 2 was in development based on based on yesterday's screenshots, and Infogrames sends along a confirmation that Digital Extremes is indeed working on the game. Here's what we received.

Infogrames confirms Unreal Tournament 2 in the making by Digital Extremes. As rumored all week online, the co-creators of Unreal and Unreal Tournament are currently working on the sequel to the infamous 1999 Game of the Year.

Late next week, in conjunction with the February issue of PC Gamer, Infogrames will officially announce the game and detail all the news currently available at this point in development. The cover story includes an in-depth interview with the development team at Digital Extremes, specifics about the gameplay and globally exclusive artwork to be seen only in PC Gamer.

JIM.Be managed to actually obtain real screenshots from Unreal Tournament 2. This as part of their news post which comes with a fact sheet of the game. Besides the screenshots (of which they say more are coming), there are also various other images from the game.

- Explore up to 30 original exotic indoor and outdoor environments, each featuring jaw-dropping dynamic volumetrically lit particle systems and up to 100 times more polygons than the original
- Choose from up to 50 new highly individualized characters with their own abilities and origins featuring high polygon counts and high-resolution textures
- Select from frenetic new game modes or tried-and-true favorites including Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, Domination 2, Survivor and Bombing Run [...]

For those of you who don't parlez Francais, there is an English translation of yesterday's Unreal Tournament 2 scans on Voodoo Extreme.

Planet Unreal has posted four scans from the French gaming magazine Joystick, showing a preview of Unreal Tournament 2. The game was first rumored to be in development back in December and this seems to confirm Digital Extremes is indeed working on it. The screenshots are looking very much like the Xbox game Unreal Championship, also in development at DE (co-creators of Unreal, Unreal Tournament). Surprise, surprise.

According to Computer and Video Games, Unreal Tournament 2 is due out next year. While we haven't heard anything about the game until this point, supposedly it's in "an advanced stage, with maybe six months of development still to go". Developer is Digital Extremes, co-developers of Unreal and UT, where work also continues on the Xbox game Unreal Championship.

According to sources, the game looks "considerably" more detailed than the original Unreal Tournament and uses the latest build of what is now known, simply, as the Unreal Engine. Key advances are likely to include vast outdoor environments, extensive particle effects such as sand and smoke, expanded control techniques and a revamp of weapons.

The above almost reads like a description of Unreal Championship, so are we getting a PC port of that game?