At the recent CES event in Las Vegas, Motion Blur unveiled a look at their upcoming game, Black State.

Built in Unreal Engine 5 with all the bells and whistles turned on, the alpha footage of the game looks astonishingly good.

Black State follows an emotional and mysterious story of scientists who uncover details about a seismic event in the world.

Just what that event is, is hard to pin down from the game’s descriptions, so far.

What is clear is the inspiration the developers have taken from around them.

There are shades of Cyberpunk 2077 in the sci-fi angles and the technology our hero possesses, and in action set pieces throughout the alpha footage, we see time dilation and slow down, akin to Max Payne.

More than that, there’s a definite sense that Metal Gear Solid is a good foundation for the movement, technology, and style of Black State.

However, underneath all these nods to other titles, there’s an intriguing mechanic that will take advantage of super fast storage that will allow players to transition quickly to far off environments.

You see, behind every door could be a new area, which changes with each opening of a door.

In the trailer, we see the hero open a set of large wooden doors in a mansion several times; one moment there’s a grand entrance, the next a sci-fi bunker.

It’s clear we’re going to be leaping from place to place, possibly all over the world, by simply opening doors.

The photorealism will also lend this dimension-hopping a very real sense of place – the details are incredible.

The trailer ends with a big boss battle that sees grunts being blown to bits in spatters of blood and gore, while a machine demon taunts and throws out waves of attacks.

It’s a frenetic end that sets up Black State as one to watch going forward.