Millions of views, thousands of comments: What is so disturbing about this video?

This video of just over two minutes has been the subject of a lot of digital ink since it was posted on Wednesday, April 19th. On Youtube, it has already been viewed nearly 1.5 million times and generated over 2,600 comments. Not to mention the Twitter numbers. These images show an armed man moving through abandoned or under construction buildings from a first-person perspective. He meets several individuals which he systematically kills fairly easily. The victims’ faces are blurred, as if to protect their anonymity.

One could think of a particularly grim recording that would have passed censorship on the platforms. However, it is a video game under development. Directed by French Drama StudioUnrecord is a tactical first-person shooter that follows the frantic adventures of a seemingly cop.

“disturbing valley”

So where is the problem? In its realism when it gets annoying, the “pedestrian camera” view only drives the point home. Numerama makes parallelism He is familiar with a phenomenon called “disturbing valley”, which is a sense of unease that can arise when a robot looks too much like a human. It is very surprising that many netizens on social networks are crying and screaming, assuring that all this was a stage show, a real video, and not a game.

The hype took such a turn that one of the studio members, Alexander Spindler, tweeted pictures in which we see Unrecord working in his development environment, to prove it wasn’t any big joke. Drama has it too Post a press release He reiterated that it was indeed a game and that the video was taken during a game of keyboard and mouse.

The game is actually developed under Unreal Engine 5. This next generation Epic graphics engine allows you to reach high levels of realism and Bringing incredibly immersive interactive experiences to life. Many take advantage of its capabilities are currently under development. Of course, to get a perfect result, a very advanced computer would be necessary.