Posted first by Dink at HBO, Daily Radar reports that Mark Rein of Epic was caught making some boastful statements about the next product they plan to work on:

Unreal Tournament. (Publisher: Infogrames, Developer: Epic). Ok, ok. UT is obviously not a dud. And we weren't really expecting much from them this E3 either. But when Mark Rein takes you behind the curtain to show you what they are up to, and all you see is a tech demo you can't help but be a little disappointed. Sure it looks great, and the new environments for outdoor gameplay using a single 256x256 bitmap were really impressive.

But Rein simply hinted at the amazing things around the corner (vehicles, super-high poly character models), and we were desperate for any niblet on Unreal 2 for the PC or Xbox. He claimed that the next big thing coming from them was going to put Halo to shame. Sure it was big boast, but part of E3 is the posturing and hyperbole, and given Epic's previous track record, it is certainly capable of taking the lead in PC game development. The Unreal tech demo wasn't a dud really, I'm just greedy for PCs to be back at the leading edge of video game design where they have traditionally belonged.

Heh, I'll want to see their next offering before I take such a statement seriously but it is cool to see Bungie once again setting the standard. Just think about how in two or three years columnists will be asking whether a newly announced product might finally qualify for the title of Halo-killer. That's a long way off, though! ;-)