I wish I understand what they really meant when they're pushing boundaries like no other. That, it makes any other developers seem like they have to really catch up to them.
When they feel the need to constantly point out how successful they are, and how much they've made it easier and available for everyone else to use their tools. Epic Games did earn some right to boast like this.
Of course, they're not the only ones, judging by how long I've been around. I've even lived long enough to play games made from RenderWare.
In the past year, a number of games I've played have shown problems. Serious technical issues worth talking about that have seen to have gone past the heads of anyone working on their games.
Unreal Engine is a very popular development tool, used to make countless games that we know of in the last era. I.E: Mass Effect, Gears of War, Bulletstorm, Bioshock Infinite, Batman Arkham series, and several more. The last popular game, Arkham Knight, even looked visually stunning, just at its peak from 2015. UE3 had a very good run.
Then again, that engine wasn't perfect, like the texture pop-ins and game bug that were usually fixed post-launch, hence the whole "fix it after it's out" trend, it took over the industry. This was back when Epic didn't have any major shareholders telling them what to do.
Fast-forward to the mid-2010s. 8th gen consoles, and PCs, slowly embracing DX12. Unreal Engine 4 is out, and has shown to be capable of rendering photo-realistic visuals. As well as not being super taxing on the hardware for it.
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice came out, and not having the budget of an AAA title, it was a stunning looking game using UE4. A small staff in Ninja Theory worked on the game as a passion project on the side, meaning it sold well. While also having a year exclusivity deal with Sony, I'll write about that later.
Epic would later on release Fortnite and would become their best-engrossing IPs, raking in several billion dollars a year. And would have a company like Tencent given 50% stake of their company.
Flawed Experiences
A few years ago, Final Fantasy 7 Remake came out, done entirely with UE4. And running it on the PS4, it was a visual treat and a technical achievement of running an amazing looking game on such a petite system. Crisis Core remake came out a few months ago on every platform, including PC, and I had faced no issues running that game.
Both of those games were made by Square Enix. But then, also came out Callisto Protocol the same time Crisis Core did, and it was full of issues like stuttering, performance issues, texture pop-ins and so on. After release, it did get patched out. This wasn't an isolated case, however.
The recent games that I have played like Season: A Letter To The Future, Like A Dragon: Ishin, High On Life, and Evil West had similar problems too. And the big cause of that is shader compilation. It occurs right in-game, not in the loading screen, and it's very frustrating.
I did some research, and from what I've also gathered elsewhere, the frame time graph has shown that spikes in latency are pretty often. Which goes down when you explore the same area again, this seems like something doable for online games, but single-player games? Nobody is interested in replaying or backtracking for these remedies.
For such an ambitious game engine, it sure does seem like it's asking a lot for in return. While also disguising its issues. Most of the performance problems it has faced are not just GPU related, but mainly CPU as well. Games that are exception to this, had the money and know-how of their developers to do so.
There's also its history of having performance bias towards Nvidia GPUs. I've known this fact for the past 6 years from playing Gears of War 4, and there are still few cases of games that have this.
Shady Dealings
Everybody now wants this engine in their games. From the Yakuza creators to now 343 Industries saying they're going to abandon their proprietary engine for this. Truth be told, they are the new wave of the future.
However, I don't really think shifting to this new engine will solve everybody's problems right now. Epic Games is way too integrated in current gaming politics, and that's because of their major shareholder, Tencent. With Sony also owning 5%.
Developers who use their engine gets to only pay 5% in royalties, but the sweet bonus is that if their engine is used and their games published in Epic Store, they only pay a sweet smaller percent than the amount they have to give to Steam.
I mean, that sounds great for any developer. Except one noticeable problem, it's Epic Game Launcher. It's the most dumbed-down version of a platform, even GOG store has more for it going.
Not only that, but they're buying companies left and right, having a sense of control over certain ecosystems. Which I get why, but their relationship with Tencent feels unsettling. People even make fun of it, saying the launcher steals their data. They've even worked alongside Sony for exclusivity deals for both their games and other developers.
Not So Unreal Now
Another reason why people shouldn't move to Unreal Engine, is because, well, it's the same engine. There are elements, and certain codes of rendering that are similar to all the previous ones too. That's because UE is an engine anyone can easily use to make the best looking games.
UE4 is feature packed, with so much to do, that provides plenty for every developer out there, it's become the standard for 3D modeling and has helped a majority of freelancers make their money aside using Blender. And seeing its successor, UE5 bringing nanite based rendering for object physics, foliage, and lighting changes will change everything.
And then there's that kind of caveat that comes with something grand as this. All the neat features are buried under a massive log of codes. So much so, that it'll take a whole team instead of one person to easily get where they want to. UE5's Nanite features will not work easily on current-gen systems, meaning we're still years away from it being available.
So if you want your game to look special, stand out from among others, you have to be either the smartest 3D modeling guy, or you have money and talent to hire people to do so. Because otherwise, using it, everything will start to look the absolute same.
The lighting is the same, particle effects the same, texture modeling, and rendering. It's not exactly a tool that says "oh you can have garden variety of stuff to do" without all this work needed to be done.
If the industry keeps working towards this one engine, that's what is going to happen. Everything will look stale. I miss my dragon engine look from Yakuza, when it was changed in Like A Dragon: Ishin. I wish Epic was willing to share some of their codes, or devs trying to compete by not letting them have this success in the first place.
There are still other great engines to look forward to, like Unity, which has helped indie games a lot. CryEngine's lack of success is attributed to how difficult it is to use. But otherwise provides astounding results. Each of these engines have nuances that can change a lot in how games look.
Imagine ruining any creative endeavors for game art, just because one game engine thinks it can do just about everything. While also having a monopoly on this particular industry. Think about how many people losing their jobs because of this.
I can understand that right now, the landscape is tough, but it won't make things better for the long run if it continues this way. I do hope things get better, and that other engine out there starts being competitive. Epic Games as a company aren't saints. It also sucks that am saying this, because UE5 looks really amazing, but the warning signs are also all there to see.
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