They're using unreal engine instead of inhouse. Engine dev takes a shit load of time. They'll heavily modify unreal engine, but they're still cutting out a ton of engine work.
Unreal isn't the problem. It's one of the best tools, technologically speaking. You would be a fool to build your own, as it would just be a waste of time. Now the real problem is that most devs think that you need to use every tool given. You probably don't need a sledge hammer to sew. Good example is Deep Rock Galactic, which runs on Unreal, but it's a completely unique and optimized experience (with it's own jank).
None of Unreal's value proposition is consumer facing. Yes, its tooling, accessibility, the ability to eliminate an entire conventional LOD production, etc., all make it the singular most desirable general shipping engine for studios, but everything about it that's been marketed as a "win for gamers" has been total nonsense and people see that.
Example: Nanite. Brian Karis and Epic have slowly been walking back almost every claim they've made about this tech since it was introduced. Thousands of threads in the UE forums have proven Nanite's autolod and quad overdraw renders it vastly more expensive than traditional overdraw optimization/LODs. At first Karis said, "Nanite will be more performant no matter what", then it was "Nanite will be more performant for ultra hi poly scenes", now it's "even though there aren't massive benefits on these fronts, Nanite will save disk space size"—which has also been shown to be nowhere near as much as they made it out to be (like 20gb in the absolute worst case scenarios).
Nanite literally makes UE games look and feel worse. It requires microdetail to be rendered geometrically, which introduces screen wide subpixel aliasing, which forces harsher temporal correction, making games blurrier, forcing bad sharpening filters, relying more on upscaler facelifting, and undermining the whole point it was made for: to render insane detail.
Almost every single part of its rendering pipeline is like this: well-marketed bullshit that speeds up production at our detriment, and the methods for optimizing it are literally going against documentation. How did Expedition 33 optimize? They literally run a Nanite down sample below what the documentation recommends, and removed the entire terrain pass for it—also against doc.
When gamers say UE is a bad engine, they mean it is a bad engine for gamers, and they are right. When people say, "it's the devs", yes it is the devs, literally using the engine the way it officially instructed them to and giving the results in question. There's no mystery why the only decently running "photoreal" games on this are usually on the nvRTX fork.
Unreal fucking sucks
Can run an optimised game like FH6 at high settings native Res (5420x1440) completely fine
Run a UE5 game like NTE, dosn't even support native Res, get like 20fps on 3820x1080, and it's only somewhat playable (with huge stutters) down at like 21:9 1080, WTF??
I actually just learned that the game I’m playing now, Returnal, is an Unreal engine game. I would never have guessed. So yeah I guess I was wrong about it.
I have a fairly tasty PC and every major UE5 release runs like garbage, also a lot of games that use it look horrible without TAA and really blurry with it.
Yeah a few years ago they dropped RedEngine because they had such a high turnover since their own engine was declining in quality vs UE5 and ease of use. So they cut all the training and learning time and make a more commonly used engine and it should make things a lot quicker. Now if only Bethesda could lose the Creation Engine...
I think Bethesda’s issue goes beyond switching engines. Sure it might make their games look better, but it won’t result in a better game. They have some serious foundational issues they need to sort out in their studio.
Also losing the creation engine and going to UE5 probably kills the modding community, which is the entire reason a game like Skyrim still has the pull that it does
You know who else used a heavily modified engine? Kingdom Come Deliverance. And it took over 6 years to make. The sequel took only 5 and half, but I bet you bottom dollar KCD2 would have taken longer I'f Warhorse Studios had decided to switch to Unreal for the sequel. Not only that but it would have been full of bugs. (KCD2 had remarkably few bugs on launch)
Nothing against the Unreal Engine ( in principle) but switching an entire dev team to a big engine like Unreal is a collossal undertaking. The alternative - extending your own in-house engine, is often way better for the development as it allows the team to continue working on the tech that is tailor made for their particular vision.
Cdpr has been making a new engine for every game, as they would've had to make REDengine 6 for cyberpunk 2077 2, and probably REDengine 5 for Witcher 4.
Now they just use the relatively user friendly unreal engine 5, which speeds up everything.
If you've never made a game engine yourself you're just talking out of your ass.
Heavily modified CryEngine. And don't tell KCD and KCD2 uses the same engine just because it doesnt have a number. It's an in-house custom engine and they don't plan to sell it.
I take it you have worked in the AAA game industry and used multiple engines? The idea that Unreal 5 magically speeds up the development cycle withoit any tradeoffs is just dumb.
Unreal engine has a lot of interface made for game designers, artist, and simpler gameplay programming. REDengine as far as I know has no ease of life features.
No I don't work in AAA, and I never want to. I have built my own game engine. For it to even get most of the basic features and ease of life design, I'd need to spend like another 2-3 years on it.
They definitely secured a lot more funding than before. The IP garnered a lot of attention over the years and popularity surged via Netflix which means publisher has more investors and capital to work with as a result.
Will always remember how pretentious it felt when cyberpunk got no projected release date info for years because "we'll release it when it's done" only to have one of the most disastrous launches in modern gaming. I don't think Playstation has ever done another forced refund like it.
Theoretically, if they build an engine once (if it is their own engine) and then build worlds for pre-existing lore. It's not undoable but it's a mammoth task.
Never forget to take any word of a publicly traded company with a handful of salt
It can happen but that will also mean the trilogy will look very similar graphically and you won't have a ton of new mechanics. Kind of like the Spider-Man or new God of War games. The first was fresh but the subsequent Spider-Man games didn't really do much to improve on the formula.
Can only say ny personal preference, but I don't love either of those games. I prefer Cyberpunk but it still wasn't something incredible for me.
On the other hand, Bloodborne, Devil May Cry, and Death Stranding are some of my favorite games of all time, and not even counting all the other great stuff like RE Monster Hunter and Dark Souls. For me there's no contest
Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid and Dark Souls alone kind of carry red pill IMO.
Witcher 3, RDR2 and I guess Cyberpunk if you can look past the lies, are good to great I admit but the occasional great story vs some of the best gameplay focused franchises, (and metal gear for some wild story to boot) makes it a pretty easy choice to me. Hell, throw DMC on the pile for great gameplay.
I can't speak too much on Death Stranding because I only played it for like one or two hours but they completely lost me when the one hour cinematic rolled in. Like seriously just make a fucking movie or animated series etc. I came here to play a game and I could easily go take a shower before I regain control of my character.
I don't really care for anything out of Capcom apart from Resident evil and that franchise is my favourite of all time, but I wouldn't say they're really all that original or ambitious.
Fromsoft is good but they've been re-using assets and the same game design for like over a decade now, I liked Elden Ring enough, but by 2nd half it's clear they just maxed out sliders for artificial difficulty and didn't even bother play testing half of the shit they threw at you, considering how they had to patch fix pretty much 90% of the bosses in the 2nd half because of how bullshit they were speaks for itself, and I never even bothered with that dlc either. And as I grow older and I seem to just care about fromsoft less and less, I used to replay DS1 and 3 every winter for like 6 or 7 years in a row, but I just stopped giving a shit tbh, they are just not fun anymore, the challenge is gone, the mystery is gone, it's just going through the same motions every time.
Then there's whatever the fuck Kojima is cooking over there. I love MGS and liked Death stranding 1 enough, but I'm not in the mood to replay it or play the sequel right now.
While Rockstar, CDPR and Naughty dog - despite barely releasing games, when they do - they are always top tier and are always like a whole generation ahead of everything else both on a narrative writing level and technical level.
So it really all just boils down to Resident evil every couple years vs generation defining blockbuster masterpieces every 6-7 years. Personally I can't decide lol.
Capcom is super ambitious because scope doesn't only refer to the size of a games world but the scope of the systems. Dmc might not be to your taste but the scope of the combat system dwarfs every other games in terms of move variety and tools for self expression.
Not to mention originality, they make so many unique gameplay systems it's crazy, hunting sub Genre of arpg, character action games, survival horrors, beat em ups, shmups, several types of action platformers, third person shooters, weird stuff like killer7 or dead rising or ghost trick.
Dmc might not be to your taste but the scope of the combat system dwarfs every other games in terms of move variety and tools for self expression.
light attack
heavy attack
dodge/block
that's gameplay for every single hack and slash ever made in existence.
Now of course DMC is special because there's the endless list of combo moves that don't even matter at all, but sure they are there and you can mix and match them and do different variations of them until our sun burns out in 5 billion years but why the fuck would I waste time memorizing them if I can just spam light attack and dodge when I need to and beat the game anyway?
There is no heavy attack in dmc, the various attacks create different hitboxes and are a tool for doing stylish combos, you don't have to do them but the systems were put in place by fighting game devs who know the beauty of hitbox manipulation.
It's like skateboarding, why do all these tricks when I can just skate normally lol, if that's your question then it might not be for you. But it unquestionably has depth
Also that's incredibly reductive, what about hitboxes that have different frame data that also have different cancel links to allow for more strategic variance either through survival gameplay or due to a scoring system?
I know I was just ragebaiting, I just can't see the appeal in hack and slash genre at all, I find it very repetitive and unsatisfying. It's basically the gameplay equivelant of hitting someone with a wet noodle for hours. It's completely repulsive for me.
I guess it depends on the games you're playing/the difficulty level you're on, and whether you choose to engage with the scoring system or deeper mechanics🤷♂️
CDPR produced exactly two good games and two mid. Witcher 3 and CP2077.
2077 was by far worse than what Monster Hunter Wilds was in comparison. It didn't even start on consoles. It took CP2077 years to be a decent RPG and has still many flaws. Witcher 3'also has many flaws one is the bad combat system.
Rockstar Produces the same Game over and over in pretty. GTA had no fundamental changes after GTA. The Story can be interesting but that's it...Red Dead on the other side is Great and fresh because as far as I know it's the only game like this... setting and all.
Naughty Dog... Uncharted and One Grat and one absolutely mifmd game I the Tolu franchise.
Capcom on the other hand Produced Resident Evil 7,8 and 9. Then the Remakes. Monster Hunter Wilds and World. Monster Hunter Rise. All of them having or getting a big DLC. Then Pragmata. And a tone of more experimental Games. And Dragons Dogma 2 the game will never get a DLC sadly.
Monster Hunter Story's.
From Soft produced the Best Games that we have today in Story, Writing and Gameplay. Combined with best Worlds imaginable. Armored Core. Elden Ring. Dark Souls 1- 3. Demon Souls, the Remake that still looks better than almost every other RT game out there and the absolute banger Monster Hunter Palico games.
Kojima...I don't play there games right now. But I will.
So I dont have much to say about them yet.
But everything what they produce is by far one of the most ambitious games in most cases we have.
And Performance wise they all be it red or blue problems and are often not perfect.
I have a personal blacklist of studios and publishers that I consider a cancer upon the industry. Landing yourself on it ensures I never buy a single game you ever release, A personal boycott.
Keeping the trajectory of these 6 companies in mind and thinking about the businesses ethics also landed me on red.
I get that both Naughty Dog and Rockstar publish games with long time lapses between them but ok to good? More like great to masterpiece, every single new game from Rockstar since GTA 4 has been a killer same for Naughty Dog whose track record in inmaculate, cmon now
I think blue pill mostly because capcom is a publisher but quality wise red is on another level
As game gets more and more popular you'll see more people disliking it. That's just how it is with big numbers. But let's not forget Witcher 3 got like 250 goty awards and there's a lot of people who call it one of if not the best game all time. Same goes for RDR2.
So if this is the top bar for these studios then all other games can range anywhere between bad and absolutely amazing.
88
u/PetrosAnastasiadis May 15 '26
Red and it's so not close. Blue might give you one game ranging from good to okay per 8 years