8mo ago

It's time to admit it: Unreal Engine 5 has been kind of rubbish in most games so far, and I'm worried about bigger upcoming projects

www.vg247.com

18 comments

A big part of the problem hasn't been the engine. The problem has been that games that made the fact that they were using Unreal Engine 5 a core part of their marketing did so because they had fuckall else worth saying, tying perception of the engine to a bunch of truly mid games.
- The engine itself is clearly optimised to build fortnite and everything else needs to bend it to suit any other style of game.
If it's running 5.0-5.2, you should be worried. And most all games released to date are from this range. Devs could upgrade to 5.3+, the one they finally optimized it on. it's not all on Epic
- And 5.4 fixed a bunch of major issues from 5.3, particularly for artists.
- I wonder if we'll see remasters or definitive editions in coming years for games released with older versions. Nanite foliage might be a lot of work I guess.
I think the biggest issue this engine has is just how many features there are. There are probably at least four ways to get any given job done, and sometimes there isn’t even a clear best option. I have lots of gripes with the engine but they can be summarized as “it’s just too big” No wonder games aren’t properly optimized when UE tries to replace a dozen established tools.
Um. BS. I have a 1080 and Remnant 2 plays fantastic on my machine. It's not UE5 which is the problem
- Or Hellblade 2. It looks and runs phenomenally on the Steam Deck. And I've never seen a modern game with loading times so short.
- Honestly, the only UE5 engine game I have played that has run like ass, is Stalker 2. And, I mean... They made this game while fighting a fucking war, so some slack has to be cut.
- Yeah I was about to say ... anyone that's got a problem with UE5 should take a look at Remnant II.
- Ironically remnant 2 runs like ass, for me anyway. 2k 16:9 resolution with a 3090 and modern ryzen cpu (forgot which one exactly atm but it cost a lot lmao)
- And also 5.5’s new lighting reflection system is a big deal for UE
It's not UE5, it's the nvidia partnership. Every time NVIDIA engineers touch a game, the end result runs like absolute garbage. Stalker is just the latest example! The main issue of UE5 is the shader compilation.
- The main issue of UE5 is the shader compilation.
  It isn't! Where did you get that from?!
  Digital Foundry recently did a tech review of Stalker 2 showing the game is heavily CPU-limited...
  
  I think they're talking about the constant shader compilation on every launch. The Finals has that issue as well.

18 comments