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I get what you are saying, but why would anyone want to dictate the creative process with those criteria?
If the story they imagine is with a female character, that's absolutely fine with me. If it doesn't, so be it. That is part of the the story they want to tell and shouldn't be altered by what people want.
To put it another way, I'd rather be personally disappointed than having artists not doing what they want. I hope that resonate with some.
You should not appropriate an artistic vision; you should just take it for what it is and enjoy it, or not, with some degree of reasonable criticism (good or bad).
Just for the sake of clarity, I am not talking about the technical side of things at all. This is obviously more objective, like a broken launch as we have seen too many times recently from all developers. I am also not talking about bad adaptations. I am only talking about original new ideas/storylines.
As for the title/op, really? Don't mess it up, listen to us? Why do people always feel like the have the monopoly on what is good? The OP talks about modding and a possibility to mod a multiplayer in... Not everybody believes that every game should go toward this. I get that some feel like they would enjoy an MP in this universe, I truly do, but with the tone of the title and the OP...
Come on.
If the story they imagine is with a female character, that's absolutely fine with me. If it doesn't, so be it. That is part of the the story they want to tell and shouldn't be altered by what people want.
To put it another way, I'd rather be personally disappointed than having artists not doing what they want. I hope that resonate with some.
You should not appropriate an artistic vision; you should just take it for what it is and enjoy it, or not, with some degree of reasonable criticism (good or bad).
Just for the sake of clarity, I am not talking about the technical side of things at all. This is obviously more objective, like a broken launch as we have seen too many times recently from all developers. I am also not talking about bad adaptations. I am only talking about original new ideas/storylines.
As for the title/op, really? Don't mess it up, listen to us? Why do people always feel like the have the monopoly on what is good? The OP talks about modding and a possibility to mod a multiplayer in... Not everybody believes that every game should go toward this. I get that some feel like they would enjoy an MP in this universe, I truly do, but with the tone of the title and the OP...
Come on.
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Whatever, there are literally hundres of hundres of games being produced with a female lead. Most recently is the game Forspoken. Btw. I greatly enjoyed the recent Tomb Raider games, HZD and Alien Isolation. However, nearly all fantasy these days is being undermined by "the message". Hopefully CDPR knows their audience, and doesn't cater to the woke mob on Twitter. That will generate a lot of fan backlash, which is the last thing CDPR needs now. Just look at how it went for Rings of Power, Halo, Willow, and all the other recent fantasy and sci-fi disastors.
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Yeah, Unreal Engine is a place for mediocre games, and choosing it for Witcher 4 was a bad decisions. The game engine comes with outside limitations that CDPR can't control. There are exceptions to the rule though, but they are rare, and Unreal Engine has actually produced a handful of games that were quite good. But it would almost be a miracle.
On the other hand, RedEngine and a bunch of internal sources from CDPR was leaked to the public, which probably has something to do with these decisions about RedEngine. But it's a shame.
I imagine the biggest single factor in deciding to move to Unreal was the problems with Cyberpunk, which were very conspicuous at release time.
It makes absolutely no sense -- and is enormously time consuming and expensive -- for a development studio in the business of making games, not engines, continuously to try to reinvent the wheel with eg streaming graphics rendering on X different platforms. Part of Epic's business model is literally to develop and maintain a game engine for use by third parties, which engine already has tech in it (eg for automatically culling faces at distance) that any developer would kill for, and a there is a whole team of people at Epic whose job it is to provide support for Unreal.
Add to that that Unreal already has proven multiplayer systems (it's made by the company behind Fortnite), and that the arrangement between CDPR is described as a "partnership", not simply a licence. Unreal does not have a strong track record in branching narrative open world games, so the two companies will presumably be putting in a lot of work together to expand the engine to accommodate them.
Honestly, it looks to be a much more sensible decision than constantly reworking a proprietary engine designed only for your own games just to try to keep up with everyone else. Cyberpunk looks amazingly good now that it's been patched up but look at, say, the previews from Starfield, the character work from which looks like something from years ago (Bethesda use their own engine). For some studios, that simply is not an efficient way of making games and may not deliver the best games they can make.
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Yeah, a terrible game engine that doesn't fit the game the developers want to make. And historically a place of mediocre output.
You really think Uncharted 4 and Witcher 3 could have used the same game engine? No way. Companies tailor their game engine to their needs, which not only makes most inhouse game engines far better than Unreal, but also the games produced on them. It also enhanced the talent and the ability of the studio and their people,.
Even Kojima struggled to make Decima Engine work for HIS game, the way HE wanted it, despite bragging about the engine, and saying it's the one closest to their needs. They had to add and fix a bunch of things to make it work, and yet despite that, there was alot of things they just clearly couldn't do with Decima Engine that they clearly would have wanted to do, and Kojima had done before (with his own engine).
Centralization and a common shared engine is the death for the gaming industry, one of the worst possible things that could happen. Alot of studios have made fantastic engines and fantastic games with their engines. I bet you can't even name a single 10/10 masterpiece ever made with Unreal Engine. How about 9/10? Maybe in your opinon there might be a 9/10 or a couple, but even an 8/10 i unusual. And why do you think that is?
Maybe Epic isn't as good as they think at making engines, maybe they have the wrong ideas? Maybe their ideas doesn't fit others, maybe its poorly optimized, maybe performance is terrible, maybe it just haven't got very good tools. Or overall, the problem is most likely really doesn't fit anyone and comes with too many restrictions and too narrow an idea that it just doesn't work out well.
You go an try to make a one-size fits all pair of pants and bring it on the global market. It's just not going to go well.
I'm not saying it's all bad. Licenced engines like Unity and Unreal is great for developing studios, smaller studios and indy games. Without those, there would be less studios that would take the step up to become a big studio (with their own engine). Alot of people and studios learn the process and making real games with a licenced engine.
CDP are not simply "licensing" Unreal. They are in partnership with Epic. Effectively, it's codevelopment with an enormous ready made technical support function. Unreal has traditionally been weak in open world narrative games, where CDP are strong and have very specific tools they have developed for the purpose, CDP appear to be weak in easily portable / modifiable engines (and in multiplayer implementations, reading between the lines), where Unreal shines. So it makes sense for both parties to build the engine out. What doesn't make sense is to have half your developers stuck every time something new needs to be done because it's too difficult to adapt the existing engine.
Put it this way, if Redengine was doing what CDP need it to do, they wouldn't be dropping it.
I think a lot of the doom and gloom around CDPR moving to Unreal is unfounded. They are very clearly working hand-in-hand with the Epic team to customize the engine to be what they need it to be. They have also talked about how they are building out tons of different 'tools' that are going to assist with streamlining the development process. It's essentially just them paying a fee so they can offload a bunch of engine work, problems and questions onto Epic rather than them having to handle it all themselves.
As far as 9/10 or 10/10 games made in Unreal...
While I am not a Fortnite fan - it is like the most successful and popular game ever made.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake was good - or at least I thought it was good.
Sea of Thieves got insanely popular.
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order got rave reviews from a lot of people - never played it though.
Which is to say that... I think great games can be made in any game engine. And if CDPR has the direct cooperation of Epic while also being able to add their own input into the engine's development, creation and customization I don't see why it would be a problem or something that holds the upcoming games back.
As far as 9/10 or 10/10 games made in Unreal...
While I am not a Fortnite fan - it is like the most successful and popular game ever made.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake was good - or at least I thought it was good.
Sea of Thieves got insanely popular.
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order got rave reviews from a lot of people - never played it though.
Which is to say that... I think great games can be made in any game engine. And if CDPR has the direct cooperation of Epic while also being able to add their own input into the engine's development, creation and customization I don't see why it would be a problem or something that holds the upcoming games back.
Really enjoyed it, great game
I could add few other ones too. It could be debated, but still...
- Outer Worlds
- Borderlands 1/2/3
- Gear of war
- Bioshock (all games)
- Batman: Arkham City/Knight/Origins
- Ark Survival Evolved (which still in the top played game on Steam)
I didn't realize Outer Worlds was made in Unreal Engine. I know it had a more limited budget - but I dug the atmosphere and everything more than Fallout 3 or 4 (though not as much as 1, 2 or New Vegas). I really enjoyed that game and thought it was great. I'm hoping the sequel has a larger budget and they can make it a bit more open.
I know Avowed is made in Unreal Engine and that is one of my most anticipated games.
Yeah great game, can't wait for the sequel
(It was great to see again Obsidian's "quirky writing" that I really loved in my favorite FO, New Vegas)
Unreal Engine is weak in alot of areas, not only open world narrative games. Among others they are weak on graphics, probably because they are weak on performance. Probably because a one-size-fits-all approach is not really well optimized for any particular game. And so, the end result graphics are disappointing and will probably continue to be so despite all the huffing and puffing.
Not sure it's inherently a thing with the engine or not, but almost all games with Unreal are weak with gameplay and mechanics, having rather simplistic gameplay and character animations etc. Maybe it's possible to be an exception to the norm, even with Unreal, but it's probably an uphill struggle to make good gameplay/mechanics/animations with the engine.
Probably you're right. Unreal Engine is probably exceptionally good at network by now. It's no small accomplishment to make a game like Fortnite. But on the other hand, the game is basically cartoon like graphics, and the gameplay/mechanics and character animations etc is laughably primitive.
Some people still bring up the combat system of Witcher 3 when they want to direct complaints at the game, and I agree, it's not the strongest part of the game, but I really doubt they will be able to improve it using Unreal Engine. And what exactly do they need strong networking for? I don't remember any Witcher games having some important network features. Are you wanting a Witcher 4 Battle Royal?
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I'll agree with that, but the exceptions proves the rule. And although it's a good game, you can clearly feel the limits of the engine. I do like the style of the game for what it is, but it's basically cartoon like graphics.
I'll throw in a couple of others.
Batman Arkham Knight. I think despite the limitations of the engine, they went with a real cool graphical style, and I only really noticed this when I watched a comparison video of Arkham Knight and that new 2022 Batman game (from another studio). And Arkham Knight also has pretty good combat, despite being an Unreal Engine game, but I think that is more "despite", because they spent alot of their effort on the combat system with their whole series. I really like the game, but well, it's not exactly a 10/10 or 9/10 despite being good.
Returnal is quite a good game, despite being an Unreal Engine game, but that has more to do with what kind of game they made with a limited engine and limited resources.
So yeah, it is possible to make a good game, even with a bad engine. But the exceptions prove the rule.
It's ok and even good for smaller studios to use such an engine, but it would be a huge step back for gaming and the gaming industry if big studios started using Unreal Engine, and IT IS a huge step back for CDPR to be using Unreal Engine.
I feel almost 100% sure that WItcher 4 will be a massive disappointment (and we do compare with Witcher 3), namely due to it using Unreal Engine.
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CDPR has been very open about wanting to add multiplayer elements to their future games.
People named plenty of good games made in Unreal above.
Also, I am unsure where the idea that the graphics are bad is coming from. Pretty much every previewed game for UE5 that focuses on graphics looks unbelievable. Hellblade 2 looks particularly amazing.
People named plenty of good games made in Unreal above.
Also, I am unsure where the idea that the graphics are bad is coming from. Pretty much every previewed game for UE5 that focuses on graphics looks unbelievable. Hellblade 2 looks particularly amazing.
Witcher 3 is not a good game, it's a GREAT game, and most would say FANTASTIC or a MASTERPIECE (10/10).
Graphics, yes, huffing and puffing.. I'll bet you alot that by the end of the console generation, nobody will talk about Unreal Engine graphics (also not on PC), and most big studios will have delivered graphics that will whipe the floor with Unreal engine graphics. Besides, graphics comes with game scaling as well. Sure, Naughty Dog graphics is spectacular in many ways, but their areas are puny.
Scale any Unreal Engine game up, and it becomes a cartoon. That's where the idea of bad graphics come from. Plus experience, huffing and puffing at all, nobody is talking about any Unreal Engine 4 games graphics, but they sure where when they released UE4 and people were hyped then too.
The graphics tech in Unreal 5, specifically the automatic scaling of objects at distance, is the kind of thing that can cut design work in half, if not more. As far as I'm aware, no other engine has that tech. Ordinarily, you have to create different copies of the same model to be viewed at different distances. That's just one of the fields in which the engine is likely to make a huge difference to what is involved in making a game and where time can be spent.
On multiplayer, CDP have explicitly said it is a key focus going forward.
The Witcher 3 is, in my opinion, the best game ever made and certainly my favorite.
The studio that made that game has decided to swap engines due to a disaster of a development cycle with Cyberpunk 2077. It does not seem to be some sort of false flag or excuse that they were making - otherwise they wouldn't have made the switch. You can also see these limitations and issues with how long Phantom Liberty is taking to put together and release... as well as how long it took to get Cyberpunk into a relatively stable version.
In addition they have noted the difficulty in finding developers and getting them up to speed on something like Red Engine rather than being able to hire someone on UE5 and cut the onboarding process down significantly.
Maybe the above can be explained by 'management issues' or 'talent issues' at the studio. But in that case it doesn't matter, they are going to churn out bad games anyways.
If CDPR remains CDPR in terms of their vision for games they will churn out something pretty damn good or great regardless of what engine they are using. Cyberpunk 2077 is proof of that as RED Engine was a nightmare for them during development and they still managed to put something out that was really good.
That being said for multiple reasons listed above I do not think Unreal is going to hinder them. Even if it was limited in what they need THEY HAVE A CONTRACT WITH EPIC WHERE THEIR DEVS AND EPIC'S DEVS ARE WORKING SIDE-BY-SIDE TO UPDATE THE ENGINE TO HAVE WHAT THEY NEED.
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Well, the marketing sure sold it to you. That's their job, so I guess they did it well, you're not the only one.
It's like that with every version of Unreal Engine though..
Yes, it is.. Or, it was..
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You make alot of interesting points here. I'm not sure exactly what the reason is that they dropped Red Engine. Perhaps you're right (about Cyberpunk), or perhaps I'm right thinking that source code leak of their engine had something to do with it. Perhaps a combination.
I certainly hope it doesn't have to do with developers and hiring talents. That would be a really bad sign for the industry if such "talent" aren't really talented. I'll explain what I mean by that. There is a similar trend in software programming, where it's trending "away" from good low level programming languages (like C, C++ etc) towards "newbie" languages like Python. It's not exactly true as I say it, I'm just trying to explain what I mean. C and C++ is still very popular. It just seems like people nowadays are less willing and able to put in the effort, and will instead often choose the easy/lazy way.
If you don't know what C and Python is, don't worry about it, it was a bad example and poorly explained, haha.
Anyways, I think it's a very bad sign if a big studio like CDPR is moving to use Unreal Engine. That should be almost impossible.
Perhaps I'll make another bad example. You know, these days there are shops that sell "weekly packages" of food (certain vegetables etc, eggs, so fourth) and recipes. There is everything you need for those recipes, and to make 7 dinners. It's very easy, and it might even teach you about cooking, or make you a better cook.
But it gives you no freedom, and many people can simply cook much better food on their own, and enjoy the process of not following a recipe, but using classic methods of cooking, like experimenting with ingredients and known good combinations to make certain dishes even better, tasting the food during the cooking process, and using well chosen ingreidents that you have touched and even smelled in the shop or the market to know they are top quality.
That's a little bit like Unreal Engine vs a studio with an inhouse engine, in my opinion. Unreal Engine being that 7 day groceries basket with the recipes, that you have to follow exactly.
It doesn't matter if they have a contract. If they are going to fix the Unreal Engine for epic, it's probably more work than making a new inhouse engine from scratch. But hey, I hope Witcher 4 will be great, but I think the development process will suffer, and the result will be poor due to using Unreal Engine. If in addition new "talent" aren't talented enough to not use UE, then are they really talented at all? And are those the kind of people who will make Witcher 4?
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