In an interview from 11 months ago, the co-founder of Warhorse Studios, Daniel Vávra, was asked why he chose Cry Engine to power Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 versus something like Unreal Engine. "At the time, nothing else could handle it like this, and to be fair, Unreal couldn't run it even today," Daniel said in February of 2024.
He continued, "I talked with guys who are making The Witcher or from studios that are just trying to make some open-world games on Unreal because there aren't really any open-world games on Unreal. Assassin's Creed, everything like that, is on their own engine."
"CD Projekt just switched to Unreal. Even though, in my opinion, they had a good proprietary engine. I talked to someone whose name I obviously can't say, and I said to him, 'So how about Unreal?' 'Great, we already have pieces done, like some landscapes.' And I said, well, what about the open world? 'Not yet.' When did they announce it? A year or two ago, and it still doesn't work?"
Now, again, this was 11 months ago when Daniel gave this interview, but what he presents is a bigger problem in the industry. One that more and more gamers have been continually bringing up. That is the Unreal Engine problem.
Game series like The Witcher aren't the only ones moving to Unreal. Halo recently announced its shift to Unreal Engine 5 after spending millions on its proprietary Slipspace engine. Why does that create a problem?
While Unreal Engine has been a fantastic tool that has allowed greater ease of use compared to other engines on the market, it also acts as a trap for some who don't know how to use the technology properly. Looking at games that performed poorly, especially at launch, like Lords of the Fallen, Remnant 2, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, and others, it's clear there's a pattern beginning to form when it comes to games powered by Unreal Engine 5 — especially when those titles are open world in nature.
Who's to blame? Well, that's an issue that deserves its own article. One that tells the tale from both sides. Whether it's Unreal Engine itself or a total misuse of something like Nanite technology, It's genuinely a mixture of the two. As more and more features are released on Unreal Engine 5, more developers are left needing to learn the ins and outs of the technology without properly learning how to harness it.
Daniel later mentioned that Unreal Engine simply wasn't made for open-world games, nor terrain generation, "If you wanted to make a game on Unreal from some rocks, that's great, but it couldn't do trees for a long time. Their nanite couldn't generate vegetation until now. Now it can." Looking at you, Satisfactory.
He goes on to detail the amazing videos of trees and the life-like nature of the vegetation that's produced in Unreal Engine 5 but hammers it for performance. "Until you look at some demo and realize that while it looks absolutely divine. Photos, just like a movie. Then you need a computer that costs two hundred grands (8000 Euro), and a maximum of four people can walk there because otherwise, even the damn computer that costs two hundred grand will not be able to run it."
Looking back at this interview post-release of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, it's hard to argue against his performance perspective. When it comes to KCD2, it runs incredibly well. Once, Cry Engine was bemoaned for its lack of optimizations and led by the question, "Can it run Crysis?" joke. Now, Unreal has replaced it.
What these issues mean for Witcher 4 and the future of Unreal Engine 5 games is unclear, but the team behind Unreal isn't sitting idle. In a blog post this week, engineers behind Unreal Engine posted a rather extensive blog post detailing ongoing game engine and shader stuttering issues, one that I dive into here. Hopefully, these messages will hit the likes of studios behind Halo, Ark 2, and other titles that are looking to be released on Unreal Engine 5.
What do you think about the news that the Witcher developers hadn't even moved to the open world in early 2024? Do you expect to see the game released by 2026 or 2027? Let us know your thoughts on this and your overall general sentiment on Unreal Engine in the comments below and on social media.
