Unreal Engine is Ruining Video Games
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- Опубліковано 12 січ 2023
- ... not really, but I wanted to share my thoughts on the topic as a game designer. I love Unreal Engine, but it has it's flaws -- or maybe the industry just does.
Edit: Forspoken was not made in Unreal Engine 5, it's early prototypes were so sorry for the misinformation.
You should subscribe if you want to hear more game design stuff later. - Розваги
Forspoken was not made in Unreal Engine 5, it's early prototypes were made in UE5 and some sources say it was "made with the assistance of UE5", but I'm not quite sure what that details. Sorry for the misinformation.
Update: Thanks for having wonderful discussions in the comments. I really value hearing everyone's opinions! This is such a divisive video and I'm really glad everyone has all these diverse thoughts and can critique some of the stuff I said. Once again I completely love Unreal Engine. This video is honestly about the few con's that the engine has in my opinion, but for every "con" there are 1000 things that Unreal does right. A lot of you brought up good points about this really being a problem with the industry and not Unreal. I think you are completely correct, and Unreal is more-or-less just a reflection of the industry, but that still means that Unreal has the same problems as the industry as it currently stand. But again this is completely my opinion, and I'm really glad everyone is super chill and talk about our thoughts, no matter how the differ.
honestly is been a few years gaming doesnt feel like before last time i got these butterflies in my stomach was playing Persona 5 or maybe the more i fall into the development hole the the less i play games one thing for sure is I'm getting old.
What games have you made just for refence always interested in seeing peoples work
who cares it's a cringe game , stop worrying about loser titles
@@MGrey-qb5xz ok, so you don’t like. Doesn’t mean we can’t like it
@@toaster1443 i mean yeah some one has to take pity on the failure , that's where u people come in.
Honestly I feel like the "Unreal look" isn't because of the program being restictive or putting guard rails it's just lazy or passionless people who see the surface-level potential of the engine and don't care to actually make something unique with the tools they have
I can totally see that being a factor, as a designer I feel like its not even out of laziness that that happens, but purely because the teams put too much weight on the engine for it to carry instead more intense care for the art. This is a really good point, and I think each situation definitely differs in terms of if it is laziness or Unreal itself.
It is not "lazy", it's "cost-effective"- The goal is to make as much money as possible with the least possible effort.
There is the problem that it is very hard to change the defaults and get a good result. People may not have the time and money, not have the necessary skills, etc. The guy who made the video even said that large corporations have the money to work with the engine and tweak it while indie devs just don't.
@@geschichtenausjohanland2988 I wish the goal was to make as good a game as possible, with the effort that is needed.
And even if they might care, the pressure of putting out MVPs fast could keep them that way
Blaming paint for an artist not being creative is an incredibly bold statement to even try to make.
Incredibly stupid video.
Maybe both can be improved? It's not necessarily one or the other.
@@treborkroy5280 yeah and the paint in this case gets improved all the time, it’s the artist that chooses to use or misuse the improvements.
what a great way to summarize this video
@@treborkroy5280 are you aware of how much improvement UE5 has made for developers? We are far beyond this point, the responcibility now is all on dev's shoulders on how they will use their tools.
I get the "Unreal is so convenient it makes everyone lazy" argument, but It's more a lack of ambition in the artistic department. Like you said, little studio will continue to shine with their creativity and some brain-dead AAA will still product bland garbage, but we can still dream of some rare products which will has the best of both worlds.
Look at how many amazing indie titles there are, and how many lazy AAA titles there are. Definitely proves your point
art is expensive af, thats the main problem
Like me!
@@olliepoplol5894 There are very, very few lazy AAA titles. There are titles that don't end up succeeding in delivering an experience - but they didn't get there by being lazy.
@@zoeherriot I disagree with you, to be honest. Look at something like the entire COD franchise. Popular? Definitely. Fun? Debatable. But certainly lazy. They more or less copy-paste the same game every year.
The issue could lie with the asset packs themselves. The engine itself is an amazing tool but assets from sources like Quixel (which is also a great resource) or the UE marketplace could be what are making the games feel the same. Games companies rely heavily on resources like these even when they have amazing art teams because they need to 'fill in the gaps' with their projects, otherwise the project isn't feasible in the time frame. It's hard, because people generally expect more from games nowadays, whether that be through extensive settings, UX/UI design or level design itself (talking about flow and gameplay, not scale because people are caring less about open-world etc). Great topic of discussion though!
Game artist here. Unreal Engine brings so much joy and excitement to me with the tools being very artist friendly.
I think the reason why many unreal games share visual similarities has to do with the default post processing. Or maybe it's where photorealism plateaus when you don't have anyone on the team that understands shaders, lights, and post-processing. Without anyone on the team to create original assets, the team has to rely on generic store assets or outsourcing the work. It is hard to have visual continuity in that setting.
UE5 may spawn many bad indie titles using Metahumans, but it also has so much untapped potential.
Yep....when your art direction sucks, your art sucks. It has nothing to do with the engine imo. Just a lot of people with little experience hoping in, thinking ''This is going to be easy'', so you get a lot of bad stuff made with the engine.
yep, postal 4 uses ue4 but they ruined that games look completely by relying on marketplace assets and slapping some outlines cel shader on top. not to mention the ugly default skypheres and grass texture, and just really weird colouring overall
@@marlaoutatsgamingcollectibles That's pretty presumptuous to say this is because a lot of developers hop in thinking "this is going to be easy".
But I agree with the art direction comment. Yeah if it's not good, it's not good.
Cant wait to see the advances in game mechanics, especially the way the games feel as a player.. unique uses of gravity or momentum. It seems we’ve not even touched the surface of innovation on movement tech alone
@@MinecraftMartin I'm referencing mostly the people who weren't really interested in game dev before, but now that there is UE5, metahumans, Quixel, etc., now they are hoping in. But these things don't make better games. If you are hoping in game dev because of those things, you are hoping in for the wrong reasons. And it will show...
One thing I have to point out: Forspoken is shown quite a lot throughout this video, but it's not made in Unreal Engine.
THIS
Yeah... that was my first thought
oops
Also though: Isn't Forspoken using the Luminous Engine?
But Forspoken is a prime example for devs loving particle effects, no matter the engine (often looking quite similar across different engines). xD
The devs of Tales of Arise were also very proud of theirs, that's why they are shown off everywhere. Don't know if this is what they deemed "Next Gen", because, while looking nice in its quite small areas, the game didn't feel "Next Gen".
oopsies
Why do you show Forespoken, which was made on Luminous Engine?
Honestly this is something I've thought about too. I use Unity, but for 95% of games made in Unreal you can tell from a mile away that they're made in Unreal. Not only UE 5, but also 4.
I’m not a fan of unity at all. Feels dated
The gameplay from unreal games have a weird stiffness to the movement as well. It’s hard to explain.
@@CodyWZRDthat's hardly an engine problem though. Unreals animation pipeline is the industry standard. Unreal just comes with a pretty solid animation template that some devs don't bother changing because it's "good enough"
I remember when Unreal Engine 3 came out in the 7th generation era. It was so easy to tell just from a glance which games were powered by it because it had that distinctive graphical style.
A good craftsman doesn't blame the tools. The industry right now is creatively stagnant. The industry is more worried about pumping out micro-transaction delivery systems than creating innovative, artistically gorgeous, or god forbid...fun games. Unreal expedites the process and allows them to pump out more product with a "polished" look that sells, but like you said, it also creates an "I've seen that before" feel to a host of games. The crazy developement cycle of games these days comes at the cost of creativity and the personal touch of unique art direction, it just takes too long and costs too much according to the studios. Tools like Unreal Engine only make matters worse. So unfortunately I think we're going to see a market saturated in Unreal Games.
>The industry is more worried about pumping out micro-transaction delivery systems than creating innovative, artistically gorgeous, or god forbid...fun games.
You've never played indie games huh
@@antares3030 Well, I think he means the aaa gaming industry. But I agree, indie games are where it's at.
I'm making a fun game. I literally spent months researching and making that concept. I'm coming out a better fall guys soonish. Add me
The systems are more blame they take control away from the artists with guilty gear anime games they had to break the hell out of everything to and rewrite code to get the look they wanted .
I think Unreal Engine doesn’t suit every type of game. I’ve seen long standing series switch to Unreal and run like garbage.
As a solo dev with 4 years of experience with UE4, I think it's more of a problem of lack of artistic vision inside the development teams and how much UE and all the peripheral tools (substance, megascans, speedtree, etc...) cater towards realism these days, physical based rendering is the go to for most learning developers currently and it is designed specifically for realistic graphics.
If you go for realism, you currently have terabytes upon terabytes of free and easily available assets for your project, if you create a unique art style then you almost have to do everything yourself.
Its because they don't know that stylized means more hand texturing and hand made materials. The more cartoony you want, the less you use quixel megscan textures. Just buy cartoony textures and materials. Its wild that fortnite is unreals biggest game, which is stylized, yet when people think of unreal now they think ultra realism quixel assets
This is a brilliant point and explains why so many games feel bland and samey.
I think we can learn from games like Ghost Of Tsushima among other triple A games aiming for realism it focused on colours and getting those down to be unique and beautiful. Distinctly separating the map with different colour profiles and lent itself to me prefering photo mode to playing it half the time
I think it doesn't just go for graphics and uninspired world building by reusing assets but also game mechanics aren't being heavily revamped, explored or tampered with to create something genuinely new and not obviously rehashed from previously successful titles.
In the past with less to work with and eager developers catering to the rapid growth of the market we saw creative flourishes at insane speeds we saw feats after feats be destroyed by newer, bigger and better displays of how games could be. Anymore despite there being a ton of indie and older games to play (more than ever) that are awesome and unique in their own right, we still see these weaksauce and unimaginative games be churned out of the mass conglomerate corporations milking the goodwill of consumers year after year.
These companies don't learn from their mistakes (apart from 3 I can name: No Man's Sky, BF2 and Cyberpunk... sorta). Because of this we get lazy releases along with dripfed content and moneygrabs among the actually good titles especially online.
Anyway your perspective is great I think we need more like you to realise games are more than just piecing together something to form a world but actually making it stand out as well. I mean to an extent building blocks are helpful and very okay to use especially if you aren't funded with a large Dev team.
Just wish there was more outside of the box thinking
@@illestvillain1971 Can we just agree that Ghost Of Tsushima and The Witcher 3 Blood & wine both had the best outdoor environments ever made? Just add a little bit more stylization and that would be exactly the sweet spot for high fidelity graphics while not being too generic
I LOVE the photorealistic assets and the possible pure realistic games that are to come out on Unreal Engine 5.
Hit the nail on the head here. The problem is that Unreal provides an easy way to make games that look good, so good in fact that you ask yourself: should I bother to even make my own art style?
I am in the process of making a game right now, and I have the general art style I want in mind. But right now I'm using megascans. It looks pretty good! And I can totally imagine myself skipping on developing that art style I have in mind because I could be spending that time doing other things, because, after all, megascans look good! The value proposition just might not be there considering the cost, when I already have good value.
The way I see it, Unreal should also make free some non realistic assets, textures, etc. Inspire their customers to try something different.
Awesome video! I have seen a number of comments mention the usage of vanilla UE post processing as a key contributor to the ue look. I believe UE 4 and 5 use the ACES tonemapper. In my opinion, it seems like blues are a bit amplified by ACES. I don't want to oversimplify the issue but perhaps experimenting with different tonemapping operators could help mitigate the issue.
Forspoken was made with Luminous Engine (a Square Enix in house engine and main engine of Luminous Productions) It actually shared a lot of assets with Final Fantasy XV (also made with Luminous) KH3 and FF7R were originally supposed to be made with Luminous but it was such a pain to program for and as the cost went up, SE said screw it and used Unreal. Now I love Unreal as well. But you are right, when every new game coming out uses it (save for the Ubisoft Anvil titles or EAs Frostbite or the Dumpster fire Bethesda calls Creation) they all do start becoming the same old dribble.
They might have used Megascans.
It does sadly.
Luminous was made by Sega staff which provided hardly any documentation for the Engine. People UE because the game makes itself. Nobody wants to fine tune their games anymore. UE presets are "good enough".
Honestly I don't blame the tool. It's the people who use it, some devs just lack creativity or are too lazy to come up with something unique so they just go with whatever they can.
I use Unreal Engine myself but I try to make most assets myself and go for a different style than semi-realism.
Semi-realism doesn't interest me all too much, I prefer more heavily stylized cartoony or low-poly graphics, but that's just me personal taste. I often tend to avoid too generic looking styles in general because I'm more of an experimental person who likes trying different things than what is proposed to me.
Yeah, totally! That is definitely a huge factor into it. The problem is less when making heavily stylized games like ones that are low poly or cel shaded. I think when you try to make it realistic though, there are just a lot of traps that Unreal has that are hard to escape to actually make something unique.
Yes exactly, I use unreal engine and the only thing that looks “realistic” in my low ps1 styled games is the lighting. Everything else is very stylized
bruh you do realize all engines are at their core just settings, like the fox engine is basically the creation engine but tweaked to make lighting and textures work differently. Maybe go read a book or something before making base less claims , oof
Honestly if you are gonna make a stylized game why use unreal? Isn't it meant for ultra realistic graphics?
@@stickguy9109 cause realistic> style , COPE
This is literally unity 2013 when people were making all the crappy horror games. I think it's a good thing that this is happening. The good stuff will rise to the top!
And good doesnt necessarily mean stylized or hand painted assets either! I want to be as far away from the wow/fortnite/high on life cartoony style as possible. Perhaps we are entering in an even worse state. A time where people start to promote stylization just as a 'punk fk you' to the realism just to be different. You're not different. We need both styles, all styles, just learn to use the engine properly people!
@@prodev4012 Yeah, I don't get it why everyone is so against photorealism. I love it. I just want to make games look as realistic as possible, but I want to make all the assets or at least the main assets by myself. That is what would alone gives it a soul. Then there is also coming up with unique and interesting mechanics which enhances the effect.
@Gumbo You can't hide fun games. Fun always prevails. Most of these "indie games" are just people that enjoy playing games but don't understand why they enjoy playing them. So they make ideas instead of games. Real indies will shine.
@@prodev4012I think Fortnite looks better than most of the other UE5 stuff I think its stylization is really cool and was kinda fresh when it came out
@@prodev4012high on life makes me want to vomit looking at it
I’ve started learning how to make a video game and using Unity. I got into Unity because I was just studying an MFA in video game audio and music and part of that was to learn how to implement audio and music in a game engine and Unity was the choice at the time. I stuck with it and now am trying to make a game but I always think about UE5 :)
As some one who has worked extensively with the OG UE's (1-2) I can honestly say i enjoyed the engine much more when it was primitive and had a lot more BSP in it and had more limitations. In a strange way the limited capabilities of the older engines encouraged a lot more creativity. This is really observable in the UE1-2 games that came out.
Agreed, if we look back at Nintendo N64, the game dev have to be creative to make the game that is compact and able to fit inside small game cartridge while still able to make the game that defined it's era.
limits makes you be more creative
As they say limits breed innovation.
Killing floor looked great on ue2.5 unreal2 as well... ue3 had plastic style
Very true.
As a developer who uses the Unreal engine, I agree, I always see everyone in this endless search for realism and the best graphics, one of the reasons why I for now prefer to use unreal engine 4 is the fact that 5 comes with few differences that are not focused on photo-realistic graphics, with such advances costing even useful systems present in past versions that were supposedly "outdated", this search for realism without a unique style only leads us to make a dated game.
funny you say that cause with all the new unreal games releasing these days, a unreal 4 game called high on life looks the most stylishly unique with great graphical fidelity
@@MGrey-qb5xz If high on life is the type of style that you guys are wanting going forward into the future, then we might be in trouble. It just reminds me of fortnite. I hate it so much. More ghost of tsushima and less toony stylization please!
@@MGrey-qb5xz high on life looks like an unreal engine game through and through.
yeah, I was asking in the unreal discord if 4 or 5 would be best for a cartoony fps I wanna make, they all said 5 but I’m still not convinced, since even with ue4 I have to fight against its forced “realistic” features
Screw realistic graphics, just make a fun game for christ sake
The fact that you confuse the Luminous engine (Forspoken) for Unreal speaks volumes. The look is by no means caused by the engine itself. I've seen a ton of games where I thought to myself: this kinda feels like UE. Then went on to googling to find that it was some other engine, oftentimes proprietary. What you mean by "Unreal look" is basically - realistic lighting, shadows and high fidelity foliage. I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing. Does High on Life look "like everything else" to you? Well, it's UE too... One of the things we're gonna see more and more with Unreal-based game though is copy pasta assets. You know - the rocks, forest etc. assets and such. Then again - I saw footage of Sons of the Forest and my first thought was - that kinda looks like tons of UE5 assets... If only it wasn't built in Unity :)
People never consider that if game is striving for photorealism its going to look similar if not the same as other games that do the same. What makes graphics in the game unique is style that DEVS not engine give them. Fornite, Valorant, Crackdown and Borderlands are all running on Unreal Engine but they look unique thanks to their style and the dont look like Gears of War 5 or Hellblade.
Agreed. It's the same argument people in the digital audio world use while having a pissing contest as to which DAW is best. "It has that FL studio sound." Each DAW with it's presets has a distinct sound. It's up to the artist to create their own custom sounds in order to sound unique. The same goes for video game visuals.
Graphics aren't even the most important thing in video games anyways. Game play is everything, which is determined by good programming and game design. I'd play Empyrion Galactic Survival over Star Citizen any day. Graphically, Star Citizen is amazing compared to Empyrion but Empyrion is way more fun and was made in a fraction of the time at a fraction of the cost.
Reusing assets is not a bad thing. It makes people be more willing to put out very high quality assets for free. This starts a 1-upping cycle that eventually ends in every kind of model someone could possibly want in high quality being available for free. Also, graphics do not fucking matter in games.
I prefer UE engine because a game made on it is highly tweakable and easy to run on my low end pc
He is an artistic junky, and hates games that are becoming more realistic, he prefers hyper-stylized games rather than more realistic when I think the whole artsy thing is overdone, tired of seeing Pixel/Voxel art games, its lazy and overdone. While I appreciate it when its done well and in limited quantities, I want to finally see that valley. We are supposed to progress not be stifled.
I loved "The Unreal Engine look" back in the UE3 days. It was something special about how it handled rendering and stuff. And whenever I saw those low-poly models becoming actual assets, I was like "mmmm, Unreal
Those videos give me physical pain
UE3 was good for its time
I noticed this lately and couldn't find the words for it. Every studio and damn near every game used to have its own engine which is why so many games looked so different from eachother years ago. Now that everything is made in either unreal engine or unity, most games look very similar as far as textures, movement, environmental effects, ect
This is not true at all, only triple A games look the same. Most of the time you can make a game that could look completely different to others made with the same engine (see Tarkov, Dusk, Ultrakill and that polish immersive sim)
Only triple A games really suffer from this issue because they're all aiming for the same artstyle
@@LordTrashcanRulez nope, for example every unreal fps I have played have the same choppy movement and mechanics, Even iw4 was more fluent
I'm less concerned about the homogenization of style and more worried about how Epic is gradually taking over the market with their engine. So many games are made in it now, and that gives Epic a huge amount of influence on the rest of the industry.
Because making an engine sucks and is a huge time and money investment that doesn't pay off. Square enix failed completely trying to make luminous engine. Sonic team is still struggling cause they have their own engine
What's your worst-case scenario?
Unity still dominates the industry even though Unreal is seeing more adoption.
That already happened before, with UE3.
@@vazazell5967 Doesn't mean there should be no competition.
"uncanny saminess" and "unstylized unrealistic blob" is a good summary of what most games these days feel like
Which is why I’d rather have remakes of the PS2 Catalog same fun just updated graphics and I’d be good
No ,I think a lot of tripple AAA games coming out do look really beatuful. Don't you think something like Read Dead Redemption, Elden Ring or Cyberpunk looks absolutely gorgeus? Even Ubisofts Open World Games (Assasions Creed and Far Cry) typically have beautiful envoirements, the problem is just that the rest of theese games lacks sometimes.
@@mortysmith1214 yeah that's also true, not sure about cyberpunk, that's probably subjective
@@mortysmith1214 Assassin's creed has allways had a unique style to it, although since playing Metro Exodus I think the bar has been raised pretty high, the attention to detail especially on the characters themselves is indistinguishable from a movie.
pokemon
A new editor version comes out before I can finish a level and then it says my assets are not compatible with the new version.
I agree. I have for a long time that many games have this very cinematic look to it but do not feel like a game but more like interactive movie. The style is very similar as well as the mechanics used by developers. Today i saw a game “out of action” and it had this cool physics and cartoonish style. i would love to see more of such games rather than over cinematic ones that coming out a lot nowadays.
Yeah most AAA games are hyper-realistic looking. Those cartoonish games only exist in Nintendo games or certain AA, indie games
People have the same exact worries with Unity as well. At the end of the day, these programs are simply tools and it is up to the developers to utilize them in a way that makes their game stand out.
I feel like this is a phase where everybody is grabbing at photorealistic graphics, but soon enough people will get tired of seeing real life every time they look at the screen and will crave style again.
Unreal and Unitry has the same problem. people just use standard asset to make a game.
real developer like excape from tarkov or S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2. makey they own asset. shaders and pp.
@@chadbeast4701 Im sure the developer of EFT are doing alot of amazing assets but they are using Megascans too.
@@silas24874 you can do your own Megascans.
@@chadbeast4701real developer like the EFT losers? Okay buddy. That game is a mess.
@@Akkbar21 please explain us : )
I can relate to this when the Unreal Engine had the flat grey look with the bloom glow. Now, not so much. I think that as all your clips showed, it always comes down to the art style and how it's used. Eventually, the engine will have truly realistic lighting and photo realistic scanned assets... You can give directors and photographers a real life environment, real light and real objects and they'll manage to make it look quite different from each other's work. Now if we all use the same lighting, same assets, and the same general look and colors, it's not the engine's (or real life's) fault. It all comes to to the artists. You can give 100 people a pencil and some paper and their work will not look the same - the best artists will always stand out. Games like Ori, Little Nightmares, Inside, Noita, Outer Wilds, Subnautica, etc. All look "good" despite being completely different, regardless of their engine, thanks to the creative people who worked on them.
Man you had one job and EVERY GAME you mentionned is made in Unity, you destroyed your entire argument by yourself it4s impressive!
0:57 what game is that?
This happened during the 360 era too. It felt like devs took the sample 3rd person blueprint and didn't change much in the ways of lighting and controls
An interesting counterpoint to the statement that "you need a big team and millions of dollars to escape the UE samey look" is: Bloodbourne PSX - a single dev made an INSANELY stylized 3D game that really shows what UE is capable of. She paid super close attention to the shaders and post-processing to give it a bunch of character, as well as hand making her own animations for everything, which also moved it away from the sameness
Using bloodbourne PSX as an counter argument is really not an counter argument, as that project is build on the premise of demaking bloodbourne.
@@devondorr8212 how is it not a counter argument? We're talking specifically about the graphics, not anything else. Obviously the other stuff is copied from bloodborne, but it's not relevant to the argument.
@@NihongoWakannai Because nobody is saying you CAN'T make uniqe looking games in Unreal. It's that Unreal makes it difficult if a dev team is developing a game that has modern graphics standards. The fact the all the new features are centered around photo realistic graphics styles is essentially a trap for indie developers.
If your whole demo's premise is to make a game "as not modern as possible", as long as the engine offers the ability to edit shaders, you'll be able to do it.
@@devondorr8212 What are you talking about? The original person was arguing against the point that "you need a big team to make a unique looking game" and the example of a single person making a unique looking game is a valid counter argument.
The entire point is that it's not the size of the team holding them back, it's the fact that they focus more of being "photorealistic" rather than having actual style and substance.
The reason its so hard stylizing an Unreal game differently is because you have to go into the source code of the engine and change the Shader model too alter how the light actually renders. This means you cant effectively achieve styles such as cel-shading without building Unreal from source and completely rework the Shader model of the engine.
what are the 'guardrails'? Postprocessing effects? Default tonemapping?
Dude it's not only about graphics and looks why gamers play games. It's the gameplay, atmosphere, story etc. I don't give a crap if the game looks like this or that, I want to enjoy it and have fun. If indie teams by using UE5 can create fascinating games in few months by not having to develop their own engine (which will already be outdated, filled with bugs, might not work on all HW etc.) I take that any day and accept the seeming sameness in visual feel.
Well said.
Yessir! Minecraft is the most sold game ever and it looks like a 1990s rpg
No I dont accept sameness! I wanna feel like Im playing a new game not unreal bs!
Indie games have no substance and are typically garbage.
I feel the same. Its like the RPG maker effect. The engine delivers so much ready to use that devs are not pushed to build an identity. Its like a trap for being too "easy" to get good results .But not only graphics, so many games that plays almost the same with some twists .
Maybe if people didnt simply adjust only a few parameters in the sky atmosphere component and use the default locomotion they could start to actually look more diverse. Honestly the topic should be more to do with the marketplace assets than the engine. The engine can do any style, its the presets, templates, and marketplace that sets the tone for most people who don't know how to make custom materials and post processing..
Was wondering if anyone would make this comparison. Yep.
Small recommendation: Fear and Hunger.
Survival Horror JRPG made by a single dev, inspired by Berserk(at least the first one), Lovecraft, Finnish folklore and BATTLE FUCKING ROYALE(the second one)
@@enzoarchanjo621 Yeah 2d games like that are gonna be a dime a dozen once people start using AI to make them. Its gonna be about hyper real 3d going forward for sure. For some reason kids get stuck on nostalgia
@@enzoarchanjo621 Saw this game. Dev invested alot of energy on that . Seems worth for those who likes the theme. While i dont agree with beatz, It is a Sad example of what a I said. Despite the custom art and the combat mecanics It screams RPG maker. From the tile based movment, to the text messages, menus, the combat itself and many other stuff. Its obvious for anyone who played a couple of games made on the engine or used the engine a couple of times.
It reminds me of how people make fun of Unity as extremely inferior, when it's usually developers not taking it to it's possible heights. Either due to lack of experience cause Unity's seen as a beginners software or a lack of real care like Yooka-Laylay
But let’s keep it real here. Unity is inferior. This is coming from someone who started with unity seen all of its faults. You go into unity to make a game and end up making tools to make a game.
@@DevGods And this is the exact reason why I prefer unity. It's fully customizable.
@@DevGods Precisely. That's exactly what I want out of it. A rendering engine and an extensible editor to build whatever the hell I feel like.
My only gripe with unity nowadays is seeing lazy companies use it to make shitty HD Remasters.
Looking at you, ATLUS and SMT3 Remastered.
its shit. Lots of bugs. Outdated shitty ui. 99% catered to mobile ad revenue.
Hi can someone pls tell me what game is that with the korean subtitles at the end
I don’t know a thing about game design other than one high school class I took like 8 years ago. But something that concerns me is that one day everyone will use the same one or two engines to build their games. It’s great for easy access to develop the game you want, but it furthering the development of these engines will be stunted because it’ll be like a monopoly/duopoly. This is why I hope devs like Bethesda or Rockstar keep their engines. Because they bring a uniqueness to their games. RAGE in GTA IV is my favorite for the way the physics work.
But I can definitely see one day where everyone is using Unreal because it’ll be industry standard just like how Premiere Pro is the standard for making films. Practically every university teaches on the Adobe programs for any kind of videography. I imagine it’s the same for game design/development.
I think a worthwhile followup would be some “dos and don’ts” of visual design, touching on what *exactly* makes things generic, and what can be done to avoid that. Especially when going for photorealism.
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@@augustusaurelius2628 Maybe, but for those who are dipping their toes into graphic and game design that are looking to go against the grain, that may be helpful for them.
@@augustusaurelius2628 We probably could, with a little help from the ever fickle UA-cam algorithm.
I don't think you understand when going for realism it's all based off of real life, you will always look like you because real life will always look like real life, and the "Unreal look" is the closest to it. There's literally not much to do about that. Besides play stylized games instead, I guess he didn't mention in the video the dozens of stylized games coming our for UE5 for some reason.
@@darkdevilone8613 this is some bullshit.
look at photography. We can have so many styles just by changing the lens, objective, sensors, filters, angles, depth of field, distance, etc.
and its all photoreallistic.
"unreal look is the closest to it" lol you need to touch some grass. so much confidently incorrect going on
It's not the engine's fault.
It's the Art Director (or lack of one) who we should blame.
Unreal can pull off amazing stylized looks.
Unique lighting/shading, textures and location design can make the pop-off.
The problem is that many AAA (and AA) devs go for "realism", even in fantasy and sci-fi settings.
I still dream of someday seeing Square-Enix make a game in the style of Yoshitaka Amano's artwork.
The tools are there. It can be made.
It's just a question of whether the executives and producers will take that risk.
Making a game with amano's work would be very hard. You'll either end up with a masterpiece like okami, or a mushroom trip
The comparison of 3D unreal engine games to 2D unity games is hilariously deceptive as well. So many 3D unity games have the exact "same face" issue, except they look significantly worse. In general I agree that moving to a mono-engine game dev ecosystem will be bad for game dev, but claiming unity isn't a contributor to the exact same issues seems disingenuous.
Actually, there is a good example. Batman Arkham Knight. I didn't realize when I played it (because it just looks right), but when Gotham Knighs was released, there was a comparison video of the two games, showing how bland the newer game looked.
In light of that, Arkham Knight looks amazing actually, and it's not because of photo realism, but rather because of the style and art direction of the graphics. Showing just how talented Rocksteady is.
That's because artists aren't game programmers. Art and gameplay are very different things and takes an incredibly long process of trial and error to merge the two cohesively to see what works and what does not in terms of gameplay. What ends up happening is the artist wins, and the programmer ends up being severely limited in what the character can actually do - unless the game ends up a broken jarry mess so they make the gameplay slow, bland, just enough to be pretty to look at in trailers/screen shots. Part of the blame is also on horrible marketing strategies.
stfu, you are talking about how it looks, but you don't talk about how it actually works... IT'S UNOPTIMIZED.
A big part of the "Unreal Look" is from GI, Global Illumination. Lighting is no longer really a hand-crafted experience as it was during the days of everything being baked. Be that RTX or whatever or the Rage Engine etc etc. Most studios go this route because its easy to create emotionally dynamic scenes with high contrast in a GI setting. Light and Dark. Volumetric Fog etc.
One thing to take into account though is asset creation is a huge part of making a game look "next gen". There is a good chance a lot of these studio's titles would look exactly as they do in UE5 in an in-house engine etc. The reason they are all using UE5 is performance and Lumen. Lumen works on both hardware ray-tracing cores and has a software solution that works extremely well on even 1060 and 1660ti style cards. This is a huge game changer and you can see things like this if you download Unity's Enemies project and run it on low end hardware; and then download UE5's Valley of the Ancients and run it on a 1660ti. Its not even comparable between Unity's software GI and Unreal Engine 5's Lumen.
So while I agree with you there is an "Unreal Look" I think its more to do with Nvidia pushing RTX on studios and consumers as well as the entire industry moving away from static lighting to dynamic. Unreal gets the blame because it is without a doubt the current industry leader in terms of open source, multi-purpose game engines capable of utilizing the features.
Interesting. The general consensus I gathered parallels my opinion on film making as we entered the digital age and 'anyone' could start making movies. Things became watered down as the talent migrated from centralized studios to a plethora of opportunity (watered down by the expansion) making good entertainment seem great.
The same exact thing happened with Unity, there was a huge era where there were a ton of "Unity-looking" games (think KSP) and people were saying similar stuff at the time. I haven't personally used UE before but from what I've heard there's a very specific workflow that they're making tools for, and marketing a specific look when trying to get people to make games in their engine. Unity developers at that time had done a similar thing to themselves, where everyone was using the same tools in the same way and wound up with games that worked and looked basically the same. Unreal's selling point is their "out-of-the-box" features that are all geared towards the mostly-realistic look, so devs are going to take the path of least resistance and do that. Not sure what's gonna happen in the future but it's got the same vibes as the Unity stuff and the more people that break the engine the more variety we'll probably see, I think.
Do you think Unity has gotten past that now? And if so, I wonder how they did that. Maybe be offering lots of different entry points for making different styles of games
@@samhblackmore I think for the most part people got tired of making fun of it, and also the developers discovered and shared new techniques and the knowledge base expanded as well. I don't think they really have to do much per se. A wider selection of tools is always good tho.
Personally I wouldn't worry too much about this. I've seen the same thing happen in other forms of media, like the Mirrorless style apocalypse in indie film, where tech becomes so prevalent that it dictates style and artistry to a certain degree. It might be like that right now, heck, it might even get worse, but in the end, people will tire of it, both creators and consumers, and everything will normalize again. I believe that these minor crisis are just inherent to any creative medium.
yeah like how many games in the early 2000s looked the same example being mass effect and batman arkham, it comes and goes
Totally. Just wait for nostalgia to kick in for each new leap that happened 20 years ago, and people will have a different visual yearning.
Good point!
It’s interesting to note these trends as they emerge.
It hasn't even been out a year yet, so people are still in the "Ooh instant shiny!" phase and are still figuring out the quirks and capabilities of the new version. It's like how everyone forgot colour existed for the first 3 years of the Xbox 360 and PS3 and stuck bloom on EVERYTHING, but then after a few years, games and their art styles started to diversify again.
@@DannyLavaHead I hadn't even considered that, but you are very right.
How’d you get Civvie 11 on here?
TBPH, all I want is to make the next transition to the next form of rendering, Part of the problem as I see it is the limitations of Rasterization and the time and effort that is needed to implement and get around its shortcomings in some cases it just cripples hardware to do so, as its trying to do thing inefficiently. I have played games and been around for the leaps Pixel->Vertex(Atari/Nintendo era)->Voxels(mid 90s PC era FPS)->Raster(PS1 era and early 3D consoles/pc titles damn did frame rates suck worse than the Ray tracing drop) and later you had a couple different renditions of Rasterization that were used.
I want to see fully RayTraced games(actual full render not bastardized partial hybrid rendering) at decent framerates. Don't even want to get into the Neural rendering system.
I want a portrayed realistic reality I can immerse myself into. While stylized creative games and artistic choices are interesting and cool here and there, ultimately, they get more tiring than the same old same. Pixel art is overdone, cartoony is overdone, alot of those games were limitations of the time in previous eras in technology, while a sense of nostalgia is cool it ends up overbearing.
The problem you are describing is not an Unreal problem, it's a direction problem. The Matrix demo Epic made in UE looked realistic, yet looked unique. Same with the Petra demo. The problem is UE5 made it possible so the plebs like me can load in a preset and get a super decent results. (like 80%). But because I don't have the expertise to fill up the remaining 20%, it is going to look bland. But I think with time these similar looking games are going to shrink, as solely being on UE5 loses it's marketing power.
Yeah, I agree here. Somehow previous versions of UE felt more pleasing visually to me. However, I believe that there's a lot of possibilities for stylization so it really relies on how far the gamedev team wants to go.
I disagree... Again... The tools given to us are single implementations... Take Fresnel highlights for example... Do you spend 2 weeks really learning the algorithm and implementing it, or do you use the singular pre defined Fresnel node that gives you a cookie cutter effect?
Dishonored and Bioshock games comes in mind, they are all made on UE3 with stylized graphics, they all still look beautiful to look at.
Then there's Batman Arkham games and Mass Effect trilogy, which also uses UE3 and aim for realism, it's still look stunning but it certainly started to look dated as the time passes, still good game overall
Its amazing how many upvoted people who don't even use unreal much. UE5 literally provides more auto exposure, post processing, and tons of other features specifically for stylized features. You think by sticking to UE4 you are getting a better look out of the box? After this 'high on life' bullsht, theres gonna be 200 games with that look now. Then we will want hyper realism again. An endless loop of wanting whatevers not mainstream
Don't be silly. Unreal engine is just a tool. You can make games like guilty gear strive or games like final fantasy 7 remake. Stop pretending it's anything but the developers
@@MrInuhanyou123 It was a click bait video. I saw some games before that I thought had the unreal look but they werent even using unreal engine. Its because its what happens in general when not enough time is spent adding extra flavor to the materials
As a Unity user, I don't know much about how constraining UE is in terms of what you can make with it. I remember hearing way back in the day that UE is basically the engine of choice if you want to make a shooter, otherwise you'll be constantly fighting with it. In that sense I do like how Unity is more of a blank canvas, but on the other hand, it would be nice to just have a photorealism starting point ready out of the box that you can pick apart later - I guess they're kind of doing that with HDRP.
That being said - every live action anything ever looks samey; reality just has a certain look to it. Yet it is popular because it is familiar and relatable - most people imagine in photorealism, not in a cartoon or picasso style.
Uniry is a horrible piece of software. Its a company worth 30 billion and they still have basic shit missing from it. And their marketplace publishing que is in the thousands. Epic is going to easily leave it in the dust.
@@SpaceDream You sound like a epic fanboy lol also your stuff on your channel is mediocre literally no substance
I feel like I've fallen into some sort of time portal that's taken me back a decade or two, back when people complained about all these samey looking brown shooters that all used Unreal's default sets. The more things change, the more they stay the same, I guess.
Some indie game developers pursue realistic look because it is kind of cheap to make, most assets in the unreal marketplace are realistic, some are even scanned from real life objects (the megascan packs), the characters are made using MakeHuman or something similar, and the character animation are from mocap, and they don't even have to have expensive mocap rigs because there are a lot of them in the marketplace already, some of them are even free (e.g: Mixamo). Going with realistic visual is the easier route nowadays, most of them are unimpressive because you can't freely design a good fun game with the assets that you have from the marketplace.
Basically just commented this myself and saw your post. Exactly right :)
Opportunity costs. You can focus on a fleshed out story at a cost of visuals. It'll almost be like a hidden gem
The main problem is the "think big" attitude most people have. Open worlds, 120 characters, 50 different environments, 384585934 mega boss. Is basically impossible to keep a decent quality with such a big canvas to paint, even more if you have a really small team. That's why everything looks generic, you must use all the standard assets that everybody uses in order to achieve a final product. In the past was totally different, I'm talking about the aniga 500/600 or Nintendo era: small and super funny games with simple mechanics, one or two buttons BUT, sometimes, with a really unique feel to it. Sometimes limitation is the mother of invention, think small, how can you reduce and cut instead of making everything big and generic.
@@gabrielegagliardi3956 I concur. A proper game requires every component to be fleshed out.
As much as I agree with the blandness problem in the visual department, that last part bothers me.
Since when did visuals actually impaired one's ability to design a "good fun game"
I think Kena: Bridge of Spirits was an interesting example of this phenomenon because it was a beautiful, clearly stylized game, but also quite "Unreal." It's like the devs were trying to escape the samey-ness but the engine wouldn't let them. Like, motion blur and DoF look exactly the same in every UE game on hair and particles, and postprocessing is always on in promo videos so maybe it's the engine-specific features that are less customizable that we notice immediately? I'm not sure, I don't make games in Unreal so I'm not familiar with the details, but that may be a factor.
I totally agree with you! The game had so much potential to look amazing but there was that "uncanny unreal" feeling about it.
Kena was made on jnreal6engine 4 and also was downgraded. Wait until unreal engine 5 games come out
@@wingedhussar1453 The post effects and surface BSDFs that result in the typical UE4 look are the exact same in UE5. Sometimes it's best not to speak at all on topics if you're not willing to look futher into it.
@@ZalvaTionZ idk some unreal engine 5 are really hard to spot and look like cgi. I'd say unreal 4 had a look ,just felt like not alot of post processing effects
@@wingedhussar1453 The main difference between UE4 and UE5 is lumen, nanite and TSR. Rest of the rendering pipeline is the same.
while I can partially agree, I think it’s just made the major AAA companies play it safe.
With these free and open source tools out there and creators throwing their hat in the ring with their own engines and tools and stories, the innovation I don’t think will be any new graphical leap in gaming(how do you get more realistic than real?)
But it’ll be crazy concepts like Baba is You or unique spins again. Or letting the indies thrive or mixing and matching.
But yea. I love cool effects and realism as much as the next guy but a charming low poly look or some 2D game like Ori and the Blind Forest is a relief now and I think will be the needed fresh air in between the “Unreal Games”
It's important to remember that skill and experience are key factors in game development. While utilizing the latest game engine with realistic graphics can enhance the gaming experience, it's not a guarantee of success.Ultimately, the quality of the game will depend on the developer's abilities and dedication to their craft.
yeh just like your comment its shit
I feel like Unreal is a tool that offers people like me (I've wanted to make a game. An idea I had for over 5 years now. But never had a tool that could make it more accessible) the ability to create a visual representation of what we wanted to make.
Later on, I can absolutely take the time out to flesh the idea out and then make it an actual playable game with a distinct visual style. But for now, Unreal let's me plot out how I want it to work.
You could do the exact same thing in unity, "ive never had a tool that makes it more accessible" , words of a lazy fatass
Shoutout to Capcom and RE engine for being the games that make me question reality the most!
That photo into game technology is AMAZING!
Naughty Dog has the best I've ever seen with uncharted 4 on PS5.
@@theunfazed7109 try uncharted lost legacy it looks even better
@@theunfazed7109 what engine does
GOW and GOWR use?
@Dante Woohooman • 30 years ago it uses an in-house engine made by Sony Santa Monica
@@theunfazed7109 totally agreed
As a dev whose used Unity for years I still remember when I'd often hear people saying that games from Unity had "Unity look" in much the same way, so it's kinda ironic to see people talking about Unreal that way now. Really I feel like Unity had that rep at the time because it was such a low barrier to entry that beginners would be able to drop a full game without ever taking the time to learn about the differences between different lighting workflows, rendering paths, etc...
I was looking for this comment, I distinctly remember the "unity look" of blocky 3d characters with very minimal lighting and rigid animation.
and washed out from the gamma space lighting with really ugly clay-like materials because they didn't adjust the specular maps at all, ye
In my opinion the engine itself isn't the issue it's the people making the games, its like blaming paint because an artist isn't good at making art when it's not the paint who is painting it's the artist. There are ways to make good games that people will love and be amazed by though a lot of studios have been disappointing their customer base without really making an effort to right their wrongs instead they have people like frost double down on stuff and blame the buyers
Came here to write exactly this. Fornite, Valorant and Crackdown are using Unreal Engine and they don't look like Gears of War 5 for example. Its up to the developer to give the game style not to the game engine.
@@oLaudix exactly I think its harsh to blame the engine when the engine itself isn't the one making the games its the studios who should be held accountable for either spending too much money hyping up games instead of working on their release, and we should simultaneously support studios who do the right things and focus on publishing full games that aren't broken on release, portkey games being one who I think deserves some recognition. With hogwarts legacy being their first ever release I think they've done a great job they didn't focus on features that would take time away from focusing on the main aspects of the game and so far at least for me there's only been one bug where I've had to close the game to restart. I could easily see them creating sequels or dlcs for hogwarts legacy and the game itself looks beautiful as well as it being entertaining for more than just the average Harry potter fan
@@oLaudix Another good example of unique ue4 games is HiFi Rush. It doesn't have that generic Unreal Engine 4 look.
It is at least partly the engine. You have to create the game within the limitations and boundaries of that engine. You never see any "out side the box" unreal games from a technical perspective - and there's a reason for that.
@@alexanderjamesreed935 What do you mean outside the box? It is strictly a matter of style devs give the game and weve seen many eifferent styles of games using UE.
This. I swear this problem goes back years.
Back when I was heavily into gaming during UE3 games, most unreal engine 3 games had the same look, overbright colors, weird plasticy looking metals, cartoonist characters, texture fading in from blurriest to less blurry when loading an area.
I could still play a game and pretty much tell if the game was an unreal engine 3 game just by the graphics.
It seemed that UE3 had trouble rendering anything that wasn't metal, dirt, or glare.
@@ainlLeek yeah, but still some of my all time favs were built using UE3 like Borderlands 1,2.
@@agnel47 same. Borderlands, Mass Effect, Batman, just to name a few...
@@ainlLeek remember Bulletstorm?
@@agnel47 I read the reviews back in the day, but never played. It has the classic features of a UE3 game!
this feels like a similar problem unity ran into years ago (2kliksphillip did an excellent video on it). but the real issue here is that lowering the bar of entry for game development like this causes many more people to make a game regardless of whether or not they have the proper experience. for every S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2, theres bound to be four dozen or so asset flips and crapware games. unity partially solved this with their Scriptable Render Pipeline, which allowed more experienced devs to customize the look of their game in more depth than most novice indie devs. while a similar solution would be ideal for UE, i have my doubts anything similar will ever come.
Trying to modify the rendering pipeline and post effects is a huge headache compared to unity.
I'm a developer born as a 3D animator, i'm glad to see someone else concerned, because in the 2021 on the video "NEXTGEN Terrain Physics In UNREAL ENGINE 5" I wrote this comment:
My only fear is a flattening of the games, I explain why:
When you have a product within the reach of many, which does almost everything by itself, without too much effort, and does it too well, with free libraries, fantastic presets, where creating is very easy, that product becomes too common use, supplanting and almost completely killing the alternative.
This phenomenon has a contraindication, in the eyes of a good observer, all the games and projects developed with it will be flat, because as it is true that not everyone wants to use models and presets, materials, and will try to modify, add their own models and textures, modify materials as much as possible with the editor, or create your own scripts, it is also true that when you have something comfortable, you tend to use it, when you have nothing in your hand you have to deal with it, and find solutions to create something satisfying. Even by editing a lot, a game developed with it always remains the work of that engine, and when it is comfortable and gives excellent results, with little effort, as well as being cheap compared to other engines (speaking of packages offered together), everyone tends to use it. , this leads to a major flattening, slowly all the projects will resemble each other.
It has already happened with the previous versions. I recognized the projects developed with the UE, compared to the competition, not to mention those made in economics.
Now that this version will assert itself it will surely crush the alternatives much more than in the past, this aspect of flattening will be even more relevant and evident, because as beautiful and versatile as Unity, and alternatives, this version of UE ... does a lot it tempts me too and makes me want to totally abandon the alternatives, and I think it has this effect on many others.
The pre-baked assets and post processing may be one of the reasons. They're very easy and quick to implement, save a lot of time, but also make for a lazier work. It's a bit like apps and websites looking very similar to each other, you just pick a template and slap you content in it. Games getting bigger with their expansive worlds are a variable to consider as well. There's just not enough time to handcraft projects from scratch. Indie developers can be more creative and that's when they shine and make unique experiences, but they also can fall for the same trap and deliver something similar to other projects but with a different facade.
I think for me it isn't exactly UE5 itself but the tools and premade assets that make it convenient for developers to make more of the sake looking realistic looking games. There is less emphasis on art direction.
UE5 can definitely do stylization like in Fortnite. It looks gorgeous with the update. Also tried Guilty Gear Strive for the first time in the beta and damn is this game gorgeous...
I am glad stuff like Hi-Fi Rush too has gotten good reception. It is vibrant, has beautiful animations, and runs very well. That's all I really want anymore.
The reason fornite does its cartoonish, non-photorealistic stylization so well is because Epic Games is the developer of Unreal Engine, thus their developers have more skill than anyone in altering the engine to change how light renders. Its kinda funny cause they havent actually released a shader model consistent with Fortnites style which is kinda weird.
ive always maintained that all you need to make a good game is opengl, sdl, notepad, and a c compiler. my opinion hasn't changed much, beyond vulkan replacing opengl. copypasta is a terrible way to make a game. unreal and others allow too much of that.
@@bigmojito1765 Exactly, and I find that interesting as well. I hope they do provide more non-photorealistic stylized tools in the future.
@@LordOfNihil I pretty much agree. It isn't for everyone, but I find Playdate Devs to showcase what you said. The games all feel pretty unique with rudimentary game design.
people are sick and tired of that fornite look though i hear it all the time.
I agree that games do look REALLY samey and generic now, and honestly have for years. I want to say it’s more an issue with developers taking the safest route and going for the most photo realistic looking game possible rather than taking a chance on designing something truly unique looking. I’ve never worked in a game engine before so I really have no idea what it’s actually like and I can totally see how if EVERYONE is using a given software then over time people will find the most “optimal” way to use it and these “optimizations” will be in almost every game, causing them all to look similar. I think the solution would be for studios to take a chance on foregoing some of the conventional wisdom that has been followed so strictly for so long to make something truly uniqe, but that’s like asking a tiger to change its stripes. So I guess a better alternative would be a competing engine that can perform on the same level as Unreal, which I’m sure is no easy feat.
I remember learning UE4 and whenever I played a new game I could immediately tell if it was made in Unreal or not, even stylised ones like Life Is Strange and Borderlands 3
Okay I’m a game developer as well and I’m going to say right now Unreal is great for the community of developers and gamers. “The Unreal engine look” is similar problem to a 2000s grey and brown games we started to get after Gears of War showcased the unreal 3 engine; it’s not the engine itself but the look of the game colour tone, style and lighting. Personally I believe if games start to look too similar it’s because of the lack of art design and direction. Yeah sure we’ll be seeing a lot of Quixel assets in future games but it’s the job of environment team and level designers to make things stand out and original. Unity is an inferior engine in every way other than it being easier to code in C# yeah it has more stylized games but mainly due to years of development on Unity that was free and more accessible to indie developers originally but now that Unreal has been free for over ten years and has made so many improvements that literally make my job easier it’s going to catch on quickly that Unreal is the premier engine to work with as the it’s easier to use compared to unity with 50 plugins. but honestly I think this video is kind of click bait as your argument I believe isn’t strong enough to justify your opinion like every professional digital artists mainly use adobe photoshop or illustrator but people can’t tell if it’s a adobe look.
One more thing, Unity's debacle makes itself even more inferior to UE5.3
Hope the upcoming UE5 updates makes Nanite finally supports Skeletal Meshes tho-
I guess what you're talking about the "Unreal Look", Unity also has the same problem, but I do agree with the part that Unreal feels like a tool that gives you the power at the cost of boundaries whereas Unity is like a blank slate and it asks you to make as you please which is why there is never a basic player/camera controller given as well in the mix since it's so barebones to begin with. But once you get the hang of it, yes, Unity does help you create visuals that will eb strikingly distinct than another made on that engine. I agree with most of the points but I can say, the same can also be said for Unity. It has a reputation for being the one engine responsible for more than 90% of shovelware. I myself am an Unity Developer for over 8 years as of now. I know what you mean to be honest.
Yeah I wonder why a game engine where 90% of people don't even bother changing the post processing or shader material settings all end up looking similar. Maybe its because it has nothing to do with the engine itself but the stock templates that come with it, which is barebones unless you go to the marketplace. But just by keying in stylized in the marketplace, for 200 bucks u can have everything u need to make people wonder what game engine your super 'stylized' game is running on
Its also made producing very stylized visuals much much easier than ever before. You don't have to go into photorealism with ue5 and very often its flat out best not to.
for me personally, the way you described possible outcome is fine.
gamedevs put all the visual heavy lifting on the engine -> customers start associating certain look and UE5 -> customers stop buying games because of this certain samey look -> gamedevs are forced to stop relying on out of the box solutions ureal provides and will start to stylize or push realism even further to stand out.
In any case the market will endure, and the bright developers will push the wheel of progress past this point. Like it was with any widely adopted new tech in gamedev.
Been using Unreal a while now, for film and virtual production, games and VR and honestly I think a lot of it comes down to the desired look.
With the amount of things you can do in the post processing and creating materials around it, you can dramatically transform the way light and materials interact on screen, which is honestly what makes the unreal engine look.
It 100% comes down to what devs are looking for in their style and what the market trends look like, causing a lack of creative diversity within UE users.
Also have to look at what the Marketplace is selling, combined with free access to megascans. Independent teams can struggle to create enough assets for ambitious projects so asset store is what people will often turn to.
you should make or boost some videos about how to get around unreal engine guardrails and use it to create more unique looks and feels
Writing them currently. Expect many to come :)
@@Studio_Reborne I don't know if you mentioned it but the documentation for people trying to make their projects in C++ is largely missing. Also the reason its so hard stylizing an Unreal game differently is because you have to go into the source code of the engine and change the Shader model too alter how the light actually renders. This means you cant effectively achieve styles such as cel-shading without building Unreal from source and completely rework the Shader model of the engine. Along with this, if you want to edit and recompile your implemented styles you pretty much have to recompile the whole 50gb engine. And also they've pretty much voided the ability to deploy to html now with Unreal Engine 5. Its really only for triple A games who are capable of making extremely and uniquely stylized assets. Other than that achieving style through shaders and reworking the actual lighting of the game is a pretty huge task for a solo dev but it is possible.
In Unity creating something that look decent is a challenge, more so then Unreal. Most of the things that you get in Unreal you need to look up from assets. Unity games are more unique because most of the things that UE have, you need to do by yourself. For solo dev its almost the same challenge as changing something in UE.
But I think the worst thing in Unity is trying to optimilize better graphics. When Unity is great when it comes to 2D, creating something that is looking nice, and isn't low polly stylize its a challenge.
I'm pretty sure the Unreal Look comes down to all the premade assets. You got the started content which has some gems in it, but also the megascans library (Quixel stuff). I think now with Bridge being an installable addon to the engine, making it ludicrously easy to kitbash a scene, the number of "unreal looking projects" is only gonna increase.
On the other hand, it forces developers who want to be unique, in particular about their style choices, to be more creative and think more outside the box. Hell, Minecraft is essentially just pixelart on a voxel map, but that game still holds up. Creativity in your art style will shine through in a good way, but something that just *looks* unique ain't gonna sell either. We need good gameplay and replayability.
What are some of the most popular games we know of? Well, there's the aforementioned Minecraft, but there are also things like World of Warcraft and GTA (I only played the 5th one so all my statements about it will be taken from GTA5 and not the whole franchise).
What makes these games good? Their gameplay and replayability. Minecraft is basically virtual legos with a survival mode, and I don't have to justify why it made my list, because we all know what I'd say. WoW has a lot of different character types you can choose from; orchs, mages, archers etc (been a while since I played it so my memory's a bit fuzzy) and GTA has great story and gameplay. These three games have very different art styles from each other, but still make for good games.
So yea, I think the Unreal Look will saturate the fuck out of the market, but I also think serious developers will consider multiple aspects of their game - art and gameplay being the cornerstones.
We have proven before that art style and gameplay are in similar lanes, and we have proven that an excellent video game doesn't have to look photorealistic.
Haven't slept in a while, so me brain's a little clogged up. You guys hopefully get what I'm saying tho
Its pretty dumb how he says unity games dont have the unreal look and then all the examples he shows are 2-d side scrollers...
@@HavokBWR adding to the list
Not because I hate World of Warcraft and about Minecraft I'm loving a version they're making of it that's Opensource that everyone will have an easier time being able to do what they want.
@@giulyanoviniciussanssilva2947 and how does this relate to the original comment?
GTA is not made in Unreal, but in Rage Engine
Alot of developers are forgetting that there are other game artstyles for example comic book style and 2D pixelated games... super releastic isn't the only game artstyle
I agree, I have been using Unreal Engine since 4.0 released as a solo dev and I had no problem using and expanding the engine until around 4.24 and now every version brings some amazing tools but most features feel like they aren't made to be "permissive" if that makes sense.
What you said about the engine becoming less and less of a tool for small teams is spot on, that is exactly how the last few updates have felt.
Though I can't blame the Unreal Engine team for it, it's the same when they release an update and looking through the changelog I find more niche features for big studios and ESPECIALLY movies and AR stuff that replace the great improvements like when they rolled out UMG for example.
Also the performance and optimization issues we get in UE5 are scary, it's a trend in video games today aren't optimized at all and I blame the artistic side of the engine for that, when we got Nanite the argument was to be able to make ultra high quality assets everywhere, it's great for artists but it removes the thought of being careful of what assets you use
Well Unity has just destroyed itself.....
I do agree there's a greater risk now since Unreal is becoming so dominant and the industry has swelled on the back of that technology, but I do think it's a bit overstated due to nostalgia distortion, tbh. Every generation is affected by technology availability, we just forget about all the forgettable ones. I remember when the x360 came out and i was shocked how rubbery everything looked in every single game. They were using different engines but everyone had the same ideas about what material channels should be available and how to paint the textures. Different tools used in the same way will also yield remarkably samey results. The main thing is your conceptualization, because you can't see what you don't understand.
I feel like Guilty Gear is one of the only games which breaks the mold in terms of stylized looks while using Unreal. Honestly, most wouldn't be able to tell it was a product of Unreal until told, so maybe there is hope.
anyone know what game this is at 0:30
I'm definitely not sick of the UE looks. I'm sick of generic AAA games, that don't dare to stand out in any way.
Currently I'm in a position where the market is full of games to the brim, yet I sit here and am bored and have nothing to play. The last games I've enjoyed were indie and double A titles, that "the algorythm" didn't suggest to me. Had to find those on my own.
I am at the point of boredom, where I downloaded UE5 and started watching tutorials and trying to learn the engine, to eventually make my own game, lol.
Every version of unreal engine has had a specific look when the games weren't stylized, I remember back in the day a lot of games were very easy to spot if they we're using UE3. Then came UE4 and things felt a bit different, but now it has that same identifiable look, but specific to UE4. The issue for me is that UE5 hasn't changed that look much, it looks more like UE4+, but it gives you that same familiarity that makes a game feel less fresh even if it just released and that detracts from the game imo.
Early Unreal Engines were actually unique and distinguistiable but not for the "looks" or stock textures. They had some kind of feel to it.
@@themetalcatacombs3790 Its partly due to proper and good art direction for their graphics
@@legacyofvrak i'm about the physics and movement over graphics. Duke Nukem Forever 2001 leak just prooved how OG UE was innovative and huge for the time.
In a way you could argue epic have sort of stylised the built in shaders to create the “unreal look”.
@@quickscopesheep5994 that's an interesting idea, but I hope that's not the case
What I've definitely noticed is that game trailers of UE games are always compressed af, run at a low framerate, and have obnoxious motion blur to hide it
The fact that for a second I thought the one of the game displayed was the Last of Us when it was really a game called Project M instantly proved your point to me. I hadn't heard of Project M and with the footage of various games in the video, if I didn't know prior what game it was from I started mixing them up.
Its because of this problem I've ironically found myself playing games with purposefully low render graphics like Project Zomboid and am currently looking into Valheim. They just stand out more and seem to focus more on the game itself than "High end modern resolution graphics!!!"
Its the simplicity of powerful tools available to even beginners that with not much hassle, few drag and drops can make it look nice.. I felt the same way when i purchased Citadel colors for painting 3d prints...they made those colors stupidly easy to achieve "good" results but it all looks bland and same.
For example they dry brush colors that you add to the print and it automatically stays only on highlights and rough surfaces.. then they have glazes taht if you apply itt over the printed model it goes into crevaces and stays there only..making the shadowwy areas.. and so on..
The end result is more less always the same and looks boring. It looked nice until I got colors and tried it for myself..then after acchieveing what I wanted I felt empty.
Even me as a total begginer in the fielf could acchive really nice looking painted minis with it...but it felt lame after a while.
I feel the same for UE.
So many people call their small projects games nowdays..
This immediately reminded me of the effect AI art generators has had on the online art space. These tools are being solely relied on for results, with minimal artistic and creative input. It's the same with any medium, when the creator starts to rely so heavily on the tools, they forget the core fundamentals of what makes their creations authentic. Obviously not everyone uses these tools like this, but it's an easy and dangerous trap to fall into.
Let me formulate it shorter: advanced tools give you delusion that you have artistic vision, when it's actually not always true.
@@charlieking7600 Well said
no people who use ai art dont do art for the same reason u lot do ai art is used bu componies for box arts and model design and by writers for quick easy covers not by people who enjoy drawing
I get your point but thats 1% of most issues , 99%
Or protests and anger against ai art twnds to be against conponies not lazy artists its anti progress entittlement half the tiike like oh wizards of the coast used ai art on their books how evil they didnt go out and pay some over charging entittled artist like stfu they dont owe any suport to random artists their a compony not an art charity the bigger issue in the ai sphere that deserve protest is microsoft privatised open ai in 2018,dod u know it used to be open source elon misk created open ai as a open source ai redearxh to give free ai suport to people but microsoft privatised it. Thats why he left the compony
What a terrible take, imagine saying standarised screws are ruining furniture. Screws like Unreal engine are tools and exist to lower the barrier to entry...
I've quickly started to think of those trailers with photo realistic graphics as the new asset flips. Which they often also seem to be. Todays engines are so capable that graphics is no longer a valid indicator of how much care was put into the construction of a game. I'm now evaluating games solely on core mechanics, the amount of bug reports/developer engagement, freedom from microtransactions/overpriced expansions and if the title requires access to servers that might go away tomorrow.
The risk is not that Unreal will become a “dead engine”, but rather that it will be so successful that it is entrenched as the “mono engine” of the game industry, resulting in monotony of style.
If you have ever watched Angry Video Game Nerd you will know this has been a problem since Pong
The Unreal Engine look has a lot to do with the material editor, IMO.
Metal materials have a plastic look to them. Glass materials have a plastic look to them. Even when trying to make wood or grass or brick, it all usually ends up looking plastic in some way, shape, or form.
It's hard to pinpoint exactly why, but to me, it feels like every material always looks like it has a clearcoat of some kind.
Combine that with Unreal's built-in lighting and you get a combination that is unmistakable no matter what.
It's because it's Rasterization not Pathtracing
I'm not sure which diffuse material model they use, but with the default specular value it is way too glossy imo. Even if it's based on accurate measured values, maybe the fact we still haven't solved light occlusion on small enough details on a reasonable level results it reflecting way too much light.
The plastic look was one of my biggest issues with UE3 back in the day.
capcon engine has the same problem, look at the latest monster hunter, the world looks wet all the time
Are you using substance plugin or do you create textures outside Unreal?
I know what you mean, everything has this smoothed off look, i dont know if its the post processing or the way it streams assets but you can just tell.
Crash 4 is a good example of an unreal game which is heavily stylised and stands out
I completely agree, the industry today obsesses so much about photo realism that a strong art direction often falls short, which would make games potentially much more timeless than the realistic route in my opinion.
Exactly I remember when CGI started gaining traction every major budget movie was using it to replace props, special effects and makeup etc. At the time it revolutionised the capabilities of the medium and opened up a world of creativity. Of course most of it was used to pump out the least inspired empty blockbuster flicks. And after about 10 years or even less it aged like milk, and ironically the films before them that hadn't relied on perfecting realism with the technology of the time feel less dated and more stylised and creative when looking back on them.
I always wondered if one day when hardware is powerful enough and techniques are developed enough to achieve close 1:1 photo realism at high resolution and frame rate, If more stylized games will become popular once the market gets saturated with enough the same photo realistic games. Similar to how photography pushed artists into more abstract styles like cubism and futurism.
art direction is one of the most important things for visual communication. A lot of indie games struggle with the same thing. if the developers pick realism, and if they have the budget and resources it'll look like unreal 5 stuff, if they dont it will look a lot like rust or old realism games from 2010. one of my favorite games was dishonored 1 with unreal engine 3, and i loved that because they purposely chose a different art direction than another realism style of game.
Some of the UE3 stuff was amazing, Batman Arkham series, I think Gears 1-3 was also UE3
I didnt know Dishonored 1 was UE3 but all of those games had distinct artistic look it was going for
But then you also have the generic bloom grey/blue look plaguing every game
I feel like games from around 10yrs ago were kind of the sweet spot. Good graphics that don't suck, but aren't realistic.
There's a certain type of effort that had to go into them in order to get the look and feel they wanted. But the problem now, is that the large majority of games selling point is how realistic the graphics are.
And tbh It's not entirely the fault of the people making the games, because when gamers see a semi-realistic trailer for a game, they will pick it apart till It's raw, like what happened to Halo Infinite.
So many games suck now, or just don't feel like a new experience and I think that's mainly because people making the games spend so much time caring about how the game looks, that they slack off on how the game feels.
Some of the most loved games are from the early 2000's and hell even earlier then that. And surprise surprise, we loved tf out of them even though they didn't have good graphics.
i couldn't agree more
Excellent video. 100% agree and know the issues you're talking about. I feel this video was an overly long intro to the subject. A deep dive into issues would be awesome. Another video on stylization is what's really needed. It's a tough nut to crack.
(POV of software dev)
This sounds so similar to the Bootstrap CSS case,
Bootstrap also tried to simplify the UI build task, it achieved its goal of simplifying so much that every site looked like "made with bootstrap". Now Unread Engine also looks like it
Yeah.. thats kinda the whole point. You're talking about nothing
Unreal games tend to be pretty poorly optimized too from my experience, some unity games can be like this too but I feel like it's more commonplace in Unreal these days due to how many things are packed into the engine that i'm thinking most people aren't bothering to remove or rework for their game, probably because they don't know how.
I noticed this too. I know Platinum said they want to make their own custom engine because Unreal might not beable to do the kind of games they want to make.
I'm not in the game creation space so maybe I'm just seeing what I want to see as an end user, but after four decades of playing video games, this is hardly the first era to have a signature "look" many games end up with. It's no different than the various eras of music and movies that often ended up centralizing around certain tropes and styles of the time. In the moment it might feel stifling, but in hindsight we often celebrate the distinct feeling evoked by these time periods, even going so far as to emulate them in retro fashion.
Fair to say, just as often we look back and lampoon some of these tropes while chiding ourselves for spending so much time blindly supporting them, but laughing at our past foibles certainly doesn't invalidate what was created. Heck, sometimes retro style is just as much as picking on the past as celebrating it. If you're truly self-aware and sound of mind, a little good natured ribbing is always welcome.
The ability to notice these trends and eventually buck them is ultimately a good thing because it's what progresses the state of the art and finds fresh new paths. However the mere existence of those trends is not necessarily a bad thing. If someone went on a crusade to eliminate sameness from art, I shudder to think how many indispensable classics they might end up wishing out of existence for the crime of simply looking too much like their peers of the time.
This exactly. There will always be trends in what is made, and that's ok. It's all about the spin the artists put on those trends.
Before I even started hating the unreal look I’d already noticed that ps2 and 3 games all just accidentally had a unique style, even when aiming for photo realism which doesn’t exactly change unless our eyes aren’t good enough…
@@nanor4214 Very little these days. More games move and play the same. The characters in the new Res Evil games run, twirl and move like Battlefront characters who are meant to spin easily and travel like people who are moving on rocky terrains. I much prefer the old style cos when we’re good with it, it plays perfectly. The stiffness of the running is like real life when we can’t bend very much or turn to the sides when moving fast in a straight line. Just feels like the UnREal era series and not a unique horror franchise
I’ve noticed the same Unreal Engine feel too, it especially shows when they just use the same default skybox. I was thinking about using it for my VR game, but the physics felt off to an extent I couldn’t describe. I know Unity’s your competitor, but it feels more responsive in comparison.
You're not the only one. I am not a designer, but as a gamer the 3d look does not excited me. I only appreciate it when its stylized.
But there's a lot of stylized 3D
Stylized games are cool if your 10. What are you a fortnite player?? Its about semi-stylized now. Think of the mists of pandaria trailer. Games that are either too stylized or too realistic are not that great. But if you find the middle between both, thats the sweet spot
It's funny that you mentioned Unity because I distinctly remember the era when people said "Oh Unity games all look like shit and the entry level is so low it's literally destroying indie game industry by giving it a bad reputation" and now that Unreal is getting hyped people are giving it the same treatment. Honestly, to get rid of most of the "generic" look you really just need to:
1) Disable realtime lighting (unless needed) and bake it instead
2) Tweak (or outright disable) the tonemapper to get rid of this "cinematic" feel
3) Disable eye adaptation and whatever changes the exposure as you play
4) Set the GOD DAMNED motion blur to 0.1 or something
5) Don't just grab every free asset out of the marketplace and attempt to assemble a game from them
6) If default rendering doesn't fit your style - just make your own shader (Unreal makes it pretty easy)
And boom, you're pretty much done. From there you just start making your own assets and go for whichever style you want: high res, low res, low poly, pixels, whatever. Those "guard rails" you talk about are literally just presets you get when creating a new project, which is understandable as Epic make their own games and cinematics with Unreal Engine and have the graphics configured to whatever works for them. On the other hand, Unity don't even use their engine so the starter projects are just... empty, pretty much. Which forces you to do *something.*
As for "not built" for indies is absolutely not true. It provides out-of-the-box solutions for multiplayer, node editors and many other useful features an ordinary indie would struggle to implement themselves and thus probably never do.
Honestly, it's exclusively a problem of creatively-bankrupt developers who slaps a bunch of shitty assets together, tie them together in blueprints and ship out without even changing the default post processing values. I don't see how it's an engine problem. Should they raise the plank and make it harder to use just so amateurs get turned off by it? Lol
Thanks for this. I never used UE bit it seemed weird to me that devs wouldn't have any control over post processing and the other points you mentioned
Yeah, blame the Devs and greedy publishers. It is the same situation as FSR and DLSS. How the heck is it GPU manufacturers fault when the game Devs are over relying on these tools and not optimising the game?
Like already was pointed out by you is that Forspoken is not made in the Unreal Engine but I agree is shares that Unreal Engine look. There are also some other engines that start to share this UE look. Few things I think this looks comes from is:
- Transition to scanned assets and Phyisically based rendering (PBR), I have been to a lot of presentation on Siggraph about real-time rendering and what struck me is that with the transition to PBR a lot of lightning algorithms in different engines starts to converge to be the same. This is logical as they all try to model real-world lighting.
- Some other algorithms that UE4 was a pioneer in are also beging adopted by other engines. A good example of this is TAA. Every engine has it's own version or they use dlss or fsr.
It depends on the philosophy of game design i think. If the tools is a better fit for you than go for it. The things i hate sometimes about Unreal is people is starting with already asset premade like ASL animation which look identical to Fortnite games, etc. I would rather start from scratch & make sure i understand every steps of the way. You're right about the ''Unreal look''.