Usually when I think of triple A studios using Unreal I always assume the scripting is being done almost entirely in C++ it's interesting to see just how much of it seems to be done in blueprints. It's truly amazing to see big projects from big studios using UE without making giant overhauls to the engine.
Naah, Why would you think that? Bigger teams only cares about fast iteration. And blueprint is GREAT for that. C++ is powerful but it just annoying to work with in unreal
The previous reply is correct, the general trick is: 1. build first in in blueprints* 2. do performance analyzis 3. rewrite any slow blueprints to pure and optimized C++ (assuming that the blueprint was already optimized for performance) * an advanced game might require features that doesn't exist in blueprints. You need to write those first in C++ and then make Blueprint nodes to access it as well.
@@rspy24 Big teams also care about performance, and C++ is WAY better for performance-heavy operations. You could bet this team also used a combination of C++ and blueprints to run the game smoothly on Switch, is all about finding a balance.
SMT V is probably one of the absolute best looking Switch titles. Its performance isn't always up to snuff particularly during more effects-heavy sections like when more powerful spells are being cast but for the hardware I think they did a really good job
Honestly, compared to what some other titles look like on the Switch, SMTV was downright ugly. And those other titles not only looked better, but ran better as well. The game was clearly poorly optimized and took shortcuts all over the place. It even has that distinct clay-like look that is so common with Unreal games and especially from the 360/PS3 era of gaming.
@@matteste I can see “clay-like” due to the blend of anime shading and realistic shading, but to me it looks like a distinct stylistic choice here and not at all resembling the 360/PS3-era “generic Unreal engine” look. I think the game looks marvelous and would be curious to know what specific games you think look better.
@@YayWalterSullivan Xenoblade 2, Doom, The Witcher 3, Dragon Quest XI, I can go on. Oh, and those even have better draw distance than SMTV and still run at stable framerates. And that's before getting into just how much more varied those games environments are whereas SMTV just uses the same palette for each area with just a color filter slapped on top. Even Nocturne which had a similar setting still had more variety in its locales than this game. There is just a lot with the game that screams of corner cutting.
@@matteste You're right about the same palette and lack of variety. But I completely disagree with your comparisons. SMT V doesn't look worse than those you mentioned. And I know that because I already tested them all on my Switch Oled. The Witcher III is impressive on Switch but it's not as HD as SMT is. Dragon Quest is too cartoonish to compare with, it's maybe on the same level. Same with Doom. Both HD games looks amazing on Switch. Xenoblade 2 is a marvelous and huge game. I concede. But hell it looks awful if you compare it to the rest of games we have talked about. Again, too cartoonish, and some "teeth" between an element and its environment spoiled the performance. What makes SMT looks so amazing is its lights and shadows aspect. It looks mature, polished and realistic, even being an anime style game.
@@matteste Doesn't Doom run at like under 720p or something like that? Also Xeno 2 has a lot of sharp models and stiff movement, the fingers for example are quite ugly, textures can look blur and the resolution is on a weir 720 p-900p whit hand held mode being even on the 480p range. I can't call them better looking, maybe better programmed and/or with better art direction, but based on pure visuals nah. Xeno 3 on the other hand is a better comparation, but even then, it isn't that big of a gap (again, going purely by the visual side, Xeno 3 is easily one of the best performing games on switch).
SMTV is one of my favorite switch games! It's so underrated. Gameplay is fun, cutscenes looks insanely polished and elegant. Music goes hard. Models and animations are magnificent! I'm so glad I bought it.
It makes me very happy to see that ATLUS ditched conventional scripting and used blueprints. It must've been a difficult transition but it's definitely a worthwhile one for the long term. Hopefully they keep using Unreal Engine moving forward
@@RoyalHustler09 i doubt Hashino's new team is using Unreal Engine, since Team Maniax had worked on SMT V while the Project Re Fantasy team have been working on Re Fantasy along side them. Hopefully I'm wrong though
Thank you for this vid, it's good to see Atlus's development process. I wish they adapt Unreal Engine 5 soon for there upcoming games and not when UE6 is out...
After seeing all the hard work put into this game over many years it just makes me wish the narrative did it justice. The game is very visually impressive for the switch these guys did a great job, but it's a shame that it will go down as one of the weaker entries just on account of the lacking story.
Aside from strange journey, they’ve all had lacking stories lol. Well, 4 starts out really well but fumbles hard at the end. smt 5 has the best gameplay, exploration and side quests in the series, that’s enough for me to put it up there.
@@rj_4mp100 I thought 4's narrative was consistently great the whole way through with the exception of how they handled the alignment lock, but even then the problems with it are nowhere as egregious as 5. Don't get me wrong it's not my preference but you can go for a more abstract narrative, Nocturne did a great job at disguising its more bare-bones story with its unique setting and surreal atmosphere. I just think V is fundamentally lacking in so many of these aspects. I do agree that the core gameplay is very fun though, I liked how customisable your character and demons were and I still find it to be the most re-playable in the series.
@@mothman5025 I really disagree over Nocturne. I too found the story to be disappointingly bare-bones (I really like how they handled Isamu, though), but, unlike you, I didn't think the game did a good job at masking this. In fact, I would say that the game applies the same minimalist philosophy to not just its story, but to the rest of its elements, much to its own detriment. The setting isn't exactly unique (post-apocalyptic wasteland), but where it disappoints is in the lack of meaningful content in the world. There are, like, 3 side-missions? One of which is a sequence of penis jokes (hilarious) and another is a Frost Bros meme. So many of the more 'real world' areas were aesthetically dull too, like the towns, the fairy park, the 3 underground tunnels you're forced to go through, etc. Places like the Diet Building and Amala Temple were gorgeous and fully showcased the unique aesthetic and had great atmosphere, but these were sadly few and far between. It certainly didn't help that the music was really not that good. Meguro just cannot make minimalistic music for the life of him, it's all so one-dimensional and boring (SMT 5 does a much better job at creating music that is appropriate for a destroyed and desolate world). All of this contributes in making the setting of Nocturne feel very lifeless and boring tbh. SMT 5 sidesteps this neatly by not only having meaningful side quests and great music, but also having demons in 3D on the overworld; they were able to give each area such a strong sense of identity and progression because of that. The narrative of 5 isn't fleshed out at all, but imo the (good number) of side quests make up for it. They not only serve to contextualise each of the main 4 areas of Daat, some of them (Demeter and Khonsu quests) also expand on the main concept of the game, that of the Nahobino. I would love for future mainline games to have better main stories, but I think side-quests are far more important just because of how much they contribute to modern games with large, open areas, and in such an organic and unobtrusive way. As for 4, I too loved it up until the alignment lock, although Jonathan and Walter are not my biggest problem with the story. The good: SMT 4 had a ton of interesting side quests (narratively not as good as 5, but there were a lot more), so many NPCs with dialogue that changed after every major story event (Person 2 had this as well, and to a lesser extent SMT 5, they should really do more of this) that made Tokyo feel like a living, constantly evolving world. However, the ending had some heavy nationalistic undertones, which are just too weird to ignore, especially in a Japanese game. It automatically made 4 have the most problematic story of all the Megaten games for me, personally (although the newer Persona games have anti-LGBT elements, which is also shameful). Anyway, sorry for the long rant and if it comes across as overly hostile, that really was not my intention. I still thoroughly enjoyed playing through most of the SMT games, Nocturne, 4 and 5 included. And it was great reading your thoughts and opinions on the franchise.
SMT 5 is a game that rewards exploration and actually finding out things yourself. The way I played it was I constantly talk to other people within the game. The more I do so, the more I found the characters compelling, even the characters I despise (Hi, Ichiro), and the story made sense. It's not "subtle" storytelling, it is in fact passive storytelling. The best part? It is superior to a lot of Fromsoftware's Souls game. A lot of those has equipments with character descriptions in it, which is farcical. Shin Megami Tensei V? It's as simple as talking to another person. For me, this is the best ever SMT I've ever played.
@@AdamMooreGameDev wouldn’t epic’s compression system (PAK) or their new compression system (UCAS) work with handling that? I mean as far as i know Fortnite (a game that’s 200GB+ uncompressed) was able to be compressed down to 10-30GB and as their game now takes advantage of Nanite (apparently on the switch as well)
Garbage tier game, but the visuals are probably the best of Atlus. Usually, I would be upset if graphics is the only thing that is really good about a game, but this game clearly had a very rough development so the graphics are the best we got out of a bad situation.
But Persona 5 in their own proprietary engine looks much better than this Unreal engine. In here everything looks like things are happening in a tiny plastic toy world. And all in all looks kinda cheap and weird.
To be fair it to that A. They used the Catherine engine for 2 games prior to P5 iirc so they could optimize visuals more while this is the first time they used Unreal Engine B. The lead artists for the games are different C. P5 natively runs of better hardware with the PS4 than the switch
@@Brian-tn4cd p5 is a PS3 game, so it has nothing to do with it running on better hardware. It just goes for a more stylised, anime aesthetic compared to SMT 5 (see Wind Walker for eg, game looks a lot better than Twilight Princess despite the latter releasing after the former). What you said about them having less experience with UE was probably a big factor too, though.
Persona 5 looks like an anime. A little cartoonish. SMT V tried (and succesed) to be more realistic and dark-tone. That's why they didn't use the engine they used with P5. I don't see SMT art style as a "tiny plastic toy world" at all. It looks fictional. Yes. But not fantastic. I mean, it's still anime-style but with a realistic play of light and shadows. Like a high quality anime series (Ufotable animation for example) What you said only works with games like Link's Awakening or Pokémon. THOSE do like "tiny plastic toy boy" But SMT not at all.
Why make a decent engine yourself and optimize it for the Switch when you can use Unreal Chinese Communist Engine to get cinematic 12fps on the Switch and save money.
You sure know how easy peasy it is to make an engine huh. Developing an engine requires tons of resources and man-hours. That is if it actually works. For atlus or sega to develop their own engine is a risky investment. if you’re rockstar or ea sure make your own.
Why accuse Unreal engine being a Chinese Communist Engine. When you have no evidence to back it up . That statement is useless and personal. The company behind UE has done more good than harm to the Game industry so was your point calling the engine that ?
@@magicmasterplayer That's true but they only made a PS2 engine and reused it for like 8 years, a ds and 3ds one, and P5 engine. Maybe there was some in-between but Atlus got really behind after the PS3, it took them almost 5 years to make SMT V using a pre existing engine, a home made engine would have extended that for a good extra chunk of time.
This game definitely pushes the Switch's limitations and I'm glad Atlus is doing that!
Usually when I think of triple A studios using Unreal I always assume the scripting is being done almost entirely in C++ it's interesting to see just how much of it seems to be done in blueprints. It's truly amazing to see big projects from big studios using UE without making giant overhauls to the engine.
Naah, Why would you think that? Bigger teams only cares about fast iteration. And blueprint is GREAT for that. C++ is powerful but it just annoying to work with in unreal
The previous reply is correct, the general trick is:
1. build first in in blueprints*
2. do performance analyzis
3. rewrite any slow blueprints to pure and optimized C++ (assuming that the blueprint was already optimized for performance)
* an advanced game might require features that doesn't exist in blueprints. You need to write those first in C++ and then make Blueprint nodes to access it as well.
@@rspy24 Big teams also care about performance, and C++ is WAY better for performance-heavy operations. You could bet this team also used a combination of C++ and blueprints to run the game smoothly on Switch, is all about finding a balance.
SMT V is probably one of the absolute best looking Switch titles. Its performance isn't always up to snuff particularly during more effects-heavy sections like when more powerful spells are being cast but for the hardware I think they did a really good job
Honestly, compared to what some other titles look like on the Switch, SMTV was downright ugly. And those other titles not only looked better, but ran better as well. The game was clearly poorly optimized and took shortcuts all over the place. It even has that distinct clay-like look that is so common with Unreal games and especially from the 360/PS3 era of gaming.
@@matteste I can see “clay-like” due to the blend of anime shading and realistic shading, but to me it looks like a distinct stylistic choice here and not at all resembling the 360/PS3-era “generic Unreal engine” look. I think the game looks marvelous and would be curious to know what specific games you think look better.
@@YayWalterSullivan Xenoblade 2, Doom, The Witcher 3, Dragon Quest XI, I can go on. Oh, and those even have better draw distance than SMTV and still run at stable framerates.
And that's before getting into just how much more varied those games environments are whereas SMTV just uses the same palette for each area with just a color filter slapped on top. Even Nocturne which had a similar setting still had more variety in its locales than this game.
There is just a lot with the game that screams of corner cutting.
@@matteste You're right about the same palette and lack of variety. But I completely disagree with your comparisons. SMT V doesn't look worse than those you mentioned. And I know that because I already tested them all on my Switch Oled.
The Witcher III is impressive on Switch but it's not as HD as SMT is. Dragon Quest is too cartoonish to compare with, it's maybe on the same level. Same with Doom. Both HD games looks amazing on Switch. Xenoblade 2 is a marvelous and huge game. I concede. But hell it looks awful if you compare it to the rest of games we have talked about. Again, too cartoonish, and some "teeth" between an element and its environment spoiled the performance.
What makes SMT looks so amazing is its lights and shadows aspect. It looks mature, polished and realistic, even being an anime style game.
@@matteste Doesn't Doom run at like under 720p or something like that? Also Xeno 2 has a lot of sharp models and stiff movement, the fingers for example are quite ugly, textures can look blur and the resolution is on a weir 720 p-900p whit hand held mode being even on the 480p range.
I can't call them better looking, maybe better programmed and/or with better art direction, but based on pure visuals nah.
Xeno 3 on the other hand is a better comparation, but even then, it isn't that big of a gap (again, going purely by the visual side, Xeno 3 is easily one of the best performing games on switch).
SMTV is one of my favorite switch games! It's so underrated. Gameplay is fun, cutscenes looks insanely polished and elegant. Music goes hard. Models and animations are magnificent!
I'm so glad I bought it.
SMT is my favorite franchise, you all did amazing work with UE! Excited for what comes next!
So excited for 2024 or 2025 interview for P-Studio and Persona 3 Reload.
I've beaten it, 10/10 one of the best games on the system
Great stuff & great game overall as well!
it’s the boyyyyy aye
@@im.simsim 🤗
@@DavidCastJRPGs yo Davidcast!
i hope we will be able to play this on PC, great game
runs fine in ryujinx
Looks like your wish has been granted !
SMT 5 : Vengeance
SMT V for PC, please.
It was kinda a trip seeing Zeus T-posing XD
Loved this game and every minute I spent playing it.
It makes me very happy to see that ATLUS ditched conventional scripting and used blueprints. It must've been a difficult transition but it's definitely a worthwhile one for the long term. Hopefully they keep using Unreal Engine moving forward
Maybe that new IP they’re working on is using the Unreal Engine 4 or 5. Maybe four since we haven’t heard about since 2017?
@@RoyalHustler09 i doubt Hashino's new team is using Unreal Engine, since Team Maniax had worked on SMT V while the Project Re Fantasy team have been working on Re Fantasy along side them. Hopefully I'm wrong though
@@jaygo6390 Yeah. Guess we all have to wait and see.
isn't soul hackers 2 on unreal?
@@returnofMCH Shin Megami Tensei V is the only one so far. Soul Hackers 2 is using the same engine of the other games Atlus has made.
i hope one day they bring this one to pc as well. with a nice boost on the visuals. ue is addictive lol
Thank you for this vid, it's good to see Atlus's development process. I wish they adapt Unreal Engine 5 soon for there upcoming games and not when UE6 is out...
Ignorant comment
A fantastic game from beginning to end.
I'm excited to do an NG+ of this game on the next switch.
After seeing all the hard work put into this game over many years it just makes me wish the narrative did it justice. The game is very visually impressive for the switch these guys did a great job, but it's a shame that it will go down as one of the weaker entries just on account of the lacking story.
Aside from strange journey, they’ve all had lacking stories lol. Well, 4 starts out really well but fumbles hard at the end. smt 5 has the best gameplay, exploration and side quests in the series, that’s enough for me to put it up there.
@@rj_4mp100 I thought 4's narrative was consistently great the whole way through with the exception of how they handled the alignment lock, but even then the problems with it are nowhere as egregious as 5. Don't get me wrong it's not my preference but you can go for a more abstract narrative, Nocturne did a great job at disguising its more bare-bones story with its unique setting and surreal atmosphere. I just think V is fundamentally lacking in so many of these aspects. I do agree that the core gameplay is very fun though, I liked how customisable your character and demons were and I still find it to be the most re-playable in the series.
@@mothman5025 I really disagree over Nocturne. I too found the story to be disappointingly bare-bones (I really like how they handled Isamu, though), but, unlike you, I didn't think the game did a good job at masking this. In fact, I would say that the game applies the same minimalist philosophy to not just its story, but to the rest of its elements, much to its own detriment. The setting isn't exactly unique (post-apocalyptic wasteland), but where it disappoints is in the lack of meaningful content in the world. There are, like, 3 side-missions? One of which is a sequence of penis jokes (hilarious) and another is a Frost Bros meme. So many of the more 'real world' areas were aesthetically dull too, like the towns, the fairy park, the 3 underground tunnels you're forced to go through, etc. Places like the Diet Building and Amala Temple were gorgeous and fully showcased the unique aesthetic and had great atmosphere, but these were sadly few and far between. It certainly didn't help that the music was really not that good. Meguro just cannot make minimalistic music for the life of him, it's all so one-dimensional and boring (SMT 5 does a much better job at creating music that is appropriate for a destroyed and desolate world). All of this contributes in making the setting of Nocturne feel very lifeless and boring tbh. SMT 5 sidesteps this neatly by not only having meaningful side quests and great music, but also having demons in 3D on the overworld; they were able to give each area such a strong sense of identity and progression because of that.
The narrative of 5 isn't fleshed out at all, but imo the (good number) of side quests make up for it. They not only serve to contextualise each of the main 4 areas of Daat, some of them (Demeter and Khonsu quests) also expand on the main concept of the game, that of the Nahobino. I would love for future mainline games to have better main stories, but I think side-quests are far more important just because of how much they contribute to modern games with large, open areas, and in such an organic and unobtrusive way.
As for 4, I too loved it up until the alignment lock, although Jonathan and Walter are not my biggest problem with the story. The good: SMT 4 had a ton of interesting side quests (narratively not as good as 5, but there were a lot more), so many NPCs with dialogue that changed after every major story event (Person 2 had this as well, and to a lesser extent SMT 5, they should really do more of this) that made Tokyo feel like a living, constantly evolving world. However, the ending had some heavy nationalistic undertones, which are just too weird to ignore, especially in a Japanese game. It automatically made 4 have the most problematic story of all the Megaten games for me, personally (although the newer Persona games have anti-LGBT elements, which is also shameful).
Anyway, sorry for the long rant and if it comes across as overly hostile, that really was not my intention. I still thoroughly enjoyed playing through most of the SMT games, Nocturne, 4 and 5 included. And it was great reading your thoughts and opinions on the franchise.
SMT 5 is a game that rewards exploration and actually finding out things yourself. The way I played it was I constantly talk to other people within the game. The more I do so, the more I found the characters compelling, even the characters I despise (Hi, Ichiro), and the story made sense. It's not "subtle" storytelling, it is in fact passive storytelling.
The best part? It is superior to a lot of Fromsoftware's Souls game. A lot of those has equipments with character descriptions in it, which is farcical. Shin Megami Tensei V? It's as simple as talking to another person.
For me, this is the best ever SMT I've ever played.
I hope they make the leap to ue5.
Nanite could make the switch feel like a real next gen console instead of a half-way point.
Nanite brings a different set of constraints on a project. The game's size gets huge (the valley of the ancients demo is over 100GB)
@@AdamMooreGameDev wouldn’t epic’s compression system (PAK) or their new compression system (UCAS) work with handling that?
I mean as far as i know Fortnite (a game that’s 200GB+ uncompressed) was able to be compressed down to 10-30GB and as their game now takes advantage of Nanite (apparently on the switch as well)
port it to pc.
the texture pop-in on characters really messes up my experience with the game. : \
But I Want see the blueprints jajaja
So now blueprint is superior 😅
UE the best engine
Great game!
If only it was available on a platform stronger than an old phone
How UE made shin megami tensei become trash. Worse SMT game by far
Cry
@@ziggyrules0489 Not crying ? Just facts.
@@jacudomato6076 cry
@@ziggyrules0489 duh...
insane comment
Garbage tier game, but the visuals are probably the best of Atlus. Usually, I would be upset if graphics is the only thing that is really good about a game, but this game clearly had a very rough development so the graphics are the best we got out of a bad situation.
lol
that programmer guy should cut his nails and get into skincare products
Thats none of your business.
its not for us to judge his looks
@@albertocarbajal9826 i agree a very shitty comment
totally agree!
But Persona 5 in their own proprietary engine looks much better than this Unreal engine. In here everything looks like things are happening in a tiny plastic toy world. And all in all looks kinda cheap and weird.
To be fair it to that A. They used the Catherine engine for 2 games prior to P5 iirc so they could optimize visuals more while this is the first time they used Unreal Engine B. The lead artists for the games are different C. P5 natively runs of better hardware with the PS4 than the switch
@@Brian-tn4cd p5 is a PS3 game, so it has nothing to do with it running on better hardware. It just goes for a more stylised, anime aesthetic compared to SMT 5 (see Wind Walker for eg, game looks a lot better than Twilight Princess despite the latter releasing after the former). What you said about them having less experience with UE was probably a big factor too, though.
Persona 5 looks like an anime. A little cartoonish. SMT V tried (and succesed) to be more realistic and dark-tone. That's why they didn't use the engine they used with P5. I don't see SMT art style as a "tiny plastic toy world" at all. It looks fictional. Yes. But not fantastic. I mean, it's still anime-style but with a realistic play of light and shadows. Like a high quality anime series (Ufotable animation for example) What you said only works with games like Link's Awakening or Pokémon. THOSE do like "tiny plastic toy boy" But SMT not at all.
Why make a decent engine yourself and optimize it for the Switch when you can use Unreal Chinese Communist Engine to get cinematic 12fps on the Switch and save money.
You sure know how easy peasy it is to make an engine huh. Developing an engine requires tons of resources and man-hours. That is if it actually works. For atlus or sega to develop their own engine is a risky investment. if you’re rockstar or ea sure make your own.
Nice bait
Why accuse Unreal engine being a Chinese Communist Engine. When you have no evidence to back it up . That statement is useless and personal. The company behind UE has done more good than harm to the Game industry so was your point calling the engine that ?
@@Kramway99 Atlus were developing their own engines up until SMT V
@@magicmasterplayer That's true but they only made a PS2 engine and reused it for like 8 years, a ds and 3ds one, and P5 engine. Maybe there was some in-between but Atlus got really behind after the PS3, it took them almost 5 years to make SMT V using a pre existing engine, a home made engine would have extended that for a good extra chunk of time.