UE4 never entirely escaped the samey look issue that 3 had, not nearly as prominent when a studio puts in the work to change the look but there's often tell-tale signs. Issues like UE stutter feel predictable too
I feel like I see this a lot when it comes to unreal too. I guess folks don't realize that was just the art style in vogue at the time. Engines don't determine that everyone should look like Marcus Fenix. Some great examples of some wildly different UE3 games: Bioshock Infinite, Batman Arkham Knight, the Borderlands games, Dishonored, Injustice 2, Mortal Kombat 10 and 11 Mass Effect 1-3, the x-com games, which all run on UE3 and all look wildly different than the ps3/360 "everything is brown and everyone only works out their shoulders" games. Arkham Knight and the MK/Injustice games are perfect examples too because I would describe those first two Batman games, Injustice 1 and MK9 as having that very brown, very shoulder-heavy art style, only to completely change it while staying on UE3 between sequels
Honestly, they didn't say, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was because of the technical bottlenecks they encountered while working on Cyberpunk 2077 using their REDengine. I'm sad for all the artists and programmers who helped making their internal engine through sweat, blood and tears.
The technical issues with RED Engine were due to crunch and rushed development, not because the engine is lacking.
According to the former dev, crunch and rushed development led to the engine being lacking. After that happening twice, one can see it being an easy decision to say "fuck that" and using UE5
I think there is still a distinction to be made here. RED engine was also re written for Cyberpunk. I think CDPR retooling their engine for every game and rushing development is a bad mix. And they seemed to have realized that now.
Not to mention with the current shortage and struggle to hire developers, Unreal Engine lowers the barrier of entry for a lot of devs.
If the story isn't about Gerald or Ciri as the main character, then I wouldn't be against it. Of course the character should still be voiced and meaningful.
They don't want to wake you up. They want to wake devs up, so they join the team. Games are announced early for that reason every now and then.
Like a lawyer once said
Those tell tale signs are developers making active choices to not be as visually distinct. Not the engine itself.
What im confused about is what "tell-tale signs" are you referring to?
I don't think anyone at CDPR ever had that thought cross their mind. CBP77 happened because their way of developing games finally reached its breaking point.
