Former Bethesda developers ditch Unreal Engine 5 for Elder Scrolls sequel

If you know anything about PC, you probably know that Unreal Engine 5 has been getting an unwanted reputation. We've recently seen several high-profile games release with impunity, including Silent Hill f, Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, Oblivion Remastered, Mafia: The Old Country, and other recent examples. Unreal Engine 5 is the engine Clair Obscur developer Sandfall also used, so many blame its feet, although the cause has not been confirmed.

As a result, Unreal Engine 5 has received more negative reviews than positive reviews in recent months, and now one indie studio has decided to abandon the engine entirely and develop its own.

The developer is OnceLost Games, a group of former Bethesda developers currently working on an Elder Scrolls sequel called The Wayward Realms. In a post on the studio's official Twitter account (thanks PCGamesN), they announced that they would be switching from Unreal Engine 5 for their own engine, which will be a fork of the existing engine called Wicked. Although it's not an engine built from scratch, the transition means the game won't hit its year-end targets.

There wasn't much information on exactly why OnceLost Games felt the engine switch was necessary, but they did explain that the move would give them “the control and flexibility needed to deliver the experience we want.” They also claimed that switching to their own engine would allow them to create “much better games” than if they had stuck with Unreal Engine 5, which isn't a huge endorsement.

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Persona 4 Revival looks like an Unreal Engine 5 remake, and I hope that's meant to be complementary.

Atlus unveiled this RPG remake with the most “oh, I think that exists” trailer I've ever seen.

It then lists some of the features this new engine will allow, such as the ability to achieve over 30fps on older laptops without dedicated GPUs, and over 30fps on a first-generation Nintendo Switch. This essentially means that The Wayward Realms can run on older hardware while still looking relatively the same. It was also claimed that modding would be much easier for those interested in the scene.

This is an interesting tactic for a game so far in development, but it should also get Unreal Engine haters on board. At the very least, it doesn't bode well that Unreal Engine 5 is being abandoned by indie developers who have chosen to postpone their projects to build their own engines, and it's becoming increasingly difficult for Epic to argue that it's the developers' fault and not theirs.