You can do plenty of lower end stuff and have it feel somewhat distinct, but it takes a lot more to use UE in a 3D game and not make it super obvious it’s unreal. People are responding unfavorably to it being on unreal for a reason. It’s not imagination. It has a lot of flaws that limit games using it unless they take extraordinary measures to overcome them.
The end result is people tired of unreal because the games all fall short in the same ways, because the engine pushes devs into it.
Is it taking extraordinary measures, or is it more leaning into the hyper realism look because that’s what people expect when they hear UE5? Not a rhetorical question, I just would assume the latter.
The extraordinary measures to not feel like another generic UE game involve replacing core components not designed to be replaced.
The reason people don’t want to see UE just be “the engine” for every big budget game is because you get way more variety when big companies make their own from the ground up to meet their own needs. A game like Elden Ring feels different because they have different design principles, sure, but it also feels different because they built their own engine from the ground up that fits its gameplay. It would be a worse game in UE. The things it abstracts away sound great, but it means everyone does the same things the same way.
People react negatively to it because it’s really easy to tell.
