Unreal Engine often gets flack for games running poorly or stuttering, but as Avowed demonstrates, it's really about how devs use it and the pressures of time

Hey there fellow gamer! Let me share some insight with you about these upcoming games we’re all excited for: Black Myth: Wukong, Frostpunk 2, Palworld, Stalker 2, Tekken 8, Silent Hill 2, and Avowed. You might be wondering, what do they have in common? They were all developed using the same game engine – Unreal Engine 5 (UE5). Now, I’ve noticed that many gamers on social media are mentioning issues with their performance on PC. But after spending a week testing out Avowed, I’m not entirely convinced that UE5 is the root cause of these problems. There could be other factors at play as well.

This peculiar game features a variety of unusual aspects, including suboptimal frame rates and inconsistent upscaling, yet it boasts an impressive visual appeal overall. Generally, it operates smoothly, though it’s advisable to disregard the specific frame rates and evaluate its performance based on the gaming experience instead. The development team behind Avowed, Obsidian Entertainment, has prior experience with Unreal Engine, having utilized it for The Outer Worlds and Grounded. However, they were working with an earlier version of the engine in these previous projects.

As a gamer, I can confidently say that UE5 isn’t to blame for the fact that turning on FSR 3 barely makes a difference for low-end GPUs and causes ghosting and pixel crawling. It shouldn’t be held responsible for the significant gap between average and 1% low frame rates, or the unpredictable frame times. Sometimes, it’s indeed the game’s engine that’s the culprit, and while many of the games I mentioned at the beginning of this article have performance issues in one way or another, Avowed’s are so peculiar that they must be due to decisions made by the developers.

For instance, consider Silent Hill 2. Although it appears visually stunning, its debut performance was inconsistent, not to mention it had numerous bugs. However, subsequent updates from the Blooper Team addressed many of these issues. Yet, when I last played the game, it still retained a level of glitchiness or “jank.” Similarly to Obsidian, their coding team is well-versed in using Unreal Engine.

It could be said that when two expert teams struggle to make games function smoothly using Unreal Engine (UE), some might conclude that the software itself is the problem. However, the difficulties faced by Avowed and Silent Hill 2 are distinctly different. While they do share performance issues, their underlying problems are not identical.

Games such as Doom Eternal or Indiana Jones and the Great Circle are frequently employed as evidence by those who argue that Unreal Engine (UE) is subpar. The reasoning behind this is that if Id Tech 7 can produce such exceptional games, both running smoothly, it must be a superior software platform, correct?

In a twist, it’s worth noting that both teams behind the mentioned games, Id Software and MachineGames, work under the same parent company (ZeniMax Media) that owns the proprietary Id Tech 7 engine. Interestingly enough, the developers in question have extensive experience with this engine, as one team actually created it, while the other has exclusively used Id Tech engines throughout their projects.

Unreal Engine serves as a versatile tool for developing visual effects in movies, TV shows, and video games alike. It’s user-friendly enough that even someone like me, who may be older and a bit scatterbrained at times, can figure it out with persistence and determination. However, while I’ve only managed to create simple projects with Unreal Engine 5, such as visual tests and playful experiments, the creation of a full-scale AAA game is a level of complexity that feels more like comparing making a paper airplane to constructing a commercial jetliner.

In essence, Epic acknowledges that games built on Unreal Engine (UE) have historically faced recurring problems, particularly with PSO compilation (often referred to as shader compilation stutter) and traversal stutter. However, they are proactively working on solutions through multiple updates in Unreal Engine 5. Yet, it’s important to note that recompiling massive amounts of code each time a new UE version is released isn’t an appealing prospect for large developers because of the time crunch and potential risks of unintended issues.

Despite its flaws, I believe the issues with Unreal Engine are understandable given its purpose. In my opinion, most of these problems originate from time constraints. Game publishers must release their products on schedule to recover the significant financial investments made. Optimizing performance and refining code is an extremely time-consuming process, which often leads to some of the challenges encountered with Unreal Engine.

Many large games come out in less than perfect condition because they are often fixed up later, giving developers extra time to thoroughly address issues and improvements.

There’s little room for question – I expect the same positive outcome for Avowed. The pre-release code I tried out was quite glitchy, but considering the overall game is strong and highly enjoyable, it’s likely that any issues will be addressed after the official launch.

If developers are content with the current performance or if sales aren’t strong, the improvement might not be prioritized further. Notably, Obsidian Entertainment is engaged in developing The Outer Worlds sequel using UE5, thereby dividing their focus between enhancing Avowed as well.

In my viewpoint, it’s not the engine or the developers themselves that pose the main issue, but rather the constraint of time. Regrettably, time equates to money. Here’s a question: Would you be willing to spend more on your favorite games so that developers can hire additional personnel to tackle more tasks, thus ensuring PC projects run smoothly upon release? This is a topic for future discussions, I believe.

2025-02-13 23:02

Unreal Engine often gets flack for games running poorly or stuttering, but as Avowed demonstrates, it’s really about how devs use it and the pressures of time

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