Epic Games has "threatened" the gaming community with the announcement of Unreal Engine 6, and I am holding my gaming PC tight. Now, don’t get me wrong, my gaming rig isn’t weak by any means. This is a rig that’s been with me for the past decade and has been future-proofed to play expansive titles such as Elden Ring and the Dead Space remake smoothly.
It’s just that games these days aren’t as optimized as I think they should be. Thankfully for me, I still have a few current-gen games that run beautifully on my rig, but it feels like the future of having to take my rig out the back is growing closer and closer.
Unreal Engine 5 is by far the most accessible game engine in the market today. Popular games like Fortnite, Borderlands 5, Final Fantasy XVI, and even Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 were all made with the Unreal Engine 5, and all of them were also unoptimized messes. Thankfully for me and my endless backlog of games, I get to bide my time, but as I get closer to the end, I’m afraid of what’s to come. Beloved franchises like Halo and Valorant have both turned to Unreal Engine for better or for worse, and I just can’t shake the feeling that a paywall was just erected in front of me.
I think it’s also worth mentioning that it’s because of this unoptimized engine that I had to drop so many games, or else run the risk of my gaming rig catching fire. Honestly, if it were just me, I would’ve just shrugged it off as me having rose-tinted glasses for my gaming rig, but it’s not just me. Friends who have way stronger rigs are also experiencing the same unoptimized mess that I was, and if they can’t run it properly, then what chance do I have? And with how accessible and convenient Unreal Engine is for developers, I constantly worry about the bear trap I’m leading myself into.
Performance Preference
As graphical requirements for games become even more demanding as time passes, the hardware industry has been desperately trying to play catch-up as well. Now I’m all for innovations in processing power and graphical fidelity, but the polygons are starting to match the price, and as a broke boy, I’m very worried. Gaming rigs have always been expensive, but as of late, it feels like no matter how strong your specs could be, you’re still not entirely future-proof, and that’s an investment I’m just not ready to make right now.
Because of the ever-changing landscape of PC Gaming Specs, I find myself turning to the stability of consoles. Okay, don’t get me wrong, PCs still are the master race when it comes to gaming, but there’s a sense of security when you have a current-gen console. That’s because consoles are literally just pop-and-play machines that you don’t have to think twice about. As a casual gamer, this honestly sounds like heaven for me right now. The only downside to why I haven’t made the switch is that consoles just have fewer games. So until Steam comes out with a pre-built console that can last me for long, I’ll be here twiddling my thumbs playing Team Fortress 2.
Is it Necessary?
I heard someone on a podcast say that we may have to accept that we’ve reached the peak of a lot of things in our lifetime, and I think that might be true for gaming graphics as well. Sure, features like raytracing can make your game insanely beautiful by suddenly dousing the floor in water, but I believe all that should be secondary to the gameplay. At some point, you just have to wonder if all the hyperrealistic models and textures matter if you can’t even play the game properly. Especially when games have done far more in the past without these graphical add-ons.
That’s not to say I’m afraid of innovation; I love it when games get innovative with their designs! Taking Horizon: Zero Dawn into consideration, their dev team used a special rendering technique that only rendered what was visible to the player and removed everything else out of view. It’s special little workarounds like this that help push innovation in gaming in a meaningful way, forcing the dev team to get creative with their solutions.
Only time will tell if Unreal Engine 6 is still a clunky mess. I sincerely hope I’m wrong and these graphical hops are leading somewhere. My conspiracy theory here is that the hardware companies are in cahoots with developers to make sure their games require an upgrade, but I can’t prove any of that. Instead, I’ll be playing through Yakuza 0 for the 4th time.
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