Stalker 2 Is Officially Running On Unreal Engine 5

Prepare for some terrifyingly realistic graphics.

[RaidenBlack]

sweet, sweet graphics

[camel_toad]

Related but unrelated question.

How is it that the unity engine can sometimes lead to fantastic looking games but other times absolutely awful? Is it difficult to master or is cheaper to get a license therefore less talented 3d artists working for budget studios tend to end up being the ones using it?

[CrimsonIdol]

It's none of those exactly. It's not definitely not that less talented people choose Unity, it's that less talented people get worse results in Unity. The engines seem to have a different philosophy. I'd argue that Unity requires more work to get to the level of fidelity that, say, the Unreal engine tries to pack in by default. Unity is super flexible and can be pretty lightweight, and you can do just about anything with it. Although this is changing in newer builds, for years your default project included none of the post processing, GI etc etc that's become common in modern games. These are all things you can access, but it's all about choosing the right packages to add to your project. Many high quality ones are free to use with a Pro licence, but as a beginner or intermediate it may not be that obvious where to look. Nowadays in Unity you can choose a base project that is much more stacked with all that extra bloat that makes it simpler to have a nicer looking game to begin with (though you can still choose to have a fairly clean project).

Although I don't have much experience with Unreal it seems like their direction is more to give you a big heavy FPS setup that you can basically plonk yourself into straight away and instead it would be up to you to strip away or ignore what you don't need. Unity also has an enormous asset store, but those assets can be a decade old and of any level of quality. The licencing is free for the non pro version, and 150 a month with.

Basically it seems to me that any uni student can grab UE, drop a bunch of assets provided free by Epic into a level and have some first person level that looks nice in a matter of hours (or minutes). While it seems like Unity is taking some steps to address this, it takes more work to do the same in Unity.

[itsmebryan]

Yes, they are. Remember when people claimed UE5 could only run on PS5. Smh

[CosmicTurtle]

Not really, I don’t remember many people saying that, Bryan. You can find a comment to support almost any idiotic idea though. U5 is likely even scalable to Switch. It’s the nature their engines.

[Lightning77]

That brings confidence that Hellblade 2 possibly be teased or shown off in the near future. Here's hoping Gamescom.

[CantThinkOfAUsername]

Hasn't entered production yet, what are they going to show? Another CGI trailer?

[darthv72]

Just curious, what makes you think they haven't been working on it?

[Noskypeno]

I don't think they're going to pull a Bethesda or cdpr and announce a game 3 years before the game even has any sort of concept. I can excuse covid for a couple months of delay.

[CantThinkOfAUsername]

@darthv72 Tameem Antoniades literally said and I quote, "What we're doing right now is building a good chunky slice of the game before we then move into full production to build out the rest" in the first 20 seconds of their latest 'teaser' a month ago.

https://youtu.be/rWoySrKxPl...

[Tacoboto]

"Full" production. That's an important context you choose to leave out, CantThink.

It's a UE5 game, the engine is only in Preview form. It's obviously been in development/production/world-b uilding/prototyping for the last couple years.

[DJStotty]

"Hellblade 2 hasn't entered production yet"

Lmao, this guy, amazing....

[DarthZoolu]

Hell blade is so boring

[CosmicTurtle]

I like Ninja Theory, I wish they were working on a new IP though.

[medman]

That is really amazing that the game is on track for spring 2022 when Unreal 5 is still in early access and itself currently isn't scheduled for full release until early 2022.

[XxINFERNUSxX]

Nice surprise I was thinking UE4 maybe modified but this will be on a whole 'nother level😁 I'm pretty excited to see how much they will push the PC with this game, I want to see them use AMDs/Nvidias GPUs to their full potential, and not hold anything back.

[Mr Logic]

Given how heavy the engine is I really hope they still try to go for 60fps.

[CaptainHenry916]

I'm thinking only the PC version will ne able to do that. I don't think the consoles gpu will be able to handle it in native 4K 60fps with Raytracing turned on

[Phlacky]

Yeah native 4k is over rated give me a 2k or hell sometimes a tad lower resolution upscale to 4k with 60fps and RT that's a more realistic hope I'd say.

[JEECE]

Lol so hopefully they give us a performance mode with dynamic resolution and no raytracing so we can have 60 fps.

[XxINFERNUSxX]

I hope to. I'm using a 1080p 360hz HDR panel with a 3070+5950x and I hope it can go over 60fps with everything on maybe the highest settings with RT on, but that might be asking too much 🤔

[Neonridr]

at 1080p it might be possible.

[1nsomniac]

@1080p of course it will be possible.

[FPS_D3TH]

Let’s hope it’s better optimized than the X-ray engine then cuz unreal 5 is still in early access

[Eamon]

That makes sense. I remember when they announced the game was using Unreal Engine I thought the graphics were a bit too good for UE4.

I only hope it will keep the same "feel" as the old Stalker games. Quick animations, no "realistic" bopping mobility. Just pure PC shooter experience with very little feedback to movement.

[JEECE]

It's hard for me to imagine that is going to be the case. That type of PC shooter seems to barely exist anymore, and given they are doing Stalker on consoles this time, I don't think it will have that same feel.

[Eamon]

Well the new Doom games seem to follow that design philosophy... I can hope Stalker 2 will do the same.

[Sayai jin]

Nice! Can't wait to try this on game pass. Might even play it again on my PS5 if they enable dual sense functions.

[AuraAbjure]

dude...

[smolinsk]

Looks like a metro ripoff. Been there done that.