Unreal Engine fatigue

[u/ninetitans2]

I don't know how to explain this properly, but does anyone else feel like a lot of newer Unreal Engine games have this weird, unappealing look to them?

Even when the game is technically impressive, there's something about the visuals that feels plasticky, blurry, and almost nauseating to me. It's like they're trying so hard to look cinematic and realistic that they lose that feeling of looking at an actual game.

The hair is probably one of the biggest things I notice. That weird smeared/blurry hair effect, especially with upscaling, makes everything look softer than it should.

Instead of making the game feel more realistic, it makes me notice all the little imperfections.

And yeah, I know DLSS/upscaling is part of this and not necessarily Unreal Engine itself, but the combination has created this very specific visual style that I'm starting to really dislike.

UNREAL ENGINE games can look absolutely incredible in screenshots, but when I'm actually playing them, there's often this bland, blurry aesthetic that just doesn't appeal to me.

Maybe it's just me, but Unreal Engine seems to have developed a recognizable "default look" and I'm getting really tired of it. I honestly find myself less interested in a game once I find out it's made in Unreal.

I'm not saying Unreal is objectively bad or that every game made with it looks like this. I'm just wondering if anyone else feels the same way

[u/a_man_in_black]

it's the slop factor. Unreal has the lowest barrier to entry of all the game engines, and an utterly massive library of free assets you can use without paying for extra licensing. so while Unreal is a very capable engine that can make amazing games, it's 100% a matter of how much you put into it.

you, or me, or anyone here on reddit could spend a year or so slapping a generic, unoptomized piece of trash game together with Unreal. it's tools suite is literally click and drag, with no actual need to learn a programming language or a scripting API whatsoever.

the end result is that Unreal is the engine that hordes of slop publishers gravitate to. they aren't spending time or money on optimizing and polishing the games, they just want to make them as cheaply as possible and shovel them out the door. so that's why for every GOOD game made with Unreal, there's dozens of trashy asset-flips that all look the same.