Unreal Engine 5 Keeps Having Performance Issues, But Epic's Not Taking The Fall

Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater may have been released to critical acclaim, but there’s one aspect about Konami’s remake that graphics-focused fans are not happy with. The game’s gorgeous visuals are the result of an Unreal Engine 5 conversion. However, those life-like flourishes come at the expense of performance dips and issues that Konami has since promised to address in future updates.

This is nothing new for games that use Unreal Engine 5. Recent releases like Mafia: The Old Country and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion remaster have all had their fair share of issues at launch. But while this seems to be a persistent problem with the game engine itself, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney says these setbacks are actually the result of developers not optimizing their games for more hardware variables.

In an interview with Clawsomegamer, Sweeney cleared the air on the reputation Unreal Engine 5 has earned and why so many games that use it this generation struggle to maintain a solid framerate.

“The main cause is the order of development,” he said during Unreal Fest in South Korea. “Many studios build for top-tier hardware first and leave optimization and low-spec testing for the end. Ideally, optimization should begin early—before full content build-out.”

He said that Epic has been trying to intervene in this issue by beefing up its engine support with “more automated optimization across devices,” and educating developers to make optimizing their games early on a more standard practice.

As mentioned before, Metal Gear Solid Delta is a surprisingly unoptimized game. Despite being based on the guts of a 21-year-old PlayStation 2 game, something about rendering the original’s lush jungles and patrolling NPCs tanks the game’s framerate. Digital Foundry found that some of the most intensive areas of the game will see framerates dip as low as 30 frames per second instead of a buttery smooth 60.

While I’d posit that the majority of players will not care about this (I was able to roll credits before launch and thought performance never got in the way of what the game does best), it is representative of a larger issue this console generation. Before the launch of the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5, this console cycle was sold with a handful of promises we’ve yet to see come to fruition. Load times still exist. Games rarely render in full 4K resolution natively. Even graphical fidelity across games feels like a moderate jump from the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One rather than a generational one.

Unreal Engine 5 was part of the broader pitch for the generation. It was sold to non-developer players as a flexible tool capable of rendering real-world objects accurately, human beings with life-like features and animations, and photorealistic environments. It was also sold as this incredibly easy tool to implement, thanks to built-in features like Lumen for lighting and Nanite for real-time rendering.

Some five years later, there seems to be a much wider gulf between those expectations and reality. Games like Hellblade 2 prove that the engine is capable of producing the best-looking console games ever made. But for every Hellblade sequel, there’s a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 or an Immortals Of Aveum. Developing using these tools proves to be just as intensive as other engines, something anyone knowledgeable of game production could have called a mile away.

Metal Gear Solid Delta is the latest Unreal Engine 5 game to get picked apart for its performance issues, and it probably won’t be the last. It’s all a part of the growing pains of new technology. This is what it’s been like for decades. Looking back at Unreal Engine 3 games during the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 era, performance was just as inconsistent as we find its successor is today. It wasn’t until the tail end of that generation, when developers had the chance to ship a handful of titles and get familiar with the tools, that things finally evened out.

This generation’s a little different. Development cycles are much longer, meaning developers are getting fewer reps between releases, and players aren’t seeing growth as often as they once did. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t improving their processes and work.

I’d implore players to have a little bit of faith. As Sweeney suggested, developers are still broadening their understanding of how to utilize this powerful tool. So long as the games that use it aren’t totally broken, maybe give creators some room and time to get there. Refocusing on the substance of a game rather than maximizing the number of frames one can get might do players some good in enjoying the hobby like they once did.