There are two big problems with this video:
- It's pre-patch
- They didn't know why UE4 was chosen (30km stages)
That said, the move to Unreal is still baffling me. Were 30km stages worth the tradeoff for switching to UE4? The answer for me is a resounding no.
I doubt the move to Unreal was solely about making longer stages, though (which we can now see that most casuals don't care about anyway). Rather, it could have been a cost-cutting measure to enable CM to remotely employ armies of coders for a dollar an hour, since many non-professional coders around the world can do work in Unreal. That would mean huge savings by having fewer trained professionals in the British office working on the in-house EGO engine. As a web developer I have worked with the $1/hour armies and to make a long story short, they are not very good at their jobs and end up having a negative effect on a project.
The 30km stages have come with a huge tradeoff in performance and trackside detail (which is barebones, repetitive and dull no matter which way you look at it). Graphics have also taken a huge hit. In fact, it doesn't even look like an Unreal game at all. I wonder if CM imported as many EGO assets into Unreal as possible, possibly compounding the known stability issues with Unreal. The car models look practically identical to the DiRT games, after all.
Milestone did well with Gravel on UE4. The game looks good and the environments are wonderful. Kunos did a great job with Assetto Corsa Competizione although it also had a rocky early access period but despite also being on UE4 and dealing with highly complex physics and dozens of cars on track is quite stable and pretty with the right hardware.
After seeing how EA WRC performs on PS5 and friends' PCs, I now have zero hope of this ever coming to PSVR2, and I have serious doubts about the viability of VR on PC.
The fact that the game also has so many bugs ruining various game modes is just the icing on the cake. This game needs some serious work. Although it's fun to drive I just don't look forward to booting it up and playing. The whole package seems unfinished, uninspiring and lacking character (the exact opposite of the DiRT Rallies). At this point in time (still pretty much launch day for me), the only improvement over the KT games has been the marketing.
I want to love this game. There is a truly excellent game here. It's just such a shame that it was moved to Unreal and that the launch has been so disappointing. I hope it doesn't take three years to get it right like it did KT (WRC 8 being their first respectable title). Thing is, KT was a brand new studio without a game engine when they got WRC so their growing pains were understandable. CM has decades of experience in this.
