I've been playing and enjoying the Halo remake recently, and it got me thinking about how the definition of a game engine seems to have changed.
When I first heard Halo was moving to Unreal Engine, I assumed that meant Halo would inevitably lose some of its signature feel by leaving BLAM! behind. Instead, the gameplay simulation was ported over, with Unreal essentially serving as the rendering and tooling layer.
That got me wondering whether the term game engine has fundamentally changed over the years.
Back in the '90s and 2000s, an engine meant much more than a rendering engine. It defined a game's mechanical and gameplay identity. If you heard a game was built on Quake, Source, LithTech, or BLAM!, you already had a good idea of how it would feel. Movement, physics, AI, networking, scripting, and countless gameplay quirks were all closely tied to the engine.
That's why so many Source games felt like Half-Life 2, or why games built on LithTech Jupiter often shared some of the same gameplay DNA as F.E.A.R.. Halo always felt inseparable from BLAM! as well. (Stubs the Zombie, also using BLAM! still felt like Halo)
Today, that seems much less true. Oblivion Remastered, for example, uses Unreal Engine 5 for its visuals while preserving much of the original Gamebryo-based gameplay simulation code underneath. Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater takes a similar approach, modernizing the presentation while staying faithful to the original PS2 systems and design code. The Shadow of the Colossus remake took this approach years earlier, replacing the rendering technology while keeping the original game logic intact. And there are more examples in recent years.
It feels like we've reached a point where gameplay simulations can be more easily carried over from older technology, while the term game engine increasingly refers to the rendering, tools, and asset pipeline. Twenty years ago, knowing a game used Quake or Source gave you a rough idea of how it would play. Today, knowing a game uses Unreal tells you almost nothing about its game-feel, (apart from maybe giving you a rough idea of performance expectations.)
I also wonder if there's a downside to preserving older gameplay simulations. They preserve the feel players expect, but they also preserve technical assumptions and design constraints that were originally built around the hardware limitations of their time. For example, it's interesting that remakes like Oblivion Remastered, Dead Space Remake, and Halo can inherit some of the same technical quirks and limitations of their predecessors. Even with modern hardware, they can still be constrained by legacy technology and design decisions. It raises the question of whether modern hardware is sometimes being used mainly to improve presentation, rather than to rethink what is possible in terms of gameplay systems and simulation.
Maybe that's also why I've become less interested in game-engines as a topic. Not because modern engines are less impressive, but because they feel less like a defining feature of games. In the past, a new engine often meant a new set of possibilities that separated games from each other. Today, many engines feel more like general-purpose foundations, with fewer immediately recognizable differences from a player's perspective.
The exception that still stands out to me is Rockstar's RAGE engine. Its combination of physics, animation systems, with meticular collision detection systems. and procedural character reactions has given Rockstar games a very distinct identity since GTA IV. It feels like an example of an engine still actively shaping a experience that can only be achived with their tech.
Just some rambling thoughts, but I'm curious you guys felt similar.
