OnceLost Games has released a new update about the development of The Wayward Realms, the upcoming spiritual sequel to The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall. Specifically, the studio is transitioning development of the game from Unreal Engine 5 to a new proprietary engine. This new engine is based off a fork of the Wicked Engine, and OnceLost Games has noted they are able to accomplish much more with this new engine.
Sadly, this also means the game will see a delay in its Early Access release, but this is a tradeoff that seems worth it. The new engine is far more suitable to what the game needs, and will ensure far better modding support and optimizatio than would have been possible on Unreal Engine 5. Notably, the new engine has allowed the game to run on much older hardware and will make a future console launch go smoothly.
You can see the full update below.
We want to extend a sincere thank you for the overwhelmingly positive reception to our last Devlog. Your feedback made one thing absolutely clear, this community is here because you care about deep systems, meaningful choices, and solid, uncompromised gameplay. That clarity has guided our next big step.
After reviewing the many thoughtful comments we received, we’ve made a major but exciting decision, we are fully transitioning away from Unreal Engine and building our own proprietary engine. This move gives us the control and flexibility needed to deliver the experience you’ve told us you want. Over the past few weeks, our entire focus has been on developing this new engine, and we’re thrilled to say that we’ll have something to show you soon, with a new Devlog showcase planned for early in the new year.
Shifting to our own engine is a major step, and while it positions us to deliver a far better game, it also means we won’t be able to meet the end-of-year goal we previously set. Our new target is to release to our Kickstarter backers in June of next year, with a public Early Access release following a few months later.
We also want to remind you that we’ll be hosting our Live AMA on Wednesday, December 3rd, and we invite all of you to join us and ask any questions you have about the new engine and the road ahead.
Thank you again for the trust, enthusiasm, and insight you continue to share with us. Stay tuned, big things are coming.
Features
The new engine allows us to:
Achieve 30+ FPS on decade-old laptops without dedicated GPUs, giving us excellent performance even on very low-end hardware.
Update
OnceLost Games has now posted an update for clarification:
Hey everyone!
We wanted to clarify something from our last update as we have had many questions and concerns regarding it. We mentioned that we were building our own proprietary engine, and while that is true, it’s not being created entirely from scratch. Our engine is being built on top of a customized fork of Wicked Engine, which gives us a solid, working foundation to build from while still allowing us to tailor the tech specifically to our game’s needs.
This approach massively accelerates development, lets us focus our time on the features that matter most, and still gives us full control over the engine’s direction. In short, we get the stability of a tried and tested core and the flexibility of a fully proprietary toolset.
It is for this reason that we are confident in a summer release. We’re incredibly excited about how the game is shaping up, and we can’t wait to show it in action to you. More soon!
