Why Final Fantasy 7 Revelation Stuck With Unreal Engine 4 Instead of Upgrading to UE5

The team behind Final Fantasy 7 Revelation went with Unreal Engine 4 instead of jumping to UE5, and the director recently laid out why. According to 80 Level's technical breakdown, the studio found that UE4's stability and their existing workflow fit their production timeline and team experience better than UE5, which was still getting hammered out. On the visual side, it gets interesting. UE5 brought Nanite, a virtualized geometry system that cuts polygon overhead way down and makes asset creation smoother. You'd think that made UE5 a must for cinematic-quality games. But the Final Fantasy 7 Revelation team hit the same visual targets on UE4 using other techniques, which proves that you don't always need the bleeding-edge features. It comes down to skilled artists and real optimization work. Newer doesn't automatically mean faster or better for what you're actually trying to do. For 3D artists and technical directors, this matters. It shows UE4 still works for high-fidelity output and that getting good at optimization on a stable, proven engine gets you competitive results. Switching mid-pipeline to UE5 would've introduced real risk too, since UE5 was still in flux. Sticking with UE4 let them pour energy into assets, character design, and gameplay instead of fighting engine updates or relearning tools. This is how a lot of studios think about it: you don't always need the shiniest tools, and engine choice should track with what your team knows, what your project actually needs, and your deadline. Not the marketing push. If you're a freelancer or studio working on something similar, the point is clear: know what you're good at, figure out what the work actually demands, and pick the right tool for that job, not the newest one.