Quote:
Originally Posted by Hasney
Yeah, I thought engine referred exclusively to the text behind a game. Like the Unreal
Engine ranges from Turd (FFXIII) to awesome (Gears of War).
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Pretty much nailed it, the Engine is just the set of tools given to developers to build the game with. As you say the quality can vary from game to game because while the engine provides you the means to produce a high quality product you still need to actually have the talent to plug that content into the engine and utilise it properly.
You will also have companies utilising different Middleware/Engines for different sections of their games too, pretty sure you've all seen Havoc Physics advertised in games or RAD Sound Tools. The engines are pretty modular in how they work.
A bad engine can result in what should be a good game perhaps not performing as it should. As much as I love it, Fallout 3 suffers a bit from this for some people because it uses the Engine Bethesda used for Oblivion still.