Epic Games has released the first preview for its new Unreal Engine 5.6, promising "vast, high-fidelity open worlds with maximum performance. The latest iteration of the popular game engine, used in the likes of Oblivion Remastered, Inzoi, Avowed, Black Myth: Wukong, and Fortnite, promises to deliver "vast, high-fidelity open worlds with maximum performance" at a consistent 60fps along with powerful tools for developers to help in building large environments "faster than ever."
The recently launched Oblivion Remastered, built using a mixture of Unreal Engine 5 (for the game's visual overhaul) on top of the original Gamebryo engine, has largely been a triumph. It has, however, fallen foul of a number of crash problems and performance issues for many players, with quite intensive demands from the Oblivion Remastered system requirements if you want to run it at high settings. The arrival of a new UE5 update, that specifically takes aim at helping craft better optimized open-world games, might help alleviate such worries in the future.
Epic says that its new Unreal Engine 5.6 brings "vast, high-fidelity open worlds with maximum performance and consistent 60hz frame rates." It also includes the engine's "biggest and most powerful update yet to the animation authoring tool set," and "the ability to build expansive, high-fidelity worlds faster than ever."
Of course, it's important to note that this overhaul will only affect games that switch over to it, or upcoming PC games that choose to take advantage of the new engine. We could certainly see some make the change; Epic's own Fortnite is a highly likely candidate to take advantage of the studio's own technological leaps. Other games such as early-access MMORPG Ashes of Creation and automation sandbox Satisfactory have taken advantage of the performance boost from transitioning to newer versions of UE5 in the past, so it's possible they may look to do so again.
It's also worth stressing that this current version is just a preview build, and so any existing games are unlikely to be moved to UE 5.6 until the final release is made available. Nevertheless, if you've been running into any stutters and stumbles in your favorite games of late, this will certainly be good news.
For the time being, take a look through the best RPGs to play in 2025, or explore the best indie games on PC right now.
You can follow us on Google News for daily PC games news, reviews, and guides. We've also got a vibrant community Discord server, where you can chat about this story with members of the team and fellow readers.