At gamescom, I was able to play an hour-long demo of Avowed and talk with Carrie Patel, the game's director. I bring news - this is a real RPG! Seems that Obsidian really knows what they're doing.
I believe all of those games are “another company’s engine”, as at least The Outer Worlds and Avowed are just Unreal. But the spec for current gen consoles is getting old now too, and for one reason or another, they targeted fidelity that the engine can handle on those machines, just not at 60 FPS. Having played through The Outer Worlds only a few years late, that game ran just fine at high frame rates on my machine that I built in 2021.
I believe all of those games are “another company’s engine”, as at least The Outer Worlds and Avowed are just Unreal. But the spec for current gen consoles is getting old now too, and for one reason or another, they targeted fidelity that the engine can handle on those machines, just not at 60 FPS. Having played through The Outer Worlds only a few years late, that game ran just fine at high frame rates on my machine that I built in 2021.