I think it was rumored to have cost less than $50m to develope.
The fist game apparently cost less than $10m.

Also this is their first project on unreal engine 5.... it takes time for devs to get comfortable with new stuff.
If they did another installment now on UE5, it would probably go smoother.

The first game had great visuals and amazing sound, cannot wait to try the second one. First time I saw the trailer I wasnt sure if it was in game or CGI cause of how good it looked.

What's funny is that in film making CA is something that you want to avoid at all cost (and for most part you do, since good lenses have minimum of it) - yet for some reason, AAA industry in its unhealthy obsession with all things cinematic, thinks it is something they should soak their image in.

Yep, and it's about time to stop conflating realism with cinematic. VR aims for realism, there is no place there for CA, motion blur, dof, bloom, that's simply not how eyes work. I've been turning those effects off forever.

But it does make a great looking movie. (Although CA in movies should only be used for dream sequences imo and otherwise avoided like lens flares)

Wish 'realistic' video games would stop simulating shitty cameras, have been wishing that for a long time. Real HDR (not the fake getting lighter and darker) is the only realistic 'effect'. RE4 does fake HDR in VR and it's very distracting. Feels like there's something wrong with my eyes.

Now the characters and water effects, those are amazing.

I ****ing hate motion blur.
CA doesn't bother much.

Everyone is talking how the only way to make UE5 have a good-looking game is to make it a walking sim. Those people never played Robocop last year. Not my screens as I would turn off CA when I played but still kinda of crazy a middle-budget game using UE5 looks good and ran well for me on PS5.

I have doubts on that budget number, but 50 million for a 5 hour game that is not heavy on gameplay, isn't actually that great either. 

I hope Microsoft does not kill this studio if the sales are as bad as they look, like they did with Tango Gameworks. I don't think this is going to match even HiFi Rush sales based on Steam metrics. This thing is a bomb commercially, which then also asks the question, why aren't people showing up to buy games like this? Aveum, Avatar, Alan Wake II are also other notable games in this disturbing trend, high end graphics ... underwhelming sales.

Like the "lets cheat the budget thing and make a $200 million dollar game for less by making it only 5-10 hours" doesn't seem to work either. Gamers see right through that and aren't supporting these games. 

It is a shame we can't celebrate a beautiful game but instead elect to fight console wars.

I like Unreal Engine. It makes some beautiful visuals, and usually it doesn't require a very powerful RIG to work.

My Geforce GT 730 (RIP) managed to run a lot of Unreal Engine 4 games. VISAGE was a good example. Also, Bulletstorm back in PS3/360 days was made in Unreal Engine 3, and I remember it looking really nice.

Nothing to do with "console wars", this is (not sure if people remember this) a *sales* forum last time I checked. The commercial aspects of games and consoles is invariably almost always part of the discussion, it's being talked about everywhere:

Hopefully this studio isn't shut down because that probably is a real possibility at this point.