Reusing engines for lower costs

[Atreides]

First off, I thought Ferret's interview was amazing. Kudos to nwn2news. It really gave insights into game development that are rarely discussed.

 

Anyway I was hoping some devs could elabourate on this part that piqued my interest.

 

What in your view happened to make such epic games feasible to publishers in the past and what do you think needs to happen to have them viable again going forward?

 

Ferret: There are people at Obsidian and BioWare that could answer this question with real authority, for me I was just a fan boy back then. From what I gather, they had an established 2D engine that they knew backwards and forwards. They had become gurus at working with it