It’s honestly kinda crazy how long some games spend in development. The Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy is a perfect example of something that should’ve been quick but ended up being so bloated and took forever to make.
FF7Remake was announced in 2015, got stuck in development hell for a bit, released 2020. The sequel released 2024. The third one still hasn’t been teased yet. How many people are attached to a franchise if it takes 10 years to get the full story? I loved the first remake but dropped the second one, I just didn’t care about the story as much as I did ~5 years ago.
1st party engine devs have been stuck in dev hell, mostly. There are some exceptions, like you said; I’d cite Decima as another success.
But think of EA’s Frostbite, Cyberpunk 2077, Halo Infinite, Clausewitz, BGS, many more. Especially indies that try.
It’s not just that old games crunched, but making a new engine that supports modern platforms and modern hardware is just an immensely complex task. There’s just too much to worry about.
The best success seems to either come from:
Hyperfocusinf one’s engine’s scope to one game niche. Larian’s divinity engine, for example, makes BG3-likes; that’s it, that all it does. It cannot make an FPS or even a different RPG.
Engine shop very, very carefully. For instance, KCD2 leaned into CryEngine’s strengths hard, especially that dense, well-lit European foilage.
And either case needs a lucky roll of the dice anyway. See: Cyberpunk 2077 in utter dev hell (even if they eventually pulled out) from wrangling their engine. Or the latest Borderlands being a technical wreck even though they basically invented Unreal Engine alongside Epic.