To be fair to UE5, all the great looking “optimized” RE games I know of aren’t calculating anything super hard. Lighting, shadows and environment’s are all baked(pretty much free) because the games don’t require a lot of dynamism.
UE5 could do the same things(except smaa) and get similar if not better perf.
But I do agree with the last statement tho, studios need to stop catering to ultra rich GPU purchasers. It’s become darn near elitism.
Also, The first descendant looks great(without the forced TAA) and uses Lumen and no Nanite.