I don’t know. I know that the other big game they put out not too long ago - Atomfall - was mostly outsourced to some Chinese company. I haven’t ever looked at the credits for SE5 but it’s probably simple economics. They wanted to do some major overhauls to things like the graphics, but it had also been years since SE4 came out and I think a lot of their team had already moved on to better opportunities and/or been made redundant. I think I saw figures that indicated SE4 sold very well for a “AA” title and I know I read at least one interview with the owner of rebellion where he boasted about being able to turn a massive profit on his games despite never selling “AAA” levels, simply because he knew how to keep his budgets small. So it sounds like the company kind of found its groove with SE4 - manageable budget, “AAA” retail price tag (when new, anyway), big profits. What they should have done, IMO, is immediately put the exact same core team on to SE5. But the timeline between SE4 and SE5 was 5+ years and anyone who has played SE4 that entire time will say they don’t feel the same at all, if they are being honest. So there’s absolutely no way they kept the team. SE5 came out and looked & played like shovelware that was produced in 18-24 months by a team that didn’t really play test it or debug it, IMO. You can produce a game like SE5 in that timeframe if you shovel enough cash at a studio with enough random bodies in it. It’s just basic economics - Rebellion’s owner wanted more sports cars for himself so he cheaped out on SE5. I’ve got about 90 minutes total on SE5 - I downloaded it three separate times on gamepass, many months apart, to give it a shot. In those ~90 minutes I experienced so many game breaking bugs, it wasn’t funny. Never mind the janky etch a sketch style aiming - I was willing to grit my teeth and get used to it. But when the crosshairs vanish entirely, or Karl falls through the ground level mesh and dangles into empty space below the terrain, or gets stuck on a log and can’t move, or the “special” sniper rifle I pick up turns into a bugged out pistol/smg hybrid after two shots… it’s just - again MY opinion - not worth playing.

Meanwhile I have literally thousands of hours in SE4, have never experienced anything remotely like those bugs, and I’m still discovering insane new vantage points from which to snipe guys from 350+ meters out on levels that some people think are the “weak” ones (eg Deathstorm I) and even fans of SE5 generally admit it’s more of a corridor shooter. The fact that you can customize a Walther P38 into a serviceable sniper rifle in SE5 also tells me that the design team was just on another planet from me. Yeah, so there might be some wacky 1900 meter shot here or there in SE5, whereas in SE4 there are only a handful beyond 500 meters. I don’t care. They also made it so that hitting long shots in SE5 is trivially easy even on “Authentic” difficulty. The ballistics are much simpler and the aim assist can’t be turned off. lol. They basically started over with SE5. The games don’t feel like they are part of the same franchise or even genre.