So to start this post off, my name is Josh Lyons. I have just recently signed up to this forum in hopes that someone on here may be able to tell me or in the least point me in the right direction of a good game engine. The project I am working on is just a side thing that I do on weekends with a long time friend of mine and we haven't really taken it that seriously (Hence the fact it was only worked on 2-3 hours a week). Anyways, the game I am currently trying to develop is a homage to old school linear-ish type PS2 games (Think Kingdom Hearts 1 & 2, the Jak & Daxter series). I want to develop a game that captures the amazing story-telling and solid game play that these games instilled into my generation. I have a lot of concept art done for the game and I don't want to put out too much details about it right now, but the main plot boils down to a world being threatened by an age old enemy and an unlikely hero trying to save it (Which is what almost all Ps2 games I played were!) I just need a solid engine that can deliver visuals at a medium-high range and can be used to create my 3rd person action/adventure game. If any more details are needed please just ask, I will be more than grateful to supply what I can. (And if I placed this question in the wrong section I do apologize for that, haven't been a member of a forum in a very long time and aren't really sure of the rules anymore!)

Again, thanks for the quick responses and hopefully I can get going with this project!

Thanks a lot! I checked out the website for Unity and it looks to be a promising engine, the price is a bit crazy though for a license (well crazy to me since I am only doing this as a hobby) But I suppose if it were to become more, 1500 isn't a lot to pay. Thanks again though!

Unity has a free version with restricted features, your allowed to earn upto $100000 with it before they insist on you using the full version (by which point 1500 per year is nothing). For such a good engine aswell $1500 is nothing.

UDK non-commercial is free, $99 + a percentage of sales allows you to sell commercial games with it, a certain amount of revenue you have to pay the full license which makes $1500 look like pocket change.

Either way, if your just getting started in game dev then this might be a too big project. And the graphics quality of a game will very rarely depends on the engine, its more to do with the quality of the models and textures you put into it, although unity aswell as offering an engine have a web store where you can buy licenses to use various assets in your own projects. Just downloading a model from somewhere and using it is usually against copyright law, unitys webstore you can buy them legally to use in any engine, not just unity, but they might not be cheap.

Do you have any programming experience at all?
I'm afraid you can't just go off and make a game without knowing how to program. Unity uses C#, a modified dialect of javascript (often called unityscript) or Boo usually, you get to choose which. UDK uses unrealscript.

I currently know C++ some Java and a bit of Python (Still playing around with the language a bit). As for the textures and models, I use Blender (I have been using it for around 3 years now) So the models won't be a problem, textures are all created in gimp or paint.net! (I am all about free stuff!) I have just been having a war in my head about what engine to use, and I didn't know that I could use Unity for free up until 100,000$, I looked all over the net trying to find the most cost effective way to do this project. It is a bit daunting but I think the hardest part of this project won't be the models or story but the game-play itself, I want it to be fun not tedious or boring. Thanks for the quick input though!