Epic's recent Unreal 5 tech demo, Lumen in the Land of Nanite, showcased the engine's Nanite micro-polygon rendering system and seemed to draw heavily from intricate ancient and medieval Indian architectural orders. Will next-gen capabilities like Nanite allow developers to tackle environments that were just too hard to render on eighth-gen consoles?

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Considering the breadth of India's 5000 year-old history, it's a surprisingly underused setting for videogames: the cities of Rakhigarhi, Harappa, and Mohenjo Daro were the largest in the Bronze Age world, with straight roads, urban planning, and indoor plumbing at a time when Stonehenge was just being erected in England. So many empires, republics, and petty kingdoms have risen and fallen over the years that everything from Dishonored to Assassin's Creed to fantasy MMOs could find their home here. 

The relatively small homegrown gaming audience is one reason for India's gaming obscurity. In contrast, the sheer number of Chinese PC gamers has meant that everyone from Creative Assembly to Ubisoft has explored Chinese historical themes in recent games. But another possible reason is less obvious: architecture and rendering complexity.

Monumental architecture in more popular locales like AC: Origins' Ptolemaic Egypt is big, bold, and, crucially, easy to render. The Great Pyramid of Giza has four massive sides and, well, that's about it. Even the statues dotting AC: Odyssey's Greek islands are rough-hewn approximations. Indian architecture, and specifically, South Indian Dravidian temple architecture, is a whole different matter. 

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