One of the great things about both Unity and Unreal is that both engines let you get a basic project up and running quickly. Throw in a cube, give it controls a

One of the great things about both Unity and Unreal is that both engines let you get a basic project up and running quickly. Throw in a cube, give it controls and movement, and build a little level, and things basically work. The game engines have handled physics, lighting, shaders, camera, etc without you needing to touch them. The tipoffs you are detecting are those game engine default settings. One distinction between them is that Unreal has motion blur, camera aperture effects, and some fancy lighting configured by default. Unity is more "basic" by default. For small projects, a dev is focusing on other things rather than pouring a lot of energy into how light reflects off surfaces or whatever. Each engine is capable of really unique looks, but they also look pretty good even if a dev doesn't touch it.