Alpha presentation feedback

After presenting my alpha build I have to say my confidence has been shaken a little bit. To start with feeling under the weather hampered my presentation so my usual rapier wit was not present, along with a little lack of preparation and trying to rush though to meet the 5 minute deadline. Some of the questions however caught me off guard and really made me consider if I was heading in the right direction with using Mental Ray. Yes it is the definition of the module, learning an advanced 3D method but if it looks terrible, is hard to do and takes ages to render then what really is the point? I wanted to be different as everyone was using UE4 to create their projects I wanted to do something completely different that would look better and after seeing everyone else's presentation and hearing the feedback I really am thinking about using UE4. I'm going to try out my scene in UE4 to see what it looks like but I have to make a decision fast as I am going to need to learn either UE4 animations or Mental Ray. Trying to learn both at the same time will be too much and both will look terrible. On the whole the presentation has not convinced people I'm on the right track but in fact has nearly convinced me that I might be going the wrong way about this whole project.