> which is a problem if you ever want to release your game on consoles

The direction of dependency is from your program to the console specific stuff. You can write a platform library which is linked to your program without releasing that library.

> modern boomer shooters

I didn't say for boomer shooters. It's a general 3D game engine.

> just use Unity, Unreal or occasionally Godot instead of the actual Quake engine.

Because they are popular and familiar, not because they did a serious evaluation.

Also my comment was about Irrlicht/Ogre, etc.