They need to get rid of Emil. His absolutely delusional PR stunts and "holier than thou" attitude toward anybody who doesn't like his writing has done massive damage to Bethesda in the last year.
Veteran Skyrim modder here. I think you're speaking from vibes and impressions: you don't (by your own admission) know how to evaluate whether the deficiencies you identify are due to dev incompetence or engine limitations. OG Skyrim and Skyrim LE both suffered from severe memory constraints which gimped the gameplay experience because it limited the number of actors that could populate a cell and caused crashes and game instability. This meant, for example, the civil war aspect of the game was underwhelming. A modder by the name of Sheson created a memory patch which effectively fixed Bugthesda's poor memory management. The fix was something that Bugthesda could've easily done themselves. There are lots of examples of this sort of incompetence/laziness from Bugthesda in their games. It's (mostly) not an engine issue. It's a leadership and culture issue.
But it's exactly that cell-based engine that has caused, and been, the bane of this game: Loading Screens. Get into your ship = 1 Cell = Loading Screen. Take off into Space = 1 Cell + Menu = Loading Screen. Select Destination = 1 Cell + Menu = Loading Screen. Land at Destination = 1 Cell + Menu = Loading Screen Dismount from your ship = 1 Cell = Loading Screen. Your ship does not fly.
What's funny about the whole loading screen but is that most games have load screens, most other games do a better job hiding them though, Bethesda as far as I'm aware have only done a load screen where they hit it in Fallout 4 whenever you entered into any elevator outside of the one you build in your settlements, those were load screens, but the player didn't know because they can move around and talk to their companions while the elevator Rose but it wasn't really Rising it was really just a load screen outside of the elevator, but the issue with that game was that the load screens were often 2 minutes long per load screen, and it wasn't until a modder or a group of modders figured out how to speed up the load screens, it had something to do with turning off vsync unlocking your FPS to over 500 and then a few other tweaks, the mod would essentially speed up your load times by speeding up your FPS during load times, and then it would go back to somewhat normal parameters when you start playing, this model also made it so you could crank up your FPS while you played the actual game, instead of being locked at 60 FPS you could play at 90 to 120, my PC could only go up to 90 cuz I have a lower end PC, but you know what that was still better than 60, so in my opinion it was great, the only areas of that game I didn't really do so well was deep downtown Boston where I only got 30 FPS, my machine is very old, so it could barely handle that location, I bet if I had a 4090 I could run at 90 FPS everywhere I went in that damn game, but that's just too rich for my bones. Anyway the load screens could easily be hidden in bethesda's games, as I said they know how to do it, they just have to be kind of creative when they do it, I think because they made too many cells that you could possibly go into, they just didn't want to make it for every unique cell, cuz that would just be way too much, so then they just figured it doesn't really matter because the game loads in 10 seconds or less anyway.
@@5226-p1enot only the cell issue there physics is tied to fps too. The engine is just bad for open world nowadays. There are other games like ac odyssey gta etc that doesnt need loading screens at all to move around or entering structures.
@@monkee5th Y'all really need to understand that Rockstar games cost an insane amount of money compared to what other games cost. Stop using Rockstar games as the standard for the rest of the industry it's just unrealistic.
I'm all for shitting on Starfield, but to be fair, part of their game design these days is a symptom of the breakthrough they made in Oblivion where "Every NPC has a life, a schedule, a job, a hobby, a routine, blah blah blah" and that was absolutely mind blowing at the time. It was paraded around in every GameInformer for months. The engine (and frankly the budget) clearly can't handle a city of thousands of named NPCs with their own lives programmed out, so I don't mind suspending my belief a bit for a small city if it means I can at least play in a world where every character actually has a purpose, and isn't some nameless NPC that will despawn as soon as I leave. The problem with Starfield is that it doesn't even do that. 99% of the people you see in New Atlantis are bizarre looking freaks who walk this way, turn around and walk that way. No name. No purpose. You'll never see em again. And there's only like 10 of them in a given park or plaza, if you're lucky.
you think the cities are bad? they absolutely are but no one ever mentions how most of the MAIN ROADS go up at like 70 degree angles, they're practically cliffs and we're supposed to believe people use those? this applies to literally every bethesda game post oblivion by the way, including the fallouts the worst part is when they say "it's not REALLY like that, we just designed it like that because of time constraints", they've been using that excuse since oblivion in 2006, if you don't have the time to make it happen then PLEASE do something else
It's not about the engine. It's about lack of passion, and an abundance of arrogance. Modders out there have fixed most of the glitches and bugs with the creation engine years ago. Why does Bethesda not do this? They don't have the passion to go back and redo all the work they did, and they are arrogant enough to think "it's just fine, they still buy, they'll keep buying" and until now we have.
It's never a bad engine or low graphics that kills the game. The problem is writing, shallowness and inflated ego. I'd happily play another elder scrolls game in outdated graphics and poor engine if it had writing, passion and art direction of Morrowind.
Actually a bad engine by definition kills games. If the engine can't support the game, the game literally won't work. The writing can be GARBAGE, if the actual game is good enough, most people will just write the story off or install a story mod to indulge more in the awesome gameplay. The other way around works too, Vampire the masquerade Bloodlines had a TON of visual and many gameplay problems, but the story aspect was so good it held the whole game up.
That's not entirely accurate. It's based off of the Gamebryo Engine, but it's so heavily modified that Bethesda effectively made it their own. The fact that Gamebyro stopped updating 12 years ago but Creation Engine 2 is still being updated to this day is proof. For example technically the game engine used to make FF15 and Forspoken, Luminous Engine, is the same engine that was used to make FF14. But only bits and pieces were taken, and so much of the code for FF14's engine is its own that it's effectively its own custom game engine, the same is true for the Creation Engine.
You clearly know nothing about game engines, so why do you speak with so confidence? Unprompted even. If we go by your logic, CoD runs on Quake engine from 1996, "just" updated. That's how software is developed my dude, you update it. Do you think every version of ANY software is built from ground up? No it isn't. Unreal Engine 5 is not the same thing as the original Unreal Engine just because it's an updated version.
@@RegalPixelKing Technically you are right but practically is the same engine update by Bethesda . It´s like if i take UE5 call Mimi and start update the engine my self . The result will still be UE5 with a different name and some code from me but still UE5 .
The Creation engine isn't the problem. It might still be the best engine for the job. To quote the Escapist: “So maybe the solution is to throw away the creation engine and license a modern, stable, feature-rich engine like Unreal Engine or CryEngine? Except, Bethesda games have some rather particular needs that aren’t covered by the typical off-the-shelf engines. Bethesda games need to store the state of the entire world. Players expect that if they slay the Underking, loot his tomb, and pose the Underking’s twice-dead body with his face pressed against the seat of his throne, they should be able to come back days later and find the tomb exactly as they left it. If they toss 400 cheese wheels on the ground in the town of Whiterun, then those cheese wheels better still be there the next time they visit. The game needs to be able to handle large-scale AI behaviors that have agents roaming all over the world and going through a daily routine, even when their part of the world isn’t loaded. Most importantly, the game needs to be very open to modding so that end users can make sweeping changes to the gameplay, art, sounds, music, animations, and interface, using self-contained package files. These aren’t impossible-to-solve problems, but they do run against how a lot of modern game engines are designed. If Bethesda wanted to use one of the big-name engines out there, it would require extensive modifications. That would just lead them back to where they are now, with buggy games based on an engine that’s been twisted in ways it was never designed to go.”
The issue with Creation aka Gamebryo isn't that it's modified, but that's it's a 20 year old fucking engine. Morrowind was built on it! Constant loading screens aren't great for modern games Edit: OP, you know it's not about the age. Address the fact that Skyrim is built like a PS2 game. The engine is stuck in the era in which it was made, so their 'open worlds' are always divided into cells, little subareas like you're designing a level-based 64-bit game. All those other engines you cite don't have this fucking problem. Way to go missing the point, buddy!
@@InhabitantOfOddworld Firstly, The age of an Engine is irrelevant when it comes to software development. There's 20+ year old code in Windows 11, MacOS Sonoma and [insert any current Linux Distro] because that code works for the underlying systems. Secondly, Plenty of games are built on older established engines. GTA6 is being built on RAGE. An Engine that came out nearly 18 years ago with a Table Tennis Game. Apex Legends and Half Life Alyx released on Source. An Engine that ran the original Half Life. Unreal is based on 20+ year old code as well.
The engine isn't the problem, but it is a symptom of the real problem. Bethesda has a serious lack of competent employees. From Software also uses their own engine and they make Bethesda look like clowns in comparison.
I’ll be honest everything Bethesda claims the creation engine can’t do seems to have been made by modders already using the creation engine. I think they just don’t have anyone left who knows how to utilise the engine or make a new one for that matter. Hence why they’re considering unreal engine cause they don’t have anyone on staff that has the technical expertise necessary to play around with their old engine or upgrade it.
There's a difference between "This engine can do this" and "I can MAKE this engine do this." Modded games of Skyrim or Fallout, are NOT stable. Like, ever. That's because when modders MAKE the game do something Bethesda said it can't do, they're either doing it at best, VEEEERY carefully, or they're just making it work and if some people get lag spikes, crashes or something seemingly totally unrelated just explodes..... Welp, not really their problem. Sure they'll try to fix it, and many times they CAN, but that's ONE person, or a small team, working on ONE specific feature in a DEDICATED manner. ALL Dave has to do, is check if his house mod isn't suddenly underground. That's easier than you THINK it is. Modding is not fast and easy work by any means, at least not the bigger mods. But it's FOCUSED, and ultimately there are shortcuts you as a modder can take that developers can't. Devs have to think about a LOT of different things, for example, the SIZE of the game. A modder can make a 12 gig mod however he wants. It's the player's decision to install it, and it's the player's fault if mods tear the game a new asshole and render it unplayable until you hard reinstall all of Skyrim not missing a single file otherwise the game literally won't start. This is COMMON btw. Modding is NOT stable, the actual game MUST be stable, and the Creation Engine has very clear limits regarding what you can and can't do. Modders, do not need to care about what you shouldn't do. That is the difference. Not that I'm saying Bethesda knows their engine inside and out, I COMPLETELY agree with everything else you said, they're FUCKED over there, and I'm willing to bet they don't have the money to fix it. Them looking lustfully at Unreal Engine confirms that for me.
Don't count on it just ask the Fallout 76 players. Yes they do have a player base with 76 but they are getting frustrated with how Bethesda rarely listen to their concerns or what players want in the game. It's become a huge grindfest and it seems the Atomic Shop is were Bethesda puts it resources when it comes to Fallout 76
@@monkee5thDon't forget that Fallout 4 is still pretty much broken on consoles after the next gen update. What has happened to that once great studio?
Yeah that’s true, it kinda evolved from GameBryo. I was trying to say that I think it serves very well to the style of game they develop. I appreciate the comment though considering I left that out haha, hopefully someone can learn something new from it
Fallout New Vegas was and still is amazing, the Creation Engine is the least of Bethesda's problems. Also the Creation Engine just isn't made for space games so if Bethesda wants a Starfield sequel it's gonna have to be in another engine.
Not necessarily. They could've made a Mass Effect 1 or Andromeda like game with more focus on a dozen or so hand-crafted locations and it would've been better than this 1000 planet nonsense.
The 2 biggest flaws of New Vegas is that it was made in a short amount of time, making it pretty hard to implement things properly, and it was hindered by consoles subpar hardware specs, specially PS3.
They probably can build upon their current own engine to make a proper space game, but that means they're not going to release it for another century 😂
The engine isn't the problem, but Bethesda's complete and utter incompetence, it doesn't matter what they do, they always find new ways of messing up and pumping out garbage. There's a clear path they have laid out in front of them that leads them to being a 10/10 studio with amazing games that people love and cherish, and they look at that path and choose to go the complete opposite way. Either because they can't be asked to put in any form of effort, or because they are just completely inept. I have no faith left in that studio.
@@Ghorda9 It wouldn't be an issue if Bethesda actually spent the time to fix these bugs, some of them have been known for 20 years at this point, that's what I mean by utter incompetence. And for the loading screens, I don't think they're a problem... as long as you don't try to use this ancient engine to make a space game... and even then, I'm sure you could still pull it off somewhat convincingly with some clever shenanigans, but that's a couple levels over what Bethesda are capable of.
@@BxPanda7 loading screens will only get worse as levels become more dense, Elden Ring doesn't have this problem at all and yet it's far more ambitious than Starfield
Game engines don't make bad games; people do. Engines do matter for performance, but Bethesda just doesn't optimize their games. Give them any engine and their games will still be buggy and unoptimized.
Let me rephrase the original question: will new engine fix Bethesda's creative bankruptcy and corporate decision making producing bland safe boring slop? Is it engine's fault that ChatGPT can come up with better and more interesting quests than writers in Bethesda? I doubt that.
It wasn't even corporate slop, Todd legitimately thought it was creatively amazing. Its the game he wanted to make his whole life. Just because its creative doesn't mean its fun. Id rather take corporate safe slop over Starfield any day.
@@teamacio9043 Definitely not, Bethesda was taking a big chance on starfield. Seeing how its something they have no track record in making. Safe corporate slop would be another fallout 76 or skyrim tier rerelease. Bethesda tried something new unlike anything they've done since fallout 3. Its a new ip in a new setting, with all new mechanics. Problem is that Bethesdas creative dream, just wasnt good. Creative doesn't = good or safe.
No, but if their bank accounts are making them scared shitless enough, it's possible if they use a GOOD engine and just invest everything into making Elder Scrolls 6 a banger, we COULD get a good game. Which Bethesda REALLY fucking needs. Honestly, I'm not holding out hope.
@@haku8135 All previous Bethesda games post Morrowind were in some way shape and form fixed/improved/expanded/made fun by modders. They could ship shallow game with half baked features full of bugs and modders would fix it and add content within few weeks post launch. I doubt Unreal 5 will give them this luxury. What they'll sell us will be the final product, final proof of their incompetence.
I'm not sure they need a _different_ engine, but they sure need to take an honest open-minded look at HOW they are using it. Case in point: those loading screens *could* be hidden between animations / cut scenes, like some games do. Bethesda chose not to. That's on them leaving the old clunky old xbox requirement in place. Look at how they implemented the inventory system for the past few games. It's the same plug/play and reskin with no thought to EVOLVING it, and it shows the most in Starfield, because you can click on an item to get through to extra details like what it scraps down into (Fallout), but that doesn't exist in Starfield, so you click through to .. another screen showing the same model. There's no PURPOSE to this screen now, but they have the same unsortable/unfilterable/clunky mess that they just keep plugging in and they never honestly sit back and try to evolve what they have. "Let's make the AI better" just doesn't exist as a line in their internal development. Well, if it is, it gets a hard cold star from some manager giving the "shut up, Jenkins, stink eye".
They need MORE than a new engine now. It seems someone walked up to them and blew their brains out and now they're just zombies walking around, "Argggh it just works, arggghh it just works."
One reason they need a new engine isn't just technical. It's to force them to abandon much of the laziness of their process that has set in over the decades, by approaching development from a new perspective. And to be able to bring in outside talent that is well versed in modern engines like UE5. Smarter game designers avoid working for Bethesda because they'd be stuck using an archaic dead-end engine for a chunk of their career, and when it came time to leave they'd be rusty and not up to speed on what the rest of the industry is up to.
Unfortunately, most high-end engineers don't work with UE5 either. The only properly optimised single-player game running in UE5 is Black Myth, and the only multiplayer game made in UE5 outside of Epic that is properly optimised is The Finals, which -- to no one's surprise -- features advanced physics that were refactored in UE5 to mimic the Frostbite since the engineers at Embark are the former Frostbite engineers from DICE.
Creation originated from Gamebryo, and that originated from NetImmerse, It is familiar but i wish they would fix the bugs and optimize the engine. Replacing the engine would remove alot of the legacy bugs that Bethesda has been ignoring for years, however it will not fix the writing, that's more on the writers including Emil. Plus they would have to make a modding API if they want us to mod their games. I know Morrowind already took care of the engine issue, there is an engine called OpenMW, and it was designed to be similar to NetImmerse, but it's more like a souped up version where it has minimal engine bugs, and even has quality of life changes to further improve the game, and yes it uses ESM and ESP files like the old engine.
Fuck mods just make a good game you don't HAVE to mod. The reality of it is the whole reason mods exist is because the base game just isn't good enough for people to feel entertained long enough. Nobody needed mods 15 years ago, apart from things going on that were on PC
Bruh they are entirely dependendt on mods to fix their games also other games that dont use ganebryo 3.0 still has mods. Stop expecting modders to fix the god damn game.
I don’t think this is a real issue. Cyberpunk also has an engine people are not used to, and it has mods. If they change the engine people can just adapt if the devs made the game mod friendly.
BGS doesn't need a new engine as such. They need to re-create their engine from scratch with modern and future tech in mind. The problem with just updating an engine is that the code eventually turns into "spaghetti code". People don't seem to understand that switching to UE5 or any others 3rd party engine would almost entirely kill off mods. You know, the one thing BGS games are all about. They also need to fire Emil and hire proper writers, same thing with the art designers. If you think the projectile is square because the cartridgeless ammo is means you're in the wrong line of work.
hmm... Instead of them saying lets use the creation engine and have the community fix our game. They should have the mindset of lets make a fun feature completed game that has a compelling story line and deep plot and lore. And give the modding community tools to improve onto our game so they can make fun and interesting stuff for it. If they use the approach along with using microsoft to bug fix they could do well.
While I'm not a game designer, coder, etc... I think the problem I've always had with this question is that... All of the answers I typically see to it just assume it's just one problem. Like, yes you could fix the engine... But that doesn't fix the bad writing, lack of a design document and lack of developer cohesion, and so on. IE there's more than just one hole on this sinking ship that needs to be plugged
I don't see how having 6 planets and one star system would fix the problem. You would still have loading screens everywhere. The creation engine just can not be seamless. You talk about Skyrim and Fallout, but those games each time there's a cool castle, dungeon, cave outpost, or anything that's remotely interesting you're going to have a loading screen to access it. Sometimes, certain dungeons have multiple loading screens. I recently booted up Skyrim again for the first time and during my first hour I had 18 loading screens. This is just how Bethesda games are made.
While I didn't enjoy Starfield, I am glad that Bethesda decided to experiment to show something we haven't seen before instead of doing it like Ubisoft, where once you played at least one of their games, you played them all.
While nearly everyone loves better graphics, sound, and music, the last thing Bethesda needs is new flashy game engine. Seriously what they need isn't really new, but to learn what their audience liked about their games (Morrowind's environment, lore and main story, Oblivion's side quests, Skyrim's and Fallout 4's exploration, environmental story telling, and mod editor. Now, throw a good main quest story writer/designer, a desire to put their fans and making a fun game first. If they do that anything they released would be a win-win, where they are adored/respected, paid, and we get a game to sink hundreds of hours in. Everybody is happy and we all get back to enjoying and making fun of their games again!
Changing their engine isn't going to improve their writing. It wasn't Fallout 3's engine who was complaining about players turning his great American Novel into paper airplanes by asking questions like "what do they eat? They can't all be looting 200 year old grocery stores" or "Why is Little Lamplight filled with school children 200 years later?"
@@larrote6467 Why? Care to make an argument instead of just insulting me? I do care about the writing, and I don't see much freedom when the game doesn't react at all to your choices. You're the Dragonborn and the leader of all the factions at once and no one cares at all. The freedom is just in your head. If you're going to roleplay something in those games by just imagining stuff on your own, well, you can do that in tons of games...
3:03 This is what I've been saying. If they just compressed everything down so it wasn't so massive and sprawling they coulda kept the space theme effectively and still made it an engaging game
Honestly, it would've been cool if it were only a few planets in starfeild that we could explore, and if we wanted to explore that planet, we would've needed resources to be able to explore it, so when we finish grinding to be able to get to the other planets, the loading screen would 100% be so worth it
As much as i hate the creation engine sometimes, it's the magnum opus of Bethesda. Skyrim was pretty groundbreaking for the time, and proved that when updated, you can accomplish nearly everything with the creation engine. And that's based on the same engine Morrowind runs on! In the end, it's just a bunch of code that allows certain mechanics and exist. So as long as they update the foundation from time to time (moving to 64-bit with FO4 for example), it will be fine. Just look as Skyrim today, with the proper mods, most of the experience still holds up fine honestly. I'm still wondering who ever thought that making a game like starfield in the Creation engine was a good idea, especially considering games like Start Citizen are their competition. But maybe even more, who wrote that horrible dialogue?!
Skyrim takes more like 1-2 hours from end to end due to terrain elevation, it might be 30 mins in normal dragonflight or collision removed. Honestly looking at it as you do without programming knowledge my conclusion is Starfield's real problem is they took a main map and adapted it into ONE of the dungeons while taking what should have been a generated dungeon and making it into multiple main maps... This is why every map has a loading screen between it and space and why Space requires fast travel between every planet... Bethesda seems to have created their own biggest problem by not using what problems they had to fix each other(make space "smaller" and decrease speed in zones across it by making certain zones increase your travel speed while others keep you at "null increase" to imitate a gravity well and decrease load on the main "map" of space, then make every planet a loaded dungeon. So you don't need the "airlock" of 2 loading screens per landing site). It feels like a management level developer problem.
Its an interesting decision. The creation engine IS limited, but the editor they have is, or at least WAS, basically finely tuned to pump out Bethesda style RPGs. I think it was Josh Sawyer I heard saying once that there was NO way they could've made all of new Vegas in a year without the creation engine and its dev tools, and quite frankly I believe it. Companies switching to UE seems honestly way less about the actual engine capability, but more about finding devs that know how to work in that engine. It happened with Konami's FOX engine, it happened with CDPR's RedEngine, it just happened to 343's Slipspace engine. They wouldn't spend time upgrading these engines if they weren't capable at making the games they need to make. It's about just how many devs in the market know how to use UE. everyone does.
Pretty much. The analogy often used regarding engines is that they are like cars. Unreal, Unity and Godot are the "minivans" of engines in that they are great all rounders and anyone can drive them but you may need to modify them on their own for specific use cases. Others like RAGE, Cryengine and Frostbite are akin to "racecars" in that if you have skilled drivers and mechanics, that racecar's performance will be incredible in races. Creation is like "a weird truck" that might not be great at racing but the people using the truck really know how to use it for their purposes.
Another big issue is engine upkeep cost. The cost to maintain an engine is ever growing. And companies that specifically work on engines and nothing else, have a leg up and push expectations. Making other companies drawn in costs.
Another thing to consider is... do we really want every game under the sun to be made with Unreal? As someone who actually works in Unreal Engine for a living, I don't. Don't get me wrong, it's a great engine, but an engine contributes a lot to the look and feel of the game and I don't want every game to feel the same. Sure, you can do your own custom stuff on top of Unreal, but that will only get you so far
@@Starcrafter23 Thats a good point. It seems the industriy moves toward a engine duopol. Unity for smaller simpler games, Unreal for visually intense big budget titles. And as you mentioned it already shows - UE games often look (and feel) similar and UE5 continues this. It was to same wih id tech 5s lighting, you could tell if a game used this engine. I would rather have a diverse offering of modern game engines (like decima), tailored to specific use cases. Licensing instead of owning your own in-hous engine also comes with limitations in modding and distribution. The move to UE from in-house game engines is basically cost motivated (more=>cheaper devs, faster time to market), not to make better games.
The facial animations for NPCs you actually interact with is pretty good actually, way better than what they did with FO4. I would like to see the version of this engine improved on a more hand crafted fantasy world.
The engine isn't THE problem. It's a problem. And their playground isn't 10 square miles, it's 4 suqare kilometers. Ie: the same limitations as gamebryo before it. And it shows. But the real problem is the management that not only allow slop like this, but excuse it. As vehemently as they do toxicly. Making it seem like the standard gamer is the problem for having a morsel of expectation from their favorite company. It's actually insulting to be a fanboy, and they worked hard to earn that award
5:32 I decided to play fallout 4 on the survival difficulty for the first time and... well, I mostly stayed at the left upper part of the map and got to level 70 before going to diamond city, to get the quest to find Nick (but to be fair the first 15 - 20 levels I got on Sanctuary by scraping and building a bunch of shelves).
Firstly, I just wanna say I’m glad I found this channel, subbed, watched both your videos now and can’t wait to see what you keep putting out! I don’t think it boils down to ONLY the engine, but I think it’s a large part. A lot of people suggest Unreal engine, and I think seeing what the new cyberpunk game feels like on it will be a good indicator, and how they handle mod tools; since lack of modding is a huge argument I see to not switch. There’s a few games, SQUAD, Insurgency sandstorm, OHD, that all use unreal, and all have a public SDK (Frostpunk 2 as well) which is the unreal development tools the devs used, just restricted to protect code. SQUAD, and ISS have had total conversion mods like the Star Wars ones, so if Bethesda, CDPR, etc, any company swapping to unreal that already releases public mod tools, would continue releasing mod tools even with the new engine, then modability will remain. In my opinion, not necessary if they actually choose to get better writers, but if they stick with the dogshit writing, they may be able to use a new engine to eliminate some of the criticism in the gameplay/technical side.
I appreciate it! And yeah I agree, I think it’s way more than “just” the engine. I don’t think they’d personally make the switch… like ever. Haha. But it would be interesting of course. I honestly believe the writing has a lot to do with how empty the games have felt lately. Oblivion is NOT a perfect game. But the writing in that game makes me feel some kind of way. I know others might disagree, but Oblivion and even sometimes Skyrim feels much more alive than Starfield.
@@HorseArmouroh yeah, I don’t ever think they will. If they won’t listen to the criticism of writing, which imo is a lot easier to fix than an entire engine, they’re not gonna do all the work than the engine. I totally agree, been a Bethesda fan for as long as I can remember, watching my cousin play morrowind, then my first tes game was oblivion which is still my favourite. Played oblivion, f3, Skyrim endlessly, Skyrim being my least favourite, but still acknowledging the world being alive, and designed with care. NV is my fave creation engine game, but not Beth so not part of the discussion. Starfield, I literally couldn’t even play past like 10 hours, it was just copy and paste, boring. They should’ve just done one planet with one large zone, or done x amount of planets in a solar system, with smaller zones like KOTOR; I think that would’ve been very cool. But the writing, world design, etc is just bad. Appreciate the videos and the discussion around it!
Maybe or maybe not, it's a pretty well designed engine and can do a lot more stuff with updated scripts, I would suggest even more 'patching' of the internal code/limitations to reflect modern hardware capabilities, like that 4ram patcher which made a major performance difference- the actual structure of it works well considering what you can do potentially. But for ESVI they should definitely make a whole new engine that outdoes even this one imo.
The engine was perfectly fine, what they need to do is to hire actual writer to literally write actual fun story, and hire actual level creators to put the story in play.
It's felt a little long in the tooth even when Skyrim came out. Though I am a believer of "You make due with what you have." I have played A LOT of Euro jank games. Vampire Bloodlines The Masquerade is one of all time favorite games, and it's held together with Pritt Stick and cello tape. What makes it so good is the story it tells. The choices you can make. (It also set a really high bar for modern vampire lore for me.) And that's where Starfield fell flat on it's face. "Wide as an ocean deep as a puddle." Gets thrown around a lot when talking about Starfield and I think it's fitting. Cause how is there more stuff to do and things to care about in Cyberpunk's single city than an entire galaxy in Starfield? When you've got so much space sci-fi to pull from!? So, no I don't think they need to change engines, unless they really want to take advantage of the graphics. Cause "RTX on" does not a great game make.
I didn’t know Bethesda changed engines but the creation engine just made me fell like I was playing oblivion in space. It would have been a good experience if it was released in 2004 instead of 2024.
Someone with a sane opinion. So many people trash the engine and that BGS must change it. The engine is what makes BGS games BGS games. There are countless other RPG-likes out there but none of them are Skyrim/Fallout. They have a special magic even thou the writting and quest design sucks, they are fun to play. Plus with F76 they managed to expand the map from the 10*10 to a really large one. I hope they use that´technology for ES6
@@attilamarics3374lol. Tell me you know nothing about game engines without telling me you know know thing about game engines. You want an answer to that question? Literally 90% of games use an engine nearly as old as creation engine. Unreal engine 5, the clue is in the numbering my man.
Give a talented and passionate team gamebryo and they’ll create the best damn rpg ever made. So no I definitely don’t think the engine is even top 50 of the issues in Bethesda
My honest answer would be: they need to make a good game. The modding community should not be a priority and something they had to take important decisions around.
If people are still slobbering over Unreal getting progressively better graohics (and that's it), I'd say it's kinda hypocritical to say otherwise. Unreal is an engine you use because its easy not because you want to inovate. Not saying the creation engine is the best thing since sliced bread. Just if you want to get that into it, apply the same standards for everyone.
They need to do everything differently. Their desperate clinging to a very old engine is a symptom of major problem in their leadership and management. Also the creation engine IS the gamebryo engine with a few tweaks and some new features. Its not as big an upgrade as when the Unreal Engine changes versions. I'm not saying they need the Unreal engine, but they need to do something.
Bethesda needs a new game engine, CEO, CFO, COO, Lead Designer, Lead Programer, and Lead Social Media Manager. I cant emphasize enough that new CEO part.
Dann that oblivion gameplay makes wanna jump back to it and play it again, I was trying to wait for skyblivion but I may have to do it again. God those games are amazing
It's not a problem of them not wanting to change engines. It's a problem of them being technically incapable of doing that, much like how if you pull a life support machine grafted into someone, that person will immediately cease to exist.
lets just all remember that the engine has no emphasis or help for modders. Its entirely on the devs to decide how mod-able the game is, and the modders for the willingness to mod.
what a crap take. it doesn't matter if bethesda has the best engine ever made, if they can't write a good story and design good gameplay, quests etc then it doesn't matter what engine they have, it's going to suck!!
They need to look at the delivery of their storytelling and cinematography in every important scene they make, then look at scenes from BG3. Look at the way they use camera placement, body and facial animations, voice acting, music and how they build the scene to capture and convey emotions. Then they need to ask themselves: Is this scene done, or is it just delivering the bare minimum, the spoken word? If their engine isn't able to deliver on what they need to convey - then they need a new engine. If not, they just need to care more about everything they do.
modders tend to say it's the engine, which is hilarious because both sides are actually in agreement. modders are people with experience with the engine code, and know how to interact with it, and so from this perspective, they see it as the problem. but we need to take a step back, competent people that actually know how to code. the problem is that bethesda staff are not as competent as you, and do not know how to code. giving shitlords a better engine is giving a blind driver a bugatti. it aint gonna do shit for the end product. yeah the engine is part of the problem. but it sure af is not first on the chopping block. simple triage and weighting of issues. fire the incompetents, let the real coders put some goddamn effort in, and then once they can show and point out where to tackle it, then we can rework the codebase. not the other way around. the current path is going to make things worse, it is literally enabling tards that can't write, can't script, can't bugfix, and won't change. great, my game needs less loading screens and doesn't crash. oh, it's bethesda? i thought it was ubisoft...
The Creation engine is fine, it is old. But the Unreal and Quake engines are even older. They all have different limitations and strengths Engines evolve over time. The Creation engine started with NetImmerse, wich became Gamebryo en then evolved in Creation engine 1 and then 2. Its important to keep updating the engine and cleaning up technical debt when designing a new game. What's more important is choosing the right engine for your game. Or change your game plans to the limitations of your engine. Creation engine has problems with loading infinite worlds. Its divided in little parts, hence the loading screens. It needs to unload old data to make room for new data. Creation engine isn't a good pick for Starfield unless they choose to limit it to a handfull of different planets or get really creative. Can you do that with Unreal engine? Maybe? Im no expert No Man's Sky had to design their own engine because the thought that was the best option. Ps, braindead writing and lazyness doesnt help either with Starfield
Nice, getting in on the ground floor to this channel before it explodes into the thousands. I'm subscriber 881, pal. Don't forget it. Hopefully, the amount of BGS *constructive criticism* channels gain more traction, so they realize what their fans want and what they don't, and how to deviate from what made Starfield such a pathetic first entry to a new series. I just want actual roleplaying games again, not streamlined slop. I wish you well on your crusade, broham.
There are people who claim Bethesda modified Gamebryo so much that Creation is its own engine, but its worth noting that Starfield has a bug from Oblivion.
CE divides worlds in worldspaces. Thats is like a screne, or stage. So you handles it more like acts in a theatre, than a movie with one big take. In BGS games it is totally expected and normal to have an new space when you enter a dungeon or building, insted a seamingless transition from the outside. So this is al technical limitation, but it becomes to an element of storytelling and rules how this worlds work. Changing the engine would have a big impact of the way how a BGS game is experienced. In starfield we have one failed decission - whle planets - aka "stages" to stay on a theatrical view - are not hand crafted. No determined story, no noticeable stage crafting - all debris an clutter. So it is not a quetions for the used engine, it is a question of investment in creative manpower.
I think the creation Engine 2 is pretty cool and the assets, shaders are awesome. Without the Creation Engine we could not have anything near the mod capabilities we have now with BGS games. The only thing they fumbled HARD with Starfield are "just" the design pillars, gameplay, story and overall fun. The engine is probably not at fault at all.
Creation Engine 2 is basically creation engine 1.5. It uses the core code from CE1 but allows for SOME updated features. (FSR, Ultra Wide screen, Higher res textures), but it's not a generational leap by any stretch of imagination. Bethesda / Elder Scrolls is so tied to the workflow that CE offers that switching or building a new engine would take a decade and when MS bought them, I promise you they cared about ROI and dumping time and money (resources) into a new game engine wasn't worth the risk. Also, I believe Creation Engine was from the source code of GameByro as the project got disbanded they asked for the source code and made CE out of it. As for StarField. Nobody (closest being No Man Sky) has come CLOSE to delivering a true space sim, even though everyone wants one (just look at the investment numbers of Star Citizen, which has turned out to be Vaporware, AVOID AVOID AVOID, no matter what anyone else tells you). The amount of engineering/architecture required to build that open universe, isn't achievable with today's (or tomorrows) compute resources.
I really liked Starfield. But I understand what you're talking about, and overall it's a pretty good opinion. (I've had that thought, too.) Starfield just works differently. If in old Bethesda games, the main content was in locations that are densely spaced. In Starfield, all the content is transmitted through quests and when I went on quests, I found a lot of new locations, stories, characters and the game was revealed, no worse than the old games of the studio were revealed to me. Sorry for my English....)
How did Unreal stay up to date? The same could be done with Bethesda's engine. They have already had a decade to modernize it. Didn't they spend the time well?
Yeah, it'll be EASIER. Especially if Bethesda could create an engine that's more robust and accommodates mods. Which they definitely can't, no way they have the money or know how to do that. Switching to UE is probably their ONLY shot at making a game good enough to score a win.
I believe a change in the game engine would also force Bethesda to change their approach to game design. They seem to go out of their way to avoid trying new things. Given the long wait for ES6 up to this point, I do the game will struggle to meet fan expectations when it finally does come out.
The engine is not their problem and changing it would be too costly. But they write and balance their games better. Lets take FO4: For the tutorial things make a pod in Vault 111, make those pop-ups otional,and keep this stuff out of the mainquest. Imagine the frustration for an experienced player who wants to heal, gets a message "heal your character" and dies because this message prevented healing the character. Then break up the Museum of Freedom part first you get Sturges and Mama Murphy. And after you got the courser chip you can place the showdown with the deathclaw giving you Garvey and the Longs. Well, the ghouls in Lexington seperated the group😊 My personal wish would be an option to get the Institute intact without having to kill the Railroad. Or write a better story why this is impossible. And there should be a bit of optional post mainquest story line, not just a flag in diamond city. The Institute could offer some intersting options. Also split the robot limit(INT) and human population limit(CHR) in your settlements. Local leader --> Robotics expert for provisioners Cap Collector --> Hacker for the vendors Introduce "provisioner stations" with a terminal for management and recall stuff, too. Oh 2 things about Far Harbour: Link the (up to)4 workshops after the Captain´s Dance together, maybe even the Nakano Residence. And the Nakano Residence should reflect its status as a link between the Commonwealth and Far Harbour maybe even as a new settlement. Raider settlements need a better food handling. At least allow food suppliers to be micromanged. Or better: Give the Operators the ability to use robots for farming(without penalty) they don´t care who they exploit and might even like "honest", profitable work. Look at the Forged for inspiration. The Pack could also turn food suppliers into mangeable slave colonies.
Without any tech knowledge I can say that Creation engine is just an updated Gamebryo engine. There is no way they created a new one from scratch and it looks and feels exactly like the old one...
Creation Engine isn't good for anything but moddability, that's certainly also the reason Bethesda kept it for Starfield. Even in Skyrim, the engine still has so many underlying problems to this day. Some of them got fixed by modders but they are still somehow limited since the source code for Skyrim is not public. Someone did a deep dive into the new creation engine used in Starfield and found many problems that are so deeply tight into the engine that it's practically impossible to fix them without rewriting almost the whole thing. Getting a proper streaming system into CE would also be a monumental task and I really don't wanna see loading screens for interior in TES6.
No they don't. They need to take their players serious and work on their engine. I love the creation engine, I love how it is object oriented, no other engine can render so many interatable objects and continue running like the creation engine does, is a powerfull tool managed my mediocre and creatively broken people. Most likely the engineers that created and manage the engine left the company long ago.
Great video. When hoping BGS improves looking to the future, it’s easy to get bogged down in the idealistic narrative of BGS needing to revamp _everything_. New/better writing, quests, world building, items, RPG elements, environments, etc. I think a lot of people who are critical of Starfield (and let’s be honest, BGS since Fo4), need to be realistic in where effort improving yields the best returns. Creation really seems to be a modders paradise that helped build a community unlike any other. With limited time and man-hours, focusing on switching to something like the Unreal Engine might do more harm than good when they could be focusing on improving other aspects that are more noticeable.
Thanks for sharing your essay on this! I’ve played Oblivion, Skyrim and Fallout 3. Starfield doesn’t look sexy so I didn’t want it. Elder Scrolls VI is in danger of not looking sexy, either. I’ll just leave it at this - It’s 2024. Bethesda is still stuck in 2006.
Yes, that is a really good point. It's crazy how unintuitive Bethesda was with thier own system. Just one solar system with the density of oblivion would of been gold!!
Bethesda needs a different management team.
We hoped microsoft acquiring them would mean they'd be held to a certain standard but it seems that isn't the case
Yup. The engine doesn't hold them back nearly as much as their lack of creativity and their lack of love for their work.
Todd and many others need to go.
@@monkee5th Yes please 😭
they contracted INDIAN developers ffs... they DON'T GIVE A SHIT
At this point they need a new lead writer badly
Very much agree
they don't emil is fine
@@chaserseven2886Emil is this your burner account? 😂😂
@@chaserseven2886 Maybe emil is fine, but fine isnt a positive thing.
@@attilamarics3374 yeah.. i dont want fine (5/10) writing. I want amazing writing (10/10) and can settle for great writing 8/10) 😂
Bethesda needs different lead game designers!
Exactly. This is a Bethesda problem. Not an engine one.
They need to get rid of Emil. His absolutely delusional PR stunts and "holier than thou" attitude toward anybody who doesn't like his writing has done massive damage to Bethesda in the last year.
@@Boomer04888 THIS. Emil needs to go. "his writing" is complete load of shit. Full of plot holes, logic, or any respect to existing lore.
@@Someguy6571 eh its both but no one had an issue with with the shtty engine before because the world was servicable.
@@Boomer04888 Todd's ego is also out of place.
Veteran Skyrim modder here. I think you're speaking from vibes and impressions: you don't (by your own admission) know how to evaluate whether the deficiencies you identify are due to dev incompetence or engine limitations. OG Skyrim and Skyrim LE both suffered from severe memory constraints which gimped the gameplay experience because it limited the number of actors that could populate a cell and caused crashes and game instability. This meant, for example, the civil war aspect of the game was underwhelming. A modder by the name of Sheson created a memory patch which effectively fixed Bugthesda's poor memory management. The fix was something that Bugthesda could've easily done themselves. There are lots of examples of this sort of incompetence/laziness from Bugthesda in their games. It's (mostly) not an engine issue. It's a leadership and culture issue.
But it's exactly that cell-based engine that has caused, and been, the bane of this game: Loading Screens.
Get into your ship = 1 Cell = Loading Screen.
Take off into Space = 1 Cell + Menu = Loading Screen.
Select Destination = 1 Cell + Menu = Loading Screen.
Land at Destination = 1 Cell + Menu = Loading Screen
Dismount from your ship = 1 Cell = Loading Screen.
Your ship does not fly.
Amen. Bethesda is full of lazy programmers.
What's funny about the whole loading screen but is that most games have load screens, most other games do a better job hiding them though, Bethesda as far as I'm aware have only done a load screen where they hit it in Fallout 4 whenever you entered into any elevator outside of the one you build in your settlements, those were load screens, but the player didn't know because they can move around and talk to their companions while the elevator Rose but it wasn't really Rising it was really just a load screen outside of the elevator, but the issue with that game was that the load screens were often 2 minutes long per load screen, and it wasn't until a modder or a group of modders figured out how to speed up the load screens, it had something to do with turning off vsync unlocking your FPS to over 500 and then a few other tweaks, the mod would essentially speed up your load times by speeding up your FPS during load times, and then it would go back to somewhat normal parameters when you start playing, this model also made it so you could crank up your FPS while you played the actual game, instead of being locked at 60 FPS you could play at 90 to 120, my PC could only go up to 90 cuz I have a lower end PC, but you know what that was still better than 60, so in my opinion it was great, the only areas of that game I didn't really do so well was deep downtown Boston where I only got 30 FPS, my machine is very old, so it could barely handle that location, I bet if I had a 4090 I could run at 90 FPS everywhere I went in that damn game, but that's just too rich for my bones.
Anyway the load screens could easily be hidden in bethesda's games, as I said they know how to do it, they just have to be kind of creative when they do it, I think because they made too many cells that you could possibly go into, they just didn't want to make it for every unique cell, cuz that would just be way too much, so then they just figured it doesn't really matter because the game loads in 10 seconds or less anyway.
@@5226-p1enot only the cell issue there physics is tied to fps too. The engine is just bad for open world nowadays. There are other games like ac odyssey gta etc that doesnt need loading screens at all to move around or entering structures.
Well said unfortunately Bethesda has become so reliant on its modding community that it no longer knows or wants to create its own content
They need 16 times the leadership
And maybe one time less Todd Howard.
If they had 16 times the forehead, imagine the Tic Tac Toe tournaments they could play.
It just works.😂
I'm pretty sure their leadership is getting paid 16 times what the normal devs do.
@@bellissimo4520 Less Emil Whatever his last name is
Bethesda needs to learn what an actual city looks like and how to make a world that actually feels alive
Yeah even for a game about a world totally destroyed by nuclear war it still seems lazily left empty.
They just need to play one Rockstar game
@@monkee5th Y'all really need to understand that Rockstar games cost an insane amount of money compared to what other games cost. Stop using Rockstar games as the standard for the rest of the industry it's just unrealistic.
I'm all for shitting on Starfield, but to be fair, part of their game design these days is a symptom of the breakthrough they made in Oblivion where "Every NPC has a life, a schedule, a job, a hobby, a routine, blah blah blah" and that was absolutely mind blowing at the time. It was paraded around in every GameInformer for months. The engine (and frankly the budget) clearly can't handle a city of thousands of named NPCs with their own lives programmed out, so I don't mind suspending my belief a bit for a small city if it means I can at least play in a world where every character actually has a purpose, and isn't some nameless NPC that will despawn as soon as I leave.
The problem with Starfield is that it doesn't even do that. 99% of the people you see in New Atlantis are bizarre looking freaks who walk this way, turn around and walk that way. No name. No purpose. You'll never see em again. And there's only like 10 of them in a given park or plaza, if you're lucky.
you think the cities are bad? they absolutely are but no one ever mentions how most of the MAIN ROADS go up at like 70 degree angles, they're practically cliffs and we're supposed to believe people use those? this applies to literally every bethesda game post oblivion by the way, including the fallouts
the worst part is when they say "it's not REALLY like that, we just designed it like that because of time constraints", they've been using that excuse since oblivion in 2006, if you don't have the time to make it happen then PLEASE do something else
It's not about the engine. It's about lack of passion, and an abundance of arrogance. Modders out there have fixed most of the glitches and bugs with the creation engine years ago. Why does Bethesda not do this? They don't have the passion to go back and redo all the work they did, and they are arrogant enough to think "it's just fine, they still buy, they'll keep buying" and until now we have.
It’s insane to me that big time modders don’t even want to bother with Starfield
I fully agree nobody would care about the engine if they actually made the game good
The constant loading screens beg to differ
Eh no
@@HorseArmourlike you said in the beginning, you know nothing about this.
My dude Starfield gets modded all the time.
It's never a bad engine or low graphics that kills the game. The problem is writing, shallowness and inflated ego. I'd happily play another elder scrolls game in outdated graphics and poor engine if it had writing, passion and art direction of Morrowind.
This. You can't say you're a game studio who does Roleplaying Games and then have terrible writing. Not in a post BG3 era.
Spoken like a true ignorant. All they'e done since 2002 is remake morrowind with less and less options. The engine also needs to evolve
Bingo! Start and end with good writing!
Bad gameplay does kill games eventually
Actually a bad engine by definition kills games.
If the engine can't support the game, the game literally won't work.
The writing can be GARBAGE, if the actual game is good enough, most people will just write the story off or install a story mod to indulge more in the awesome gameplay. The other way around works too, Vampire the masquerade Bloodlines had a TON of visual and many gameplay problems, but the story aspect was so good it held the whole game up.
Creation Engine IS Gamebryo Engine, just updated. And they updated "both" more than once, so, it's the same thing with a different name.
That's not entirely accurate. It's based off of the Gamebryo Engine, but it's so heavily modified that Bethesda effectively made it their own. The fact that Gamebyro stopped updating 12 years ago but Creation Engine 2 is still being updated to this day is proof.
For example technically the game engine used to make FF15 and Forspoken, Luminous Engine, is the same engine that was used to make FF14. But only bits and pieces were taken, and so much of the code for FF14's engine is its own that it's effectively its own custom game engine, the same is true for the Creation Engine.
@@RegalPixelKingff 14 is an online mmo so it probably can do more than what ppl can do in bethesda games like better combat
You clearly know nothing about game engines, so why do you speak with so confidence? Unprompted even.
If we go by your logic, CoD runs on Quake engine from 1996, "just" updated. That's how software is developed my dude, you update it. Do you think every version of ANY software is built from ground up? No it isn't. Unreal Engine 5 is not the same thing as the original Unreal Engine just because it's an updated version.
@@RegalPixelKing Technically you are right but practically is the same engine update by Bethesda . It´s like if i take UE5 call Mimi and start update the engine my self . The result will still be UE5 with a different name and some code from me but still UE5 .
@@Starcrafter23 Ok i know nothing . Explain to my then : You know things teach me .
The Creation engine isn't the problem. It might still be the best engine for the job.
To quote the Escapist:
“So maybe the solution is to throw away the creation engine and license a modern, stable, feature-rich engine like Unreal Engine or CryEngine? Except, Bethesda games have some rather particular needs that aren’t covered by the typical off-the-shelf engines. Bethesda games need to store the state of the entire world. Players expect that if they slay the Underking, loot his tomb, and pose the Underking’s twice-dead body with his face pressed against the seat of his throne, they should be able to come back days later and find the tomb exactly as they left it. If they toss 400 cheese wheels on the ground in the town of Whiterun, then those cheese wheels better still be there the next time they visit. The game needs to be able to handle large-scale AI behaviors that have agents roaming all over the world and going through a daily routine, even when their part of the world isn’t loaded. Most importantly, the game needs to be very open to modding so that end users can make sweeping changes to the gameplay, art, sounds, music, animations, and interface, using self-contained package files. These aren’t impossible-to-solve problems, but they do run against how a lot of modern game engines are designed. If Bethesda wanted to use one of the big-name engines out there, it would require extensive modifications. That would just lead them back to where they are now, with buggy games based on an engine that’s been twisted in ways it was never designed to go.”
The issue with Creation aka Gamebryo isn't that it's modified, but that's it's a 20 year old fucking engine. Morrowind was built on it!
Constant loading screens aren't great for modern games
Edit: OP, you know it's not about the age. Address the fact that Skyrim is built like a PS2 game. The engine is stuck in the era in which it was made, so their 'open worlds' are always divided into cells, little subareas like you're designing a level-based 64-bit game. All those other engines you cite don't have this fucking problem. Way to go missing the point, buddy!
@@InhabitantOfOddworld
Firstly, The age of an Engine is irrelevant when it comes to software development. There's 20+ year old code in Windows 11, MacOS Sonoma and [insert any current Linux Distro] because that code works for the underlying systems.
Secondly, Plenty of games are built on older established engines. GTA6 is being built on RAGE. An Engine that came out nearly 18 years ago with a Table Tennis Game. Apex Legends and Half Life Alyx released on Source. An Engine that ran the original Half Life. Unreal is based on 20+ year old code as well.
It kind of is the problem since it cannot generate a huge open world without tying the physics to fps
The engine isn't the problem, but it is a symptom of the real problem. Bethesda has a serious lack of competent employees. From Software also uses their own engine and they make Bethesda look like clowns in comparison.
BG3 was made on an old ass engine, most popular game of the year
Bethesda needs a new everything.
I’ll be honest everything Bethesda claims the creation engine can’t do seems to have been made by modders already using the creation engine. I think they just don’t have anyone left who knows how to utilise the engine or make a new one for that matter. Hence why they’re considering unreal engine cause they don’t have anyone on staff that has the technical expertise necessary to play around with their old engine or upgrade it.
Why not just higher modders at this point? Like seriously.
There's a difference between "This engine can do this" and "I can MAKE this engine do this."
Modded games of Skyrim or Fallout, are NOT stable. Like, ever. That's because when modders MAKE the game do something Bethesda said it can't do, they're either doing it at best, VEEEERY carefully, or they're just making it work and if some people get lag spikes, crashes or something seemingly totally unrelated just explodes..... Welp, not really their problem. Sure they'll try to fix it, and many times they CAN, but that's ONE person, or a small team, working on ONE specific feature in a DEDICATED manner.
ALL Dave has to do, is check if his house mod isn't suddenly underground. That's easier than you THINK it is. Modding is not fast and easy work by any means, at least not the bigger mods. But it's FOCUSED, and ultimately there are shortcuts you as a modder can take that developers can't. Devs have to think about a LOT of different things, for example, the SIZE of the game. A modder can make a 12 gig mod however he wants. It's the player's decision to install it, and it's the player's fault if mods tear the game a new asshole and render it unplayable until you hard reinstall all of Skyrim not missing a single file otherwise the game literally won't start. This is COMMON btw. Modding is NOT stable, the actual game MUST be stable, and the Creation Engine has very clear limits regarding what you can and can't do. Modders, do not need to care about what you shouldn't do. That is the difference.
Not that I'm saying Bethesda knows their engine inside and out, I COMPLETELY agree with everything else you said, they're FUCKED over there, and I'm willing to bet they don't have the money to fix it. Them looking lustfully at Unreal Engine confirms that for me.
@@rzwitdauncut nepotism
@@haku8135So after TES6 they will probably move over to Unreal?
@@sacredpower7530 I'm afraid, after TES6 they'll move to a dumpster. Hope not, but overall picture isn't bright at all.
7:28 "hopefully they take the feedback" lol
Don't count on it just ask the Fallout 76 players. Yes they do have a player base with 76 but they are getting frustrated with how Bethesda rarely listen to their concerns or what players want in the game. It's become a huge grindfest and it seems the Atomic Shop is were Bethesda puts it resources when it comes to Fallout 76
@@monkee5thDon't forget that Fallout 4 is still pretty much broken on consoles after the next gen update. What has happened to that once great studio?
The Creation Engine wasn't so much made for a specific purpose as it was built on top of Gamebryo
Yeah that’s true, it kinda evolved from GameBryo. I was trying to say that I think it serves very well to the style of game they develop. I appreciate the comment though considering I left that out haha, hopefully someone can learn something new from it
@@HorseArmour except the loading screens or how the player can venture too far from an origin point and break everything
Morrowind was made with NetImmerse, which would later be upgraded to Gamebryo.
@@Ghorda9 or the fact that literally everything is tied to your fps being 60
Fallout New Vegas was and still is amazing, the Creation Engine is the least of Bethesda's problems.
Also the Creation Engine just isn't made for space games so if Bethesda wants a Starfield sequel it's gonna have to be in another engine.
Not necessarily. They could've made a Mass Effect 1 or Andromeda like game with more focus on a dozen or so hand-crafted locations and it would've been better than this 1000 planet nonsense.
The 2 biggest flaws of New Vegas is that it was made in a short amount of time, making it pretty hard to implement things properly, and it was hindered by consoles subpar hardware specs, specially PS3.
They probably can build upon their current own engine to make a proper space game, but that means they're not going to release it for another century 😂
Nice to be around for the birth of a new channel. We will watch your career with great interest.
The engine isn't the problem, but Bethesda's complete and utter incompetence, it doesn't matter what they do, they always find new ways of messing up and pumping out garbage.
There's a clear path they have laid out in front of them that leads them to being a 10/10 studio with amazing games that people love and cherish, and they look at that path and choose to go the complete opposite way. Either because they can't be asked to put in any form of effort, or because they are just completely inept.
I have no faith left in that studio.
it's part of the problem, everything made with it is riddled with legacy bugs and it doesn't do anything to reduce the amount of loading screens
It's definitely part of the problem
They never listen to those who play their games.
@@Ghorda9 It wouldn't be an issue if Bethesda actually spent the time to fix these bugs, some of them have been known for 20 years at this point, that's what I mean by utter incompetence.
And for the loading screens, I don't think they're a problem... as long as you don't try to use this ancient engine to make a space game... and even then, I'm sure you could still pull it off somewhat convincingly with some clever shenanigans, but that's a couple levels over what Bethesda are capable of.
@@BxPanda7 loading screens will only get worse as levels become more dense, Elden Ring doesn't have this problem at all and yet it's far more ambitious than Starfield
Game engines don't make bad games; people do.
Engines do matter for performance, but Bethesda just doesn't optimize their games. Give them any engine and their games will still be buggy and unoptimized.
I like your take Mr
Let me rephrase the original question: will new engine fix Bethesda's creative bankruptcy and corporate decision making producing bland safe boring slop? Is it engine's fault that ChatGPT can come up with better and more interesting quests than writers in Bethesda? I doubt that.
It wasn't even corporate slop, Todd legitimately thought it was creatively amazing. Its the game he wanted to make his whole life. Just because its creative doesn't mean its fun. Id rather take corporate safe slop over Starfield any day.
@@magnuserror9305 Starfield is the epitome of corporate safe slop
@@teamacio9043 Definitely not, Bethesda was taking a big chance on starfield. Seeing how its something they have no track record in making.
Safe corporate slop would be another fallout 76 or skyrim tier rerelease. Bethesda tried something new unlike anything they've done since fallout 3. Its a new ip in a new setting, with all new mechanics.
Problem is that Bethesdas creative dream, just wasnt good. Creative doesn't = good or safe.
No, but if their bank accounts are making them scared shitless enough, it's possible if they use a GOOD engine and just invest everything into making Elder Scrolls 6 a banger, we COULD get a good game. Which Bethesda REALLY fucking needs. Honestly, I'm not holding out hope.
@@haku8135 All previous Bethesda games post Morrowind were in some way shape and form fixed/improved/expanded/made fun by modders. They could ship shallow game with half baked features full of bugs and modders would fix it and add content within few weeks post launch. I doubt Unreal 5 will give them this luxury. What they'll sell us will be the final product, final proof of their incompetence.
I'm not sure they need a _different_ engine, but they sure need to take an honest open-minded look at HOW they are using it. Case in point: those loading screens *could* be hidden between animations / cut scenes, like some games do. Bethesda chose not to. That's on them leaving the old clunky old xbox requirement in place.
Look at how they implemented the inventory system for the past few games. It's the same plug/play and reskin with no thought to EVOLVING it, and it shows the most in Starfield, because you can click on an item to get through to extra details like what it scraps down into (Fallout), but that doesn't exist in Starfield, so you click through to .. another screen showing the same model. There's no PURPOSE to this screen now, but they have the same unsortable/unfilterable/clunky mess that they just keep plugging in and they never honestly sit back and try to evolve what they have.
"Let's make the AI better" just doesn't exist as a line in their internal development.
Well, if it is, it gets a hard cold star from some manager giving the "shut up, Jenkins, stink eye".
They need MORE than a new engine now. It seems someone walked up to them and blew their brains out and now they're just zombies walking around, "Argggh it just works, arggghh it just works."
One reason they need a new engine isn't just technical. It's to force them to abandon much of the laziness of their process that has set in over the decades, by approaching development from a new perspective.
And to be able to bring in outside talent that is well versed in modern engines like UE5. Smarter game designers avoid working for Bethesda because they'd be stuck using an archaic dead-end engine for a chunk of their career, and when it came time to leave they'd be rusty and not up to speed on what the rest of the industry is up to.
Hence they only hire modders that works with their engine only.
Unfortunately, most high-end engineers don't work with UE5 either. The only properly optimised single-player game running in UE5 is Black Myth, and the only multiplayer game made in UE5 outside of Epic that is properly optimised is The Finals, which -- to no one's surprise -- features advanced physics that were refactored in UE5 to mimic the Frostbite since the engineers at Embark are the former Frostbite engineers from DICE.
They need writers and throw out a bunch of management.
Creation originated from Gamebryo, and that originated from NetImmerse, It is familiar but i wish they would fix the bugs and optimize the engine.
Replacing the engine would remove alot of the legacy bugs that Bethesda has been ignoring for years, however it will not fix the writing, that's more on the writers including Emil.
Plus they would have to make a modding API if they want us to mod their games.
I know Morrowind already took care of the engine issue, there is an engine called OpenMW, and it was designed to be similar to NetImmerse, but it's more like a souped up version where it has minimal engine bugs, and even has quality of life changes to further improve the game, and yes it uses ESM and ESP files like the old engine.
5 years from now, after the modders improve the game, it will be beloved like Fallout and Skyrim. It just sucks right now.
Hey man, I really like your style of video. You're killing it - keep it up 👏
Preciate it sire
A new engine would mean no mods, or at least make all of us begin modding again from scratch.
Mods are the REAL appeal of Bethesda playgrounds.
Fuck mods just make a good game you don't HAVE to mod. The reality of it is the whole reason mods exist is because the base game just isn't good enough for people to feel entertained long enough. Nobody needed mods 15 years ago, apart from things going on that were on PC
Bruh they are entirely dependendt on mods to fix their games also other games that dont use ganebryo 3.0 still has mods.
Stop expecting modders to fix the god damn game.
I don’t think this is a real issue. Cyberpunk also has an engine people are not used to, and it has mods.
If they change the engine people can just adapt if the devs made the game mod friendly.
no
@@EliJahFedgo4tr The reason mods exist is because people enjoy making them
BGS doesn't need a new engine as such. They need to re-create their engine from scratch with modern and future tech in mind. The problem with just updating an engine is that the code eventually turns into "spaghetti code".
People don't seem to understand that switching to UE5 or any others 3rd party engine would almost entirely kill off mods. You know, the one thing BGS games are all about.
They also need to fire Emil and hire proper writers, same thing with the art designers. If you think the projectile is square because the cartridgeless ammo is means you're in the wrong line of work.
hmm... Instead of them saying lets use the creation engine and have the community fix our game.
They should have the mindset of lets make a fun feature completed game that has a compelling story line and deep plot and lore. And give the modding community tools to improve onto our game so they can make fun and interesting stuff for it. If they use the approach along with using microsoft to bug fix they could do well.
While I'm not a game designer, coder, etc... I think the problem I've always had with this question is that... All of the answers I typically see to it just assume it's just one problem.
Like, yes you could fix the engine... But that doesn't fix the bad writing, lack of a design document and lack of developer cohesion, and so on.
IE there's more than just one hole on this sinking ship that needs to be plugged
I don't see how having 6 planets and one star system would fix the problem. You would still have loading screens everywhere. The creation engine just can not be seamless.
You talk about Skyrim and Fallout, but those games each time there's a cool castle, dungeon, cave outpost, or anything that's remotely interesting you're going to have a loading screen to access it. Sometimes, certain dungeons have multiple loading screens.
I recently booted up Skyrim again for the first time and during my first hour I had 18 loading screens. This is just how Bethesda games are made.
While I didn't enjoy Starfield, I am glad that Bethesda decided to experiment to show something we haven't seen before instead of doing it like Ubisoft, where once you played at least one of their games, you played them all.
That wasn't experimenting. It's the same old BGS formula, but with less exploration.
@@San_Vito nice try buddy
While nearly everyone loves better graphics, sound, and music, the last thing Bethesda needs is new flashy game engine. Seriously what they need isn't really new, but to learn what their audience liked about their games (Morrowind's environment, lore and main story, Oblivion's side quests, Skyrim's and Fallout 4's exploration, environmental story telling, and mod editor. Now, throw a good main quest story writer/designer, a desire to put their fans and making a fun game first. If they do that anything they released would be a win-win, where they are adored/respected, paid, and we get a game to sink hundreds of hours in. Everybody is happy and we all get back to enjoying and making fun of their games again!
This was a very pleasant video to watch! Hope to see more of stuff like this! 🙂
Changing their engine isn't going to improve their writing. It wasn't Fallout 3's engine who was complaining about players turning his great American Novel into paper airplanes by asking questions like "what do they eat? They can't all be looting 200 year old grocery stores" or "Why is Little Lamplight filled with school children 200 years later?"
Yeah, the engine is an issue, but it's not the main issue here: bad writing.
It is the main issue since nobody played these games for thw writing. They played them for the freedom
@@San_Vitonot very smart huh?
@@larrote6467 Why? Care to make an argument instead of just insulting me? I do care about the writing, and I don't see much freedom when the game doesn't react at all to your choices. You're the Dragonborn and the leader of all the factions at once and no one cares at all. The freedom is just in your head. If you're going to roleplay something in those games by just imagining stuff on your own, well, you can do that in tons of games...
because they don't trust adults' they literally tell you that and most of them can't defend themselves
3:03 This is what I've been saying. If they just compressed everything down so it wasn't so massive and sprawling they coulda kept the space theme effectively and still made it an engaging game
Honestly, it would've been cool if it were only a few planets in starfeild that we could explore, and if we wanted to explore that planet, we would've needed resources to be able to explore it, so when we finish grinding to be able to get to the other planets, the loading screen would 100% be so worth it
Fallout 4 didn't make you think they'd mess with the formula? God bless you young man.
The engine is the least of their problems right now. Content quality matters far more.
Bethesda needs to see this video, and take notes for the future.
As much as i hate the creation engine sometimes, it's the magnum opus of Bethesda. Skyrim was pretty groundbreaking for the time, and proved that when updated, you can accomplish nearly everything with the creation engine. And that's based on the same engine Morrowind runs on!
In the end, it's just a bunch of code that allows certain mechanics and exist. So as long as they update the foundation from time to time (moving to 64-bit with FO4 for example), it will be fine.
Just look as Skyrim today, with the proper mods, most of the experience still holds up fine honestly.
I'm still wondering who ever thought that making a game like starfield in the Creation engine was a good idea, especially considering games like Start Citizen are their competition.
But maybe even more, who wrote that horrible dialogue?!
If people think Bethesda has bugs now can you imagine the games on Unreal 5? Absolute slop
Skyrim takes more like 1-2 hours from end to end due to terrain elevation, it might be 30 mins in normal dragonflight or collision removed.
Honestly looking at it as you do without programming knowledge my conclusion is Starfield's real problem is they took a main map and adapted it into ONE of the dungeons
while taking what should have been a generated dungeon and making it into multiple main maps... This is why every map has a loading screen between it and space and why Space requires fast travel between every planet...
Bethesda seems to have created their own biggest problem by not using what problems they had to fix each other(make space "smaller" and decrease speed in zones across it by making certain zones increase your travel speed while others keep you at "null increase" to imitate a gravity well and decrease load on the main "map" of space, then make every planet a loaded dungeon. So you don't need the "airlock" of 2 loading screens per landing site).
It feels like a management level developer problem.
Its an interesting decision. The creation engine IS limited, but the editor they have is, or at least WAS, basically finely tuned to pump out Bethesda style RPGs. I think it was Josh Sawyer I heard saying once that there was NO way they could've made all of new Vegas in a year without the creation engine and its dev tools, and quite frankly I believe it. Companies switching to UE seems honestly way less about the actual engine capability, but more about finding devs that know how to work in that engine. It happened with Konami's FOX engine, it happened with CDPR's RedEngine, it just happened to 343's Slipspace engine. They wouldn't spend time upgrading these engines if they weren't capable at making the games they need to make. It's about just how many devs in the market know how to use UE. everyone does.
Pretty much. The analogy often used regarding engines is that they are like cars. Unreal, Unity and Godot are the "minivans" of engines in that they are great all rounders and anyone can drive them but you may need to modify them on their own for specific use cases. Others like RAGE, Cryengine and Frostbite are akin to "racecars" in that if you have skilled drivers and mechanics, that racecar's performance will be incredible in races.
Creation is like "a weird truck" that might not be great at racing but the people using the truck really know how to use it for their purposes.
You mean bethesda adventure games
Another big issue is engine upkeep cost. The cost to maintain an engine is ever growing. And companies that specifically work on engines and nothing else, have a leg up and push expectations. Making other companies drawn in costs.
Another thing to consider is... do we really want every game under the sun to be made with Unreal? As someone who actually works in Unreal Engine for a living, I don't. Don't get me wrong, it's a great engine, but an engine contributes a lot to the look and feel of the game and I don't want every game to feel the same. Sure, you can do your own custom stuff on top of Unreal, but that will only get you so far
@@Starcrafter23 Thats a good point. It seems the industriy moves toward a engine duopol. Unity for smaller simpler games, Unreal for visually intense big budget titles. And as you mentioned it already shows - UE games often look (and feel) similar and UE5 continues this. It was to same wih id tech 5s lighting, you could tell if a game used this engine. I would rather have a diverse offering of modern game engines (like decima), tailored to specific use cases. Licensing instead of owning your own in-hous engine also comes with limitations in modding and distribution. The move to UE from in-house game engines is basically cost motivated (more=>cheaper devs, faster time to market), not to make better games.
The facial animations for NPCs you actually interact with is pretty good actually, way better than what they did with FO4. I would like to see the version of this engine improved on a more hand crafted fantasy world.
The engine isn't THE problem. It's a problem. And their playground isn't 10 square miles, it's 4 suqare kilometers. Ie: the same limitations as gamebryo before it. And it shows. But the real problem is the management that not only allow slop like this, but excuse it. As vehemently as they do toxicly. Making it seem like the standard gamer is the problem for having a morsel of expectation from their favorite company. It's actually insulting to be a fanboy, and they worked hard to earn that award
5:32 I decided to play fallout 4 on the survival difficulty for the first time and... well, I mostly stayed at the left upper part of the map and got to level 70 before going to diamond city, to get the quest to find Nick (but to be fair the first 15 - 20 levels I got on Sanctuary by scraping and building a bunch of shelves).
Firstly, I just wanna say I’m glad I found this channel, subbed, watched both your videos now and can’t wait to see what you keep putting out!
I don’t think it boils down to ONLY the engine, but I think it’s a large part. A lot of people suggest Unreal engine, and I think seeing what the new cyberpunk game feels like on it will be a good indicator, and how they handle mod tools; since lack of modding is a huge argument I see to not switch.
There’s a few games, SQUAD, Insurgency sandstorm, OHD, that all use unreal, and all have a public SDK (Frostpunk 2 as well)
which is the unreal development tools the devs used, just restricted to protect code. SQUAD, and ISS have had total conversion mods like the Star Wars ones, so if Bethesda, CDPR, etc, any company swapping to unreal that already releases public mod tools, would continue releasing mod tools even with the new engine, then modability will remain.
In my opinion, not necessary if they actually choose to get better writers, but if they stick with the dogshit writing, they may be able to use a new engine to eliminate some of the criticism in the gameplay/technical side.
I appreciate it! And yeah I agree, I think it’s way more than “just” the engine. I don’t think they’d personally make the switch… like ever. Haha. But it would be interesting of course. I honestly believe the writing has a lot to do with how empty the games have felt lately.
Oblivion is NOT a perfect game. But the writing in that game makes me feel some kind of way. I know others might disagree, but Oblivion and even sometimes Skyrim feels much more alive than Starfield.
@@HorseArmouroh yeah, I don’t ever think they will. If they won’t listen to the criticism of writing, which imo is a lot easier to fix than an entire engine, they’re not gonna do all the work than the engine.
I totally agree, been a Bethesda fan for as long as I can remember, watching my cousin play morrowind, then my first tes game was oblivion which is still my favourite. Played oblivion, f3, Skyrim endlessly, Skyrim being my least favourite, but still acknowledging the world being alive, and designed with care. NV is my fave creation engine game, but not Beth so not part of the discussion.
Starfield, I literally couldn’t even play past like 10 hours, it was just copy and paste, boring. They should’ve just done one planet with one large zone, or done x amount of planets in a solar system, with smaller zones like KOTOR; I think that would’ve been very cool. But the writing, world design, etc is just bad.
Appreciate the videos and the discussion around it!
0:10 you just got a new sub
What I've found is that most gamers/content creators who discuss game engines don't know WTF they're talking about. Not at all.
Maybe or maybe not, it's a pretty well designed engine and can do a lot more stuff with updated scripts, I would suggest even more 'patching' of the internal code/limitations to reflect modern hardware capabilities, like that 4ram patcher which made a major performance difference- the actual structure of it works well considering what you can do potentially.
But for ESVI they should definitely make a whole new engine that outdoes even this one imo.
The engine was perfectly fine, what they need to do is to hire actual writer to literally write actual fun story, and hire actual level creators to put the story in play.
It's felt a little long in the tooth even when Skyrim came out. Though I am a believer of "You make due with what you have." I have played A LOT of Euro jank games. Vampire Bloodlines The Masquerade is one of all time favorite games, and it's held together with Pritt Stick and cello tape. What makes it so good is the story it tells. The choices you can make. (It also set a really high bar for modern vampire lore for me.) And that's where Starfield fell flat on it's face. "Wide as an ocean deep as a puddle." Gets thrown around a lot when talking about Starfield and I think it's fitting. Cause how is there more stuff to do and things to care about in Cyberpunk's single city than an entire galaxy in Starfield? When you've got so much space sci-fi to pull from!?
So, no I don't think they need to change engines, unless they really want to take advantage of the graphics. Cause "RTX on" does not a great game make.
I didn’t know Bethesda changed engines but the creation engine just made me fell like I was playing oblivion in space. It would have been a good experience if it was released in 2004 instead of 2024.
Someone with a sane opinion. So many people trash the engine and that BGS must change it. The engine is what makes BGS games BGS games. There are countless other RPG-likes out there but none of them are Skyrim/Fallout. They have a special magic even thou the writting and quest design sucks, they are fun to play. Plus with F76 they managed to expand the map from the 10*10 to a really large one. I hope they use that´technology for ES6
What other company uses an engine this old? None. They could have made an updated engine based on this.
@@attilamarics3374lol. Tell me you know nothing about game engines without telling me you know know thing about game engines.
You want an answer to that question? Literally 90% of games use an engine nearly as old as creation engine. Unreal engine 5, the clue is in the numbering my man.
I’ll still never forget that Xbox 360 Skyrim showcase. I shat myself
Skyrim's BIGGEST weakness was the writing and character dialog and quest "choices" that never existed
Give a talented and passionate team gamebryo and they’ll create the best damn rpg ever made.
So no I definitely don’t think the engine is even top 50 of the issues in Bethesda
Not with that amount of loading screens. Loading screens also makes exploring very tedious and uninteresting as its happened with me in fallout london
@@dranzerjetli5126 tiny attention span tik tok zoomer says what
My honest answer will be. If the modders prefer this engine it should stay if they prefer other it should change.
My honest answer would be: they need to make a good game. The modding community should not be a priority and something they had to take important decisions around.
@@San_Vito lol
Starfield does look good.Face animation is problay realistic to what humans will be like in the future judging by the direction weir going atm
Actually..... yeah I have to agree.
If people are still slobbering over Unreal getting progressively better graohics (and that's it), I'd say it's kinda hypocritical to say otherwise. Unreal is an engine you use because its easy not because you want to inovate. Not saying the creation engine is the best thing since sliced bread. Just if you want to get that into it, apply the same standards for everyone.
Black myth wukong says otherwise
@@dranzerjetli5126 That's one game of how many have been on Unreal? The exception of the rule is not the rule.
@@dranzerjetli5126 Black Myth isn't innovative at all.
They need to do everything differently. Their desperate clinging to a very old engine is a symptom of major problem in their leadership and management.
Also the creation engine IS the gamebryo engine with a few tweaks and some new features. Its not as big an upgrade as when the Unreal Engine changes versions. I'm not saying they need the Unreal engine, but they need to do something.
The game engine would’ve made a better story. It wouldn’t be able to overcompensate for the lazy writing and just pour mission structure.
Yeah there’s a lot more factors into why every new Bethesda game feels “lesser”.
Bethesda needs a new game engine, CEO, CFO, COO, Lead Designer, Lead Programer, and Lead Social Media Manager.
I cant emphasize enough that new CEO part.
Hey, good video dude. Keep it up :P
Thanks bud
Dann that oblivion gameplay makes wanna jump back to it and play it again, I was trying to wait for skyblivion but I may have to do it again. God those games are amazing
It's not a problem of them not wanting to change engines.
It's a problem of them being technically incapable of doing that, much like how if you pull a life support machine grafted into someone, that person will immediately cease to exist.
I thought this was a very thoughtful video, thanks!
lets just all remember that the engine has no emphasis or help for modders. Its entirely on the devs to decide how mod-able the game is, and the modders for the willingness to mod.
Makes total sense. Bethesda “poked the bear” and the bear poked back. They can learn from this. Let’s hope that they do.
add more aiming zones( eyes,neck,groin) etc would be really nice for goofing and/or immersion
Did Starfield and previous games not have this?
what a crap take. it doesn't matter if bethesda has the best engine ever made, if they can't write a good story and design good gameplay, quests etc then it doesn't matter what engine they have, it's going to suck!!
They need to look at the delivery of their storytelling and cinematography in every important scene they make, then look at scenes from BG3. Look at the way they use camera placement, body and facial animations, voice acting, music and how they build the scene to capture and convey emotions. Then they need to ask themselves: Is this scene done, or is it just delivering the bare minimum, the spoken word? If their engine isn't able to deliver on what they need to convey - then they need a new engine. If not, they just need to care more about everything they do.
No. They do, however, need better management and focus when upgrading the engine and adding gameplay features.
modders tend to say it's the engine, which is hilarious because both sides are actually in agreement. modders are people with experience with the engine code, and know how to interact with it, and so from this perspective, they see it as the problem. but we need to take a step back, competent people that actually know how to code.
the problem is that bethesda staff are not as competent as you, and do not know how to code. giving shitlords a better engine is giving a blind driver a bugatti. it aint gonna do shit for the end product. yeah the engine is part of the problem. but it sure af is not first on the chopping block.
simple triage and weighting of issues. fire the incompetents, let the real coders put some goddamn effort in, and then once they can show and point out where to tackle it, then we can rework the codebase. not the other way around. the current path is going to make things worse, it is literally enabling tards that can't write, can't script, can't bugfix, and won't change. great, my game needs less loading screens and doesn't crash. oh, it's bethesda? i thought it was ubisoft...
The Creation engine is fine, it is old. But the Unreal and Quake engines are even older.
They all have different limitations and strengths
Engines evolve over time. The Creation engine started with NetImmerse, wich became Gamebryo en then evolved in Creation engine 1 and then 2.
Its important to keep updating the engine and cleaning up technical debt when designing a new game.
What's more important is choosing the right engine for your game. Or change your game plans to the limitations of your engine.
Creation engine has problems with loading infinite worlds. Its divided in little parts, hence the loading screens.
It needs to unload old data to make room for new data.
Creation engine isn't a good pick for Starfield unless they choose to limit it to a handfull of different planets or get really creative.
Can you do that with Unreal engine? Maybe? Im no expert
No Man's Sky had to design their own engine because the thought that was the best option.
Ps, braindead writing and lazyness doesnt help either with Starfield
starfield proved that bethesda doesn't need to replace their game engine.
they need to replace themself.
Nice, getting in on the ground floor to this channel before it explodes into the thousands. I'm subscriber 881, pal. Don't forget it.
Hopefully, the amount of BGS *constructive criticism* channels gain more traction, so they realize what their fans want and what they don't, and how to deviate from what made Starfield such a pathetic first entry to a new series.
I just want actual roleplaying games again, not streamlined slop. I wish you well on your crusade, broham.
There are people who claim Bethesda modified Gamebryo so much that Creation is its own engine, but its worth noting that Starfield has a bug from Oblivion.
Its more about the people behind the engine and if modern BGS is anything to go by things does not look great...
CE divides worlds in worldspaces. Thats is like a screne, or stage. So you handles it more like acts in a theatre, than a movie with one big take. In BGS games it is totally expected and normal to have an new space when you enter a dungeon or building, insted a seamingless transition from the outside.
So this is al technical limitation, but it becomes to an element of storytelling and rules how this worlds work. Changing the engine would have a big impact of the way how a BGS game is experienced.
In starfield we have one failed decission - whle planets - aka "stages" to stay on a theatrical view - are not hand crafted. No determined story, no noticeable stage crafting - all debris an clutter.
So it is not a quetions for the used engine, it is a question of investment in creative manpower.
I think the creation Engine 2 is pretty cool and the assets, shaders are awesome. Without the Creation Engine we could not have anything near the mod capabilities we have now with BGS games.
The only thing they fumbled HARD with Starfield are "just" the design pillars, gameplay, story and overall fun. The engine is probably not at fault at all.
Creation Engine 2 is basically creation engine 1.5. It uses the core code from CE1 but allows for SOME updated features. (FSR, Ultra Wide screen, Higher res textures), but it's not a generational leap by any stretch of imagination. Bethesda / Elder Scrolls is so tied to the workflow that CE offers that switching or building a new engine would take a decade and when MS bought them, I promise you they cared about ROI and dumping time and money (resources) into a new game engine wasn't worth the risk. Also, I believe Creation Engine was from the source code of GameByro as the project got disbanded they asked for the source code and made CE out of it.
As for StarField. Nobody (closest being No Man Sky) has come CLOSE to delivering a true space sim, even though everyone wants one (just look at the investment numbers of Star Citizen, which has turned out to be Vaporware, AVOID AVOID AVOID, no matter what anyone else tells you). The amount of engineering/architecture required to build that open universe, isn't achievable with today's (or tomorrows) compute resources.
If we have to ask the question, and the answer is maybe or probably, the answer is probably yes.
I really liked Starfield. But I understand what you're talking about, and overall it's a pretty good opinion. (I've had that thought, too.) Starfield just works differently. If in old Bethesda games, the main content was in locations that are densely spaced. In Starfield, all the content is transmitted through quests and when I went on quests, I found a lot of new locations, stories, characters and the game was revealed, no worse than the old games of the studio were revealed to me. Sorry for my English....)
bethesda needs to hire some like edith puthy to their team, she was one of the up and coming designers at saw con this year.
Drew Peacock too, he’d make a great edition
How did Unreal stay up to date? The same could be done with Bethesda's engine. They have already had a decade to modernize it. Didn't they spend the time well?
It's design choices that hold them back
People don’t understand that if the engine change = no more mods or at least modding will not be like now.
Plenty of games are mod friendly. Retaining modability is a poor excuse for Bethesda to keep running with severely outdated tech.
Yeah, it'll be EASIER. Especially if Bethesda could create an engine that's more robust and accommodates mods. Which they definitely can't, no way they have the money or know how to do that. Switching to UE is probably their ONLY shot at making a game good enough to score a win.
I believe a change in the game engine would also force Bethesda to change their approach to game design. They seem to go out of their way to avoid trying new things. Given the long wait for ES6 up to this point, I do the game will struggle to meet fan expectations when it finally does come out.
The engine is not their problem and changing it would be too costly. But they write and balance their games better.
Lets take FO4:
For the tutorial things make a pod in Vault 111, make those pop-ups otional,and keep this stuff out of the mainquest.
Imagine the frustration for an experienced player who wants to heal, gets a message "heal your character" and dies because this message prevented healing the character.
Then break up the Museum of Freedom part first you get Sturges and Mama Murphy. And after you got the courser chip you can place the showdown with the deathclaw giving you Garvey and the Longs. Well, the ghouls in Lexington seperated the group😊
My personal wish would be an option to get the Institute intact without having to kill the Railroad.
Or write a better story why this is impossible.
And there should be a bit of optional post mainquest story line, not just a flag in diamond city. The Institute could offer some intersting
options.
Also split the robot limit(INT) and human population limit(CHR) in your settlements.
Local leader --> Robotics expert for provisioners
Cap Collector --> Hacker for the vendors
Introduce "provisioner stations" with a terminal for management and recall stuff, too.
Oh 2 things about Far Harbour:
Link the (up to)4 workshops after the Captain´s Dance together, maybe even the Nakano Residence. And the Nakano Residence should reflect its status as a link between the Commonwealth and Far Harbour maybe even as a new settlement.
Raider settlements need a better food handling. At least allow food suppliers to be micromanged.
Or better: Give the Operators the ability to use robots for farming(without penalty) they don´t care who they exploit and might even like "honest", profitable work. Look at the Forged for inspiration.
The Pack could also turn food suppliers into mangeable slave colonies.
Without any tech knowledge I can say that Creation engine is just an updated Gamebryo engine. There is no way they created a new one from scratch and it looks and feels exactly like the old one...
Crysis back in 2007 was the biggest leap in graphics to this day
They gotta have those pencil physics
Creation Engine isn't good for anything but moddability, that's certainly also the reason Bethesda kept it for Starfield. Even in Skyrim, the engine still has so many underlying problems to this day. Some of them got fixed by modders but they are still somehow limited since the source code for Skyrim is not public. Someone did a deep dive into the new creation engine used in Starfield and found many problems that are so deeply tight into the engine that it's practically impossible to fix them without rewriting almost the whole thing. Getting a proper streaming system into CE would also be a monumental task and I really don't wanna see loading screens for interior in TES6.
No they don't. They need to take their players serious and work on their engine. I love the creation engine, I love how it is object oriented, no other engine can render so many interatable objects and continue running like the creation engine does, is a powerfull tool managed my mediocre and creatively broken people. Most likely the engineers that created and manage the engine left the company long ago.
Objects mean nothing if the game is boring af
@@dranzerjetli5126 I agree, and how entertaining the game is has 0 to do with the engine.
lmao i wouldn't take anyone seriously by judging everyone else in the comment section of this video
Bethesda needs a different Bethesda.
Great video. When hoping BGS improves looking to the future, it’s easy to get bogged down in the idealistic narrative of BGS needing to revamp _everything_. New/better writing, quests, world building, items, RPG elements, environments, etc. I think a lot of people who are critical of Starfield (and let’s be honest, BGS since Fo4), need to be realistic in where effort improving yields the best returns. Creation really seems to be a modders paradise that helped build a community unlike any other. With limited time and man-hours, focusing on switching to something like the Unreal Engine might do more harm than good when they could be focusing on improving other aspects that are more noticeable.
Thanks for sharing your essay on this! I’ve played Oblivion, Skyrim and Fallout 3. Starfield doesn’t look sexy so I didn’t want it. Elder Scrolls VI is in danger of not looking sexy, either. I’ll just leave it at this - It’s 2024. Bethesda is still stuck in 2006.
Yes, that is a really good point. It's crazy how unintuitive Bethesda was with thier own system. Just one solar system with the density of oblivion would of been gold!!