Bethesda cant let go of the Creation Engine because it's both a blessing and a curse

Decontamination Silo said:
Does it use it's own custom engine? I don't know anything about the series on a technical level.
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It does. I think it's the only game released on that engine. They made it specifically for Sims 4 since their previous engine is highly customized for single core usage. Their previous engine was also highly moddable if you want to know.

Paradox games like Crusader Kings and Stellaris also offer a lot of modding. In fact, mods can be downloaded on their official website and featured on their own launcher. Their engines are custom as well and only their own games have that engine.
 
It's not necessarily the engine, in general it's more about the open 3D world rpg genre and the layers of complexity/systems added. There's a good reason for there's not many comparable games out there with a bug-free track record.
 
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My hope is that Bethesda has a team invested in building a new engine from the ground up. You can patch and add as many things on top, but the base for the engine is still 20 years old.

It's time to start from scratch instead of constantly "evolving" a very old engine from a time single core CPUs were still a thing.

And I'd like this game to come out decent, I like space games.
 
Not many games, if any, are as big in scope and complex as Bethesda RPGs, and besides the bad rep for the amount of bugs, I don't remember ever having a game breaking one at least (and some of the bugs were actually quite hilarious). Sure, I don't think it excuse the overall jankiness, but I think it's somewhat understandable.

We will see how much they improved things with Starfield. But I was never a hater of the engine, since I always loved the games they made on it.

Edit: Actually, Fallout NV on PC always stuttered like hell for me - that I would consider game breaking. Not sure if it still happens with the Windows Store version though.
 
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This is what a proprietary, purpose built engine offers : something different. Yes, it is difficult. Hopefully Starfield will launch in a good state.
 
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I used to mod using the creation engine. I loved it. It was incredibly efficient at building big, convincing worlds. Whenever I hear people shit on the engine its always very obvious they have no experience with it. Its surprisingly very user friendly and allows you to customise nearly anything on the fly. Any layman can start building some impressive shit after a few youtube tutorials. I actually think Bethesda should release a game that's a consumer friendly version of their engine. Make it a minecraft type experiance.

Of course there are some major bottlenecks that we continue to see in Bethesda games, but the remedy for that isn't as easy as just saying 'lets make this new game on UE5'. There's so much you have to do to make that transition, especially considering that Bethesda most likely has a work flow they like to follow that is directly informed by how the creation engine functions. Of course this workflow will then inform larger business strategies like funding, deadlines etc. Strategies that are decades in the making.

Personally I think there's nothing wrong with continuing to use the creation engine, they can keep modding it and expanding what they have. My issue with some of these prevalent issues we continue to see is that their design philosophies aren't directly tackling these issues. I think its a problem with their design strategy over their engine. I think if they wanted their engine to function without bugs they could probably do it, but whats a similar theme we continue to see from the industry at large now? Its rushing things to market to save money. I think Bethesda (like so many others) have fallen for the corporatisation of their studio. When a creative company gets too big it becomes near impossible to manage with focus. The answer isn't to throw out the creation engine, the answer is to have government regulation to stop companies selling broken consumer products. Fallout 4 still sold millions despite it releasing like shit. Thats not an engine issue, thats a company issue. The company didn't think it was worth the money to fix their engine because they knew it would sell either way. Starfield will release broken, but it will still make millions and meet projections. The industry is a bloated mess. The creation engine is a fucking cool piece of software
 
I don't mind them using their own engine. Just give me the option to enable raytraced lighting, reflections, and shadows. I would prefer to not use their engine's basic light probe GI paired with SSAO.
 
winjer said:
Nonsense. As if Bethesda is the only studio able to make scripts.

There is nothing special about the Creation Engine, expect for it's large amount of bugs and glitches.
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I love Kingdom Come but I find it rather perplexing that you've seem to have forgotten the poor state that Kingdom Come was in. It was basically unplayable for months because of its bugs. Seriously, it was awful. Corrupt gamesaves was just one of its problem, updates broke gamesaves, and you even had to update the game with updates in order. Many many quests was broken, and some couldn't be fixed by updates once broken, you had to restart with a new game, even if you was 100 hours in.. It was a huge mess.
 
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SlimeGooGoo said:
Zoomers never even bothered looking at the past, Gothic 2 and Ultima did a lot of things better.
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To be perfectly honest Gothic 2 is probably still my most loved RPG out there.
But this is also due to nostalgia.
But to be fair, combat is kind of minimalistic in PB games kinda like in Bethesda games.
 
rickybooby87 said:
1000 worlds, and we've only seen a handful, and they weren't that super impressive in terms of design.
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What's impressive to you? We've seen literally nothing but a few meters of a bunch of planets...

The freedom is what matters, freedom to kill everyone in town or to not kill at all, this is what differentiates Bethesda games from other RPGs
 
lh032 said:
But lets be honest, Bethesda is the only developer that able to make big AAA RPG games like this so far
They have no competitor as todate.
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Errm.

Kingdom Come Deliverance is a brilliant 100+ hour RPG that does most things better than Bethesda games, especially important things like writing and quest design.

And I am playing Enderal right now, which is also a huge 100 hour RPG - this one uses Skyrim's engine, but is also better than Skyrim at the most important aspects.
 
nemiroff said:
I love Kingdom Come but I find it rather perplexing that you've seem to have forgotten the poor state that Kingdom Come was in. It was basically unplayable for months because of its bugs. Seriously, it was awful. Corrupt gamesaves was just one of its problem, updates broke gamesaves, and you even had to update the game with updates in order. Many many quests was broken, and some couldn't be fixed by updates once broken, you had to restart with a new game, even if you was 100 hours in.. It was a huge mess.
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Why are you quoting me?
Did you see me talking about KCD, anywhere on this thread?
 
GymWolf said:
That's my question, why staying with a small team if you are under microsoft?

I think most people were hoping for less jank from bethesda after the acquisition, because if not, what was even the point?
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Big, overstuffed dev teams are part of the cancer currently ruining the gaming industry at the moment. I'd gladly take a smaller, focused studio anyday.
 
Plantoid said:
What's impressive to you? We've seen literally nothing but a few meters of a bunch of planets...

The freedom is what matters, freedom to kill everyone in town or to not kill at all, this is what differentiates Bethesda games from other RPGs
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I am not sure, but I would of like to of seen more than just a few meters, especially if you're touting 1000 planets, they should of shown one planet that showcased an interesting biome, points of interest, etc, like super in depth, heck, they could of made their showcase an entire single planet, then been like, "Like this sweet ass planet? You do? How about, 999 more of them that are just as amazing if not better".

Edit*

It looks like the official word is that you can't fly from space to the planets surface manually? That's a massive let down.

https://www.ign.com/articles/starfield-seamless-fly-space-to-planet-not-important-todd-howard

How is that not important? What exactly is Starfield bringing to the table at this point? It's like they mimic base building and ship customization from other similar games, but then give up on implementing "Fly straight from space and land on a planet" because it's too hard? And players aren't interested in it? What players aren't interested in it? Who are these people?
 
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Nvzman said:
Big, overstuffed dev teams are part of the cancer currently ruining the gaming industry at the moment. I'd gladly take a smaller, focused studio anyday.
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Nothing wrong in having a bigger team if this means less bugs and better gameplay, mismanagement can happen even in small studios, look at the fucking state of f76 or really any bethesda game at launch, you are not gonna convince me that their internal politc is the right one because of abstract reasons that can vary from game to game.
 
winjer said:
Why are you quoting me?
Did you see me talking about KCD, anywhere on this thread?
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Yes, that's clearly the game mentioned in the post you quoted and replied to earlier. But my post was more vaguely directed at the use of KCD as an example rather than you specifically.
 
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nemiroff said:
Yes, that's clearly the game mentioned in the post you quoted and replied to earlier. But my post was more vaguely directed at the use of KCD as an example rather than you specifically.
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The post i quoted has no mention to KCD.

Stop trying to bait other users.
 
winjer said:
The post i quoted has no mention to KCD.

Stop trying to bait other users.
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What the fuck man, just check the string of posts and stop pouting. It wasn't meant as a prosecution, I just followed the context. Jesus
 
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People in here defending it are clearly biased. I'm sorry there's nothing preventing from having the same level of NPC behavior and interactibility with nice graphics and decent performance. RDR2 has pretty decent NPCs who go about their lives and it's a great looking game. The only thing preventing it is cost. It's far cheaper and faster to try and tweak an existing engine rather than building a new one from scratch.
 
winjer said:
Yeah. Holy shit.
Stop trolling.
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Yeah fuck you too, just check the context you quoted: A Kingdom Come post.. And I already wrote it wasn't meant as a prosecution of you directly. You're so fucking wacky man. You're going to be the only person I have on my ignore list, congratulations.
 
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nemiroff said:
Yeah fuck you too, just check the context you quoted: A Kingdom Come post.. And I already wrote it wasn't meant as a prosecution of you directly. You're so fucking wacky man. You're going to be the only person I have on my ignore list, congratulations.
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I only said that Bethesda is not the only one to use scripting.
And you attacked me with a rant about a game i said nothing about. I didn't even quote you.
And then you try to play the victim.
You f..... Troll.
 
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winjer winjer nemiroff nemiroff S SlimeGooGoo :

three-stooges.gif


The mod coming in soon:
three-stooges-slap.gif
 
Boss Mog said:
People in here defending it are clearly biased. I'm sorry there's nothing preventing from having the same level of NPC behavior and interactibility with nice graphics and decent performance. RDR2 has pretty decent NPCs who go about their lives and it's a great looking game. The only thing preventing it is cost. It's far cheaper and faster to try and tweak an existing engine rather than building a new one from scratch.
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RDR2 was made by 1600 people. Last time I heard, up to 400 people are working on Starfield.

Fun fact: Skyrim was made by 100 people.
 
Bernd Lauert said:
RDR2 was made by 1600 people. Last time I heard, up to 400 people are working on Starfield.

Fun fact: Skyrim was made by 100 people.
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Cool, so you're in agreement that it's a cost thing then. But MS is the richest player in the game industry so there's no reason they couldn't afford to hire more people.
 
Boss Mog said:
People in here defending it are clearly biased. I'm sorry there's nothing preventing from having the same level of NPC behavior and interactibility with nice graphics and decent performance. RDR2 has pretty decent NPCs who go about their lives and it's a great looking game. The only thing preventing it is cost. It's far cheaper and faster to try and tweak an existing engine rather than building a new one from scratch.
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Still not the same. Can you randomly go on a quest with a bunch of NPC's in RDR2? Can you talk to all of them?
 
Boss Mog said:
Cool, so you're in agreement that it's a cost thing then. But MS is the richest player in the game industry so there's no reason they couldn't afford to hire more people.
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Starfield was deep into development once MS came on board. I hope they go on a hiring spree for TES6, though.
 
GigaBowser said:
Still not the same. Can you randomly go on a quest with a bunch of NPC's in RDR2? Can you talk to all of them?
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That's not the point, the point is that if they were able to do these things in a decade+ old engine than they could do them in a new engine, one that is more efficient and that would yield better graphics and performance. Bethesda is now pretty much the premier dev at MS; they can afford to invest more in that team. If their games are now console exclusives for XBOX then they need to look like it and not look like multiplatform games. I get that Starfield started out as a multiplatform game though.
 
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GigaBowser said:
Still not the same. Can you randomly go on a quest with a bunch of NPC's in RDR2? Can you talk to all of them?
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First, just to make sure no one is misunderstanding (...) I agree with you. I just wanted to say that I think the truth is all of the above so-to-speak. Open world RPGs is in a special place when it comes to overall complexity and content, especially a modern open world 3D RPG, which of course will contribute to the overall picture, at the same time project management will also be a factor, as well as development tools and also experience and talent. 1300 developers vs 100 is definitely also a thing. There's a lot of layers, many of which are not even mentioned here. So I guess that's why that when some armchair developers are latching on to a single thing these discussions usually will head south quickly.
 
winjer said:
Nonsense. As if Bethesda is the only studio able to make scripts.

There is nothing special about the Creation Engine, expect for it's large amount of bugs and glitches.
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Bethesda so far able to make immersive complex scripts, i dont see any devs able to do in a large scale project
SlimeGooGoo said:
Zoomers never even bothered looking at the past, Gothic 2 and Ultima did a lot of things better.
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Gothic and Ultima is not as immersive as Bethesda games though
 
lh032 said:
Bethesda so far able to make immersive complex scripts, i dont see any devs able to do in a large scale project

Gothic and Ultima is not as immersive as Bethesda games though
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Thats your opinion though.
I find bethesda games way less immersive then other rpgs. 🤷🏻‍♂️
 
Either stand up and play some Gothic, or stay on your knees and continue sucking Todd Howard's dong.

There's an awesome new mod out for it too that's basiclly a full fledged expaqnsion..

 
GymWolf said:
Nothing wrong in having a bigger team if this means less bugs and better gameplay, mismanagement can happen even in small studios, look at the fucking state of f76 or really any bethesda game at launch, you are not gonna convince me that their internal politc is the right one because of abstract reasons that can vary from game to game.
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There's historically zero evidence this is ever a proper correlation.

I think Rockstar is literally the only dev company that applies too. Call of Duty has something like 3,000+ people working on it and its still a buggy mess. Same with pretty much any modern western AAA game. Meanwhile, smaller studios like Insomniac, i.d., and Valve (when they feel like it) make consistently great games.

Size has zero correlation with quality, just look at EA or Ubisoft. Ubisoft hasn't released a single interesting game since Rayman Legends (which was also made with a small studio, mind you) and they are huge.
 
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