Why Todd Howard's Studio Sticks with Its Game Engine: Insights from Skyrim's Lead Designer

General news News 10/13/2024

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Bruce Nesmith may not work at Bethesda Game Studios (BGS), but he’s been close enough to the fire to have some insight into what’s going on at Todd Howard’s studio.

In an interview with VideoGamer, Nesmith defended BGS’ decision to stick with the Creation Engine while more and more studios are moving to Unreal Engine 5 (BioWare, CD Projekt, Halo Studios, to name a few…) The Creation Engine license is based on middleware, just like Unreal. Bethesda previously used Gamebryo to create The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, then Fallout 3 (Obsidian Entertainment used it for Fallout: New Vegas), and Creation Engine has also powered The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Fallout 4, Fallout 76, and Starfield (based on old technology). Gamebase, the developer of Gamebryo, stopped development around 2012 when the engine received its last update. BGS continues this legacy.

The old technology can lead to bugs and simplifications, and so these problems may continue to fester. According to Nesmith, this is why Bethesda might consider changing the engine, but he doesn’t see much chance of that happening: “There are parts of the Gamebryo engine that I would not be surprised to find out Bethesda can no longer compile because the original source code just doesn’t compile anymore. You just have to use the compiled stuff as is. We’re arguing about the game engine, let’s argue about the game. The game engine is not the point, the game engine is in the service of the game itself. You and I could both name a hundred lousy games that use Unreal Engine. Is that Unreal’s fault? No, it’s not Unreal’s fault.

The Creation Engine has been constantly tweaked, updated, and refined to make exactly the kind of games that Bethesda makes. It would take a year or two of engineering just to move from our engine to Unreal Engine, and then more work beyond that to tune the engine, to tune the game, to work in the engine. The engine serves the game. Is the game good? I don’t care what the engine is. The game is good! Let’s play the game,” Nesmith said.

But it’s time for a change, right?

Source: PCGamer, VideoGamer

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Angyal Anikó

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