The design director of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim explained why Todd Howard and his team are not embracing a major technology switch.
After abandoning the Gamebryo engine, which powered The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (and its faithful remake) as well as Fallout 3, Bethesda Game Studios (BGS) has relied on the Creation Engine for every subsequent game, including The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout 4. Despite powering what many consider some of the best RPGs ever made, the engine has drawn criticism for how it handles massive worlds, resulting in dated, immersion-breaking loading screens – something players pointed to again with Starfield. That is why many want BGS to adopt a more modern solution for future games (The Elder Scrolls VI, Fallout 5), but that is unlikely, because it would create several critical problems for the studio.
In an interview with Press Box PR, Bruce Nesmith, Skyrim‘s lead designer, discussed what he calls the biggest misconception fans have about the Creation Engine and its limitations, and what an engine swap would actually entail. Switching engines would not be beneficial, he argues, because the Creation Engine has been developed for so long that it has been thoroughly tailored to BGS’ needs. And while the Creation Engine has been used since Skyrim, that does not mean it has remained unchanged.
“What you have to understand is that if you want to switch engines – and I say this for any game, anywhere – it is a massive effort. You’re talking about dozens of people doing nothing but making an engine work. You’re putting your developers into a situation where they can’t play the game. They might not be able to work on the game for a long time because the engine isn’t there yet, or it still doesn’t meet expectations. In that situation, it’s probably wiser to keep working with what you have.
The benefits of moving to Unreal Engine likely wouldn’t materialize until two games later. Every BGS game released so far has had significant improvements made to the creation engine, and significant improvements are still being made to it all the time. There’s an entire team dedicated to that, and the advantage is you can run the game the whole time because you already have an existing engine. You don’t have to figure out how to implement this new thing,” Nesmith said.
Because the engine has already been significantly rebuilt and improved – much like the studio did with Fallout 76 – Nesmith believes that anything achievable in Unreal Engine but not in the Creation Engine can be carried over into BGS’ technology, allowing new features to be introduced without triggering the additional disruption of a full engine switch. Looking at how Starfield‘s ambitions collided with engine constraints, it is hard to deny that the Creation Engine will still need meaningful work to handle large open worlds more smoothly.
Since The Elder Scrolls VI has been in development for a very long time, it would not be surprising if it ended up being the first BGS game to handle a huge open world properly without loading screens.
Source: WCCFTech, Press Box PR
