Since moving on from the Gamebryo engine, which powered The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, its faithful remake (which proved successful even without having great player retention) and Fallout 3, Bethesda used its Creation Engine for all its games, including The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout 4.
Despite powering what is widely considered one of the best role-playing games of all time, the engine caught some flak from gamers for how it manages the sprawling worlds of the games it powers, forcing dated, immersion-breaking loading screens, as seen in Starfield.
For this reason, many wish Bethesda would leave this engine behind in favor of a more modern solution for future games like The Elder Scrolls 6 (which won't feature any AI-generated content) and Fallout 5, but it's unlikely this will ever happen, as it would create quite a few critical issues for the studio.
Speaking with Press Box PR, Skyrim's design lead, Bruce Nesmith, discussed the biggest misconceptions fans have about the Creation Engine and its limitations, as well as what an engine change would entail.
"What you have to realize is that if you were to switch engines, and I'll say this for any game anywhere, is that it is a massive effort. You are talking about dozens of people spent doing nothing but making an engine work," the developer said.
"You are talking about putting your developers into a situation where they can't play the game. They may not even be able to work on making the game for long stretches because the engine is not there or up to snuff yet," Nesmith added, highlighting how this was an issue the studio had with Fallout 76, where the Creation Engine had to be changed "dramatically" to do multiplayer.
An engine change would also not be beneficial due to the fact that the Creation Engine has been worked on for so long that it has been tweaked to serve Bethesda's purposes. "At this point, it's probably a wiser bet to keep working with it. The benefits that you get from switching to Unreal Engine are probably not going to materialize until two titles down the road," the Skyrim design lead said, highlighting how a game like The Elder Scrolls 6 wouldn't suddenly become a different game than its predecessors with a sudden engine switch.
While the Creation Engine has been used since Skyrim, that doesn't mean it hasn't changed since. "Every Bethesda game that has ever released has had major improvements made to the creation engine. Significant improvements are always being made to it. There's an entire team that's devoted to nothing but doing that," Bruce Nesmith said. "But the advantage you have there is that you can still run the game during the whole time because you have an existing engine. You're not having to figure out how to put this new thing in place."
Ultimately, for these reasons, the Skyrim design lead "would fall on the side of keeping the Creation Engine." As the engine has been tweaked and iterated upon already, and even significantly, as the studio did for Fallout 76, Nesmith believes that anything that can be done in Unreal Engine and not in the Creation Engine can be easily put into Bethesda's engine, delivering new features without causing the additional issues a full engine switch would bring.
Looking at how Starfield's vision clashed with its engine limitations, there's no denying that the Creation Engine definitely needs to be improved to handle big open worlds seamlessly. As The Elder Scrolls 6 has been in development for a very long time, it wouldn't be surprising to see the sixth entry in the series be the first game from Bethesda to handle a massive open-world properly without loading screens. Would it be enough to make it win the "game of expectations" that Starfield lost? By itself, probably not, but it would definitely help the game and its perception a lot.
About the author: Francesco De Meo has been covering video games and technology since 2012, starting his career at small outlets like Gamersyndrome and GeekSnack. After joining Wccftech gaming section in 2015, he quickly expanded his video gaming coverage with in-depth reporting, interviews with iconic industry figures such as Grasshopper Manufacture founder and No More Heroes creator Goichi "Suda51" Suda, Resident Evil series creator Shinji Mikami, Team NINJA's president and Nioh series director Fumihiko Yasuda, and Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama, reviews and on-the-ground coverage of major industry events such as Gamescom and E3. When he's not reporting or reviewing, Francesco can be found playing the genres he loves most, spending time with his six cats, reading, writing music, playing guitar and drumming for his progressive rock band.
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