Even if it wasn’t owned by Microslop I don’t have any confidence BGS could make a good TES game. They’ve been sitting on their laurels for far too long.
I have a feeling Bethesda thought they were going to have a hit with Starfield, and when it was came out to painfully average reviews, they really had to think about their design philosophies. Or they didn’t think about them at all and ES6 will be just as painfully average. We’ll see.
From the reviews I saw it didn’t help that starfield looked and played like a skyrim sci-fi mod that leaned into the Bethesda loading screen meme on purpose.
It was more like Fallout with a space theme and significantly less style in gameplay.
The biggest issue imo was scope. It was too big of a universe to do a lot of the environmental storytelling that BGS is famous for. And the more traditional storytelling was stretched too far over that expansive world. Sure, there were concentrations in cities, but that made the empty space in between more noticable.
That being said, the setup for Starfield’s setting could have been great for modders as there was tons of area to serve as a blank canvas. Unfortunately there seems to be a minimum threshold for content density for modders to jump on that, and it looks like BGS fell short
Apparently the big problem is that Todd Howard is the creative director for all 3 franchises. While he’s good at that role, he’s constantly getting pulled between the 3 series, limiting his ability to maintain a cohesive vision for any 1 game.
Plus there’s way more people in the studio, so while coworkers talked to each other a lot in the past (even on lunch breaks) there’s simply too may people to have that close of a relationsip with anymore
I love this story because it’s obvious your son asked this during the several minute long loading screen. No matter what year it is, Bethesda games take at least a minute to load.
Unpopular opinion: The gamebryo/creation engine itself isn’t that terrible considering almost every item is physics based. I love the engine for something like Fallout. Starfield… There are things they could have done with it to make it better. But Starfield did show that as proof of concept, vehicular traversal is doable.
The issue with Bethesda isn’t the janky ass engine. The issue with Bethesda is Emil and his shitty writing.
The issue with Bethesda is Emil and his shitty writing.
Plus Todd Howard is wearing too many hats as creative director for all 3 franchises, and the company has gotten too big for teams to really know each other.
I feel like BGS needs to internally split up between multiple teams. 3 teams dedicated to a single franchise each, with Todd Howard acting as creative director for only one of them and 2 more creative directors promoted from experienced team members. Then an (engine) development team for continual tech improvements. And a 5th team for finishing games by filling out the worlds via clutter, minor quests, etc. based on guidelines and assets set by the 3 primary teams
And Unreal Engine started on 1995. This argument always shows people’s ignorance of software development. When the first pieces of the engine were built is not why it’s shitty. It’s because they haven’t invested money into it where it matters. (Unreal Engine also has some serious issues. It just looks prettier.)
They don’t work well anymore though, that’s the whole point. Bethesda’s codebase is past “mature”, it’s just straight up old and outdated now. Has been for a decade at the very least. Their games have looked and performed noticeably worse than their contemporaries for a good while now.
a similar thing happened with arma reforger a few years ago, it was supposed to be a tech demonstrator for a new engine but it turned out to still be the same codebase as operation flashpoint from 1995. the engine is solid but it’s super annoying to program for, they have this custom scripting language that’s completely batshit insane because everything is infix by default, and an ui toolkit that is written as c++ classes meaning the actual game has a compiler in it for a subset of c++. so the scripts can be edited at runtime but if there is an error in the ui the game crashes at startup. people were hoping they’d finally switch to something that made sense but no.
I didn’t think Skyrim was too outclassed compared to its peers in 2011, given that it was so much larger and doing so much more than a lot of them under the hood. But Fallout 4 came out alongside The Witcher 3, and the difference between the two was night and day. Then of course Baldur’s Gate 3 next to Starfield, and I have to scratch my head wondering what the hell Bethesda is doing still running this tech stack.
It’s not entirely out of question that they’ll use Unreal for graphics while retaining Gamebryo for gameplay. That’s kinda how the Oblivion remaster works. And might be best of both worlds if they manage to make Unreal not suck in terms of performance and don’t fall for the photorealism trap
I think graphics are pretty low on my list of priorities for how those games need to modernize. Starfield looks pretty alright in sheer fidelity, but the faces don’t animate well, the conversation system is dated even compared to The Outer Worlds doing basically the same thing, and the engine seems (for some reason) incapable of putting together a proper cut-scene.
Ah to be fair I haven’t played Starfield or even watched too many videos. I also didn’t like FO4 much so I was pretty much running with the assumption that they hadn’t changed much since 2011
Still, they may not need as many engine programmers if they reduce what their in-house engine needs to do. Could free up finances to hire more people to work on the meat and bones of the game. Or they could just pocket the difference and not give a fuck about making a good game, that seems quite likely too.
I love how the Gamebryo site is still up. I thought it was funny it was still up like 10 years ago when I looked last, and it’s still up now without any changes.
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Good, I take loading screens than unreal slop
I love the Elder Scrolls series, but I’m not convinced that 6 will be good. Owned by Microsoft in this age of AI shit.
If ES6 isn’t Skyrim with better writing and better combat, it will fail.
Unfortunately no. Gamers were always riding the hype vave. Spent money on Star Citizen and blue gun skin. Gamers are idiots.
We had that, its called Morrowind.
Yup. As I said, it’s better combat than Skyrim.
This is magnificent.
Even if it wasn’t owned by Microslop I don’t have any confidence BGS could make a good TES game. They’ve been sitting on their laurels for far too long.
It will probably be fine, but it’s very unlikely to be especially good.
I have a feeling Bethesda thought they were going to have a hit with Starfield, and when it was came out to painfully average reviews, they really had to think about their design philosophies. Or they didn’t think about them at all and ES6 will be just as painfully average. We’ll see.
From the reviews I saw it didn’t help that starfield looked and played like a skyrim sci-fi mod that leaned into the Bethesda loading screen meme on purpose.
It was more like Fallout with a space theme and significantly less style in gameplay.
The biggest issue imo was scope. It was too big of a universe to do a lot of the environmental storytelling that BGS is famous for. And the more traditional storytelling was stretched too far over that expansive world. Sure, there were concentrations in cities, but that made the empty space in between more noticable.
That being said, the setup for Starfield’s setting could have been great for modders as there was tons of area to serve as a blank canvas. Unfortunately there seems to be a minimum threshold for content density for modders to jump on that, and it looks like BGS fell short
Apparently the big problem is that Todd Howard is the creative director for all 3 franchises. While he’s good at that role, he’s constantly getting pulled between the 3 series, limiting his ability to maintain a cohesive vision for any 1 game.
Plus there’s way more people in the studio, so while coworkers talked to each other a lot in the past (even on lunch breaks) there’s simply too may people to have that close of a relationsip with anymore
deleted by creator
It’s 2026, and you are literally eleven 're’s short of the current number of rereleases.
I love this story because it’s obvious your son asked this during the several minute long loading screen. No matter what year it is, Bethesda games take at least a minute to load.
There’s and SKSE plugin that fixes that
this must be a pc problem that im too console coded to understand
I laughed 3 times!
deleted by creator
Hey, what’s your middle name?
deleted by creator
shiny metal knee 🦿
Unpopular opinion: The gamebryo/creation engine itself isn’t that terrible considering almost every item is physics based. I love the engine for something like Fallout. Starfield… There are things they could have done with it to make it better. But Starfield did show that as proof of concept, vehicular traversal is doable.
The issue with Bethesda isn’t the janky ass engine. The issue with Bethesda is Emil and his shitty writing.
Plus Todd Howard is wearing too many hats as creative director for all 3 franchises, and the company has gotten too big for teams to really know each other.
I feel like BGS needs to internally split up between multiple teams. 3 teams dedicated to a single franchise each, with Todd Howard acting as creative director for only one of them and 2 more creative directors promoted from experienced team members. Then an (engine) development team for continual tech improvements. And a 5th team for finishing games by filling out the worlds via clutter, minor quests, etc. based on guidelines and assets set by the 3 primary teams
Agreed. Todd needs to stick with what knows. Elder Scrolls.
Pay Tim Cain whatever he wants, but have him oversee Fallout.
And just let Starfield die…
Starfield has a lot of good bones to work with. BGS mainly needed to spend another year on the game filling out systems and adding more content.
That being said, delaying ES6 to work on Starfield was a horrible decision. They had enough people hired after Skyrim to split into multiple teams
If history repeats itself, ES6 will be a completely different game to Skyrim
Everything complained about will he cut, nothing new will be added
Translation: it’s the same shitty gamebryo they’re always using.
Not content to look outdated in 2015 or 2023, now they’re going to look outdated in 2030.
2015? that codebase started in morrowind. and say what you want about that game but it is not a looker. it launched the same year as metroid prime.
Morrowind? Gamebryo is the continuation of the NetImmerse engine. Development started in 1997 with the first game released in 1999.
yeah morrowind used netimmerse, first time bethesda used it.
Morrowind is definitely a looker, that art style is something Beth has never been able to approach again.
But hard agree on the VFX.
yeah it does have style, but it’s pretty low fidelity compared to its contemporaries. the scope is also a lot larger though.
I think Gamebryo (neé NetImmerse) is even a bit older than Morrowind.
yeah it’s not bethesda’s engine. but my point was about where the codebase for the creation engine comes from, and that’s the morrowind code.
And Unreal Engine started on 1995. This argument always shows people’s ignorance of software development. When the first pieces of the engine were built is not why it’s shitty. It’s because they haven’t invested money into it where it matters. (Unreal Engine also has some serious issues. It just looks prettier.)
i mean, a 23 year old codebase is bound to have some tech debt.
Very probably yes, but it will also have an extensive feature set and stable, mature functions that work well after 20+ years of development.
A mature codebase is often a double edged sword I agree. But it’s not always a good idea to just throw away all that progress.
They don’t work well anymore though, that’s the whole point. Bethesda’s codebase is past “mature”, it’s just straight up old and outdated now. Has been for a decade at the very least. Their games have looked and performed noticeably worse than their contemporaries for a good while now.
in bethesdas case though?
a similar thing happened with arma reforger a few years ago, it was supposed to be a tech demonstrator for a new engine but it turned out to still be the same codebase as operation flashpoint from 1995. the engine is solid but it’s super annoying to program for, they have this custom scripting language that’s completely batshit insane because everything is infix by default, and an ui toolkit that is written as c++ classes meaning the actual game has a compiler in it for a subset of c++. so the scripts can be edited at runtime but if there is an error in the ui the game crashes at startup. people were hoping they’d finally switch to something that made sense but no.
They rebuild the engine to be 64-bit (instead of 32-bit) for Fallout 4, and that version is what Skyrim Special Edition is running on
that’s not a complete rewrite. hell, depending on how it was architected it may just be a recompile
I didn’t think Skyrim was too outclassed compared to its peers in 2011, given that it was so much larger and doing so much more than a lot of them under the hood. But Fallout 4 came out alongside The Witcher 3, and the difference between the two was night and day. Then of course Baldur’s Gate 3 next to Starfield, and I have to scratch my head wondering what the hell Bethesda is doing still running this tech stack.
It’s not entirely out of question that they’ll use Unreal for graphics while retaining Gamebryo for gameplay. That’s kinda how the Oblivion remaster works. And might be best of both worlds if they manage to make Unreal not suck in terms of performance and don’t fall for the photorealism trap
I think graphics are pretty low on my list of priorities for how those games need to modernize. Starfield looks pretty alright in sheer fidelity, but the faces don’t animate well, the conversation system is dated even compared to The Outer Worlds doing basically the same thing, and the engine seems (for some reason) incapable of putting together a proper cut-scene.
Ah to be fair I haven’t played Starfield or even watched too many videos. I also didn’t like FO4 much so I was pretty much running with the assumption that they hadn’t changed much since 2011
Still, they may not need as many engine programmers if they reduce what their in-house engine needs to do. Could free up finances to hire more people to work on the meat and bones of the game. Or they could just pocket the difference and not give a fuck about making a good game, that seems quite likely too.
I fucking hope not. Unreals’s graphics engine looks terrible
It doesn’t if you disable TAA and shit, but by default it’s horrible
Bugs, bugs, always the same bugs.
Todd Howard doesn’t know how to make games any other way.
I love how the Gamebryo site is still up. I thought it was funny it was still up like 10 years ago when I looked last, and it’s still up now without any changes.
www.gamebryo.com
rip, you killed it
What do you mean?
site doesnt load for me, says site account suspended
Works fine for me on mobile and desktop.
It’s broken for me too, account suspended. Something about not being supported in the user’s environment.
By that logic source 2 is just the quake 2 engine.
Yes, and the Quake 2 engine is one of the greatest software creations of its generation.
The Gamebryo/Creation engine is hot garbage in comparison.
Anyone who believed that they would switch to Unreal Engine is delusional.
Maybe for the better. Sandfall Interactive seems the be the only company that could use it without performance issues.
Borderlands 4, Kill the Justice League, Immortals of Aveum, etc. are performance nightmares without tweaking and patches.
Coffeestain have done a good job with satisfactory but I can’t think of any other studio.
oh no i have just lost $623 on poly market
- someone, i bet
Obviously. And it’ll be just as broken. Show it’s technical age even more.
Surprised it’s not creation bones with UE5 skin like Oblivion’s remake. But also not surprised it is using Creation (which is just GameBryo).
So they aren’t using OpenMW …
deleted by creator
Of course it is…
New version = old version + ai?
You’re hired!
Surely no one is surprised by this?
I’m not surprised, but I am disappointed.