Impaired Creativity: Bethesda to Still Use Creation Engine for The Elder Scrolls VI, Starfield

[GreiverBlade]

At least they fixed alt-tabbing.
Hey, this ain't for Linux.

i alt-tab without issue in vanilla ... (well, double alt-tab for getting back in )

 

[Arrakis9]

Use "bethini" and "Loot". Takes a lot of the guess work out of making their games "just work" also doesn't hurt to run a 4gb patcher on the exe for the older titles. Personally im getting ready to go install the new California mod after I finish up all the dlc for new Vegas... With the recommended mods installed of course, It does look pretty...

 

[Octopuss]

Is it me, or am I the only one who puts first the story, the gameplay and the atmosphere FIRST before the graphics?? No shinny and ubber graphics is going to save any game with shitty storyline and boring gameplay...

The problem is that in this time and age (AND unlimited budget, or in another words, in an AAA studio case), there is no reason NOT to have both awesome gameplay AND graphics.

 

[ShurikN]

Is it me, or am I the only one who puts first the story, the gameplay and the atmosphere FIRST before the graphics?? No shinny and ubber graphics is going to save any game with shitty storyline and boring gameplay...

There's a difference between good gameplay with low end graphics that look ok, and the situation with FO76, where gameplay experience is ruined by not just by mediocre graphics but severe performance issues, even worse optimization, bugs, glitches, crashes. All tied to the pos that is the engine in question. Besides, if something is a pain to look at (and judging from beta gameplay videos, for me it definitely is), no amount of great gameplay will save it.
I postponed Witcher 2 until I got a better GPU, because in order to make it run nicely I had to make it look horrible. And that's was not enjoyable, trust me.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

There's a difference between good gameplay with low end graphics that look ok, and the situation with FO76, where gameplay experience is ruined by not just by mediocre graphics but severe performance issues, even worse optimization, bugs, glitches, crashes. All tied to the pos that is the engine in question. Besides, if something is a pain to look at (and judging from beta gameplay videos, for me it definitely is), no amount of great gameplay will save it.
I postponed Witcher 2 until I got a better GPU, because in order to make it run nicely I had to make it look horrible. And that's was not enjoyable, trust me.

Bug free is what I really prefer, graphics a close 2nd. Game play always has something to complain about.

 

[Vayra86]

"It has since been heavily upgraded, but it's looking slightly long in the tooth, at least from a visual perspective. "

well for Skyrim SE their upgrades on the engine ... were insanely.... subpar to what the modder community did ... as a vanilla modded skyrim is league above a SE unmodded ... i haven't migrated from vanilla to SE so far ... (on the physics side ... well it's a little annoying but, my own rig does not handle Skyrim heavily modded in 1620p above 60fps quite well, so no biggies there ... )


for animation ... trust the mod community more than Bethesda to do a good/excellent job ... heck even on textures and model also ...

Yes and no. Even the modding community cannot fix the ridiculous animation quality. To do that you need mocap, something only Bethesda can realize. And guess what, that is expensive.

What Todd is essentially saying is: we want to keep milking you with minimal expense. Only so much can be modded, the engine still retains its fundamental problems. Another thing he implicitly says is: my developers are lazy ass, comfort zone addicted noobs and I am going to keep them in their comfort zone. This falls right in line with the apologetic behaviour we saw with FO76: 'expect spectacular bugs', three weeks prior to release. This company doesn't deserve a single sale for that.

The main problem for this engine is that we are now in a time where immersion does require more than a few textures and some rehashed models. Look at TW3 and how much more advanced that experience comes across, and how that helps immersion. Things like Speedtree, and the animation of combat and facial expressions... none of these elements are possible in Creation without tearing things down radically. For immersive games, graphics matter, they set the tone of the whole experience and they support the gameplay concept because it creates a world you want to see more of.

Look at FO4 and what these 'major improvements' really meant. It still does feel exactly like you're playing Morrowind, upscaled and with a texture mod. And unfortunately, even with 500 mods sprinkled on top, that feeling doesn't change. Movement is still clunky. Combat is still horrible.

 

[sepheronx]

Oh god NO!

I cant even run Fallout 4 in city location without it dropping down to 25fps.

 

[Octopuss]

Has anyone of you ever checked changelogs for the unofficial Skyrim patch? It's totally incredible how half arsed job those supposedly extremely well paid devs do. Seven years later there are still new fixes for scripts, quests, meshes and other significant things being released.

 

[GreiverBlade]

Even the modding community cannot fix the ridiculous animation quality.

they did ... modder implemented animation were league above what Bethesda did ...

To do that you need mocap, something only Bethesda can realize. And guess what, that is expensive.

ofc if they used mocap ... that would be different ... but, hey! Bethesda ain't Ninja theory (or any "small scale" studio that used mocap ) they can't afford to do so [/sarcasme] but guess what ... smaller studio with smaller fund ... did it ..., expensive : not an excuse anymore (heck even phones can do mocap and rendition now ... ok not on a profesional scale )


the community did way more than what you think they did but ofc i agree on the limitations of the engine (which aren't really limitations for the modder since, unlike paid dev/modeler/designer from Bethesda couldn't go around them, they did it cleverly ... )

that's what angers me ...

and the animation of combat and facial expressions... none of these elements are possible in Creation without tearing things down radically.

again ... they did it ... and way better than beths ... working withing the limitation and finding other way to do better ...

What Todd is essentially saying is: we want to keep milking you with minimal expense. Only so much can be modded, the engine still retains its fundamental problems. Another thing he implicitly says is: my developers are lazy ass, comfort zone addicted noobs and I am going to keep them in their comfort zone. This falls right in line with the apologetic behaviour we saw with FO76: 'expect spectacular bugs', three weeks prior to release. This company doesn't deserve a single sale for that.

i agree on that and Skyrim without the community would not be even worth to play ... look at Endereal or any things not done by beths ... (for oblivion the char gen was so awful that i literally stopped playing it until some modder made it better ) i even have issue with TES:O but in that case ... can't do a thing ... since online, obviously no modding, mean: no community induced near perfection

 

[Vayra86]

they did ... modder implemented animation were league above what Bethesda did ...


ofc if they used mocap ... that would be different ... but, hey! Bethesda ain't Ninja theory (or any "small scale" studio that used mocap ) they can't afford to do so [/sarcasme] but guess what ... smaller studio with smaller fund ... did it ..., expensive : not an excuse anymore (heck even phones can do mocap and rendition now ... ok not on a profesional scale )


the community did way more than what you think they did but ofc i agree on the limitations of the engine (which aren't really limitations for the modder since, unlike paid dev/modeler/designer from Bethesda couldn't go around them, they did it cleverly ... )

that's what angers me ...


again ... they did it ... and way better than beths ... working withing the limitation and finding other way to do better ...


i agree on that and Skyrim without the community would not be even worth to play ... look at Endereal or any things not done by beths ... (for oblivion the char gen was so awful that i literally stopped playing it until some modder made it better ) i even have issue with TES:O but in that case ... can't do a thing ... since online, obviously no modding, mean: no community induced near perfection

They didn't do any of that, honestly. Animation is still quite simply horrible no matter how you twist it. Faces still look like plastic masks. And even mod content has loads of glitches and bugs in it, more often than not. Credit where it is due, but lets not blind ourselves from the truth either. On top of that, efficiency is out the window entirely with most of the higher quality mods. This is obvious, but when you put the end result next to a recent game on a recent engine, the differences are staggering - on the same hardware. Of course its not realistic to expect modders to do what a whole studio can do. But it is what it is. I know what the community did. I also know its still a day job getting your mods in order for Skyrim, even with all the tools available to 'make it easy'. The first order of business when applying mods is checking for conflicts, and those are numerous.

My point was, Bethesda can lean on their modding community very heavily, but they overestimate what that community can do within the limitations of this engine. Fallout 4 presented major performance issues at launch and those largely still exist. Mods only add more on top of that, not less. The code is so bloated and so inefficient, this can come crashing down at any minute. The reason Skyrim is such a popular modding project is (also) because the vanilla base is so old and light, you can stick tons of stuff on top and still have decent performance.

 

[newtekie1]

And yet more bugs will be added in later. Creation is so old and has had so much added to it, I cant imagine the debugging list. it must be a mile long.

 

[GreiverBlade]

They didn't do any of that, honestly. Animation is still quite simply horrible no matter how you twist it. Faces still look like plastic masks. And even mod content has loads of glitches and bugs in it, more often than not. Credit where it is due, but lets not blind ourselves from the truth either. On top of that, efficiency is out the window entirely with most of the higher quality mods. This is obvious, but when you put the end result next to a recent game on a recent engine, the differences are staggering - on the same hardware. Of course its not realistic to expect modders to do what a whole studio can do. But it is what it is. I know what the community did. I also know its still a day job getting your mods in order for Skyrim, even with all the tools available to 'make it easy'. The first order of business when applying mods is checking for conflicts, and those are numerous.

My point was, Bethesda can lean on their modding community very heavily, but they overestimate what that community can do within the limitations of this engine. Fallout 4 presented major performance issues at launch and those largely still exist. Mods only add more on top of that, not less. The code is so bloated and so inefficient, this can come crashing down at any minute. The reason Skyrim is such a popular modding project is (also) because the vanilla base is so old and light, you can stick tons of stuff on top and still have decent performance.

well with a little less than 1000hrs in Skyrim ...


yes they did quite some things i wrote off ... animation and a lot of blunder fixing from what Beths released initially (i wouldn't even play Skyrim base ... if i didn't liked the universe and perspective thanks to the community around it ) and obviously some mods have bugs but they are corrected, unlike with some that hold since launch day, and faster than what beths do usually ...
as for mocaps i find the excuse funny ... (not only the price ... ) since some small scale studio did use it ...

also ... "the vanilla base is so old and light, you can stick tons of stuff on top and still have decent performance." well ... it's not my barely 55fps at 1620p with all the stuff i stuffed in that would agree on that .... (aherm it's not too bad since above 60fps : physics havoc fiesta ... ) the reason why Skyrim is still popular, is, actually, with the right mods you can make it look 7 yrs more recent ...

ah whatever, yeah you're right they never did any thing i wrote. (i must be imagining, right?... )

 

[Vayra86]

well with a little less than 1000hrs in Skyrim ...


yes they did quite some things i wrote off ... animation and a lot of blunder fixing from what Beths released initially (i wouldn't even play Skyrim base ... if i didn't liked the universe and perspective thanks to the community around it ) and obviously some mods have bugs but they are corrected, unlike with some that hold since launch day, and faster than what beths do usually ...
as for mocaps i find the excuse funny ... (not only the price ... ) since some small scale studio did use it ...

also ... "the vanilla base is so old and light, you can stick tons of stuff on top and still have decent performance." well ... it's not my barely 55fps at 1620p with all the stuff i stuffed in that would agree on that .... (aherm it's not too bad since above 60fps : physics havoc fiesta ... ) the reason why Skyrim is still popular, is, actually, with the right mods you can make it look 7 yrs more recent ...

ah whatever, yeah you're right they never did any thing i wrote. (i must be imagining, right?... )

I didnt say they didnt do it, I said the execution of it is not without flaws either and grossly inefficient, and the engine is at fault for it. I think with 1000 hours its easy to miss how far gaming has evolved since. Whats seen in Skyrim modding is not next gen in any way. Its nice, but it suffers the same problems the vanilla content has, but finds ways to make it manageable or 'acceptable'.

 

[EntropyZ]

I saw this and my heart sank six feet under. They are truly lost and have gone complacent.

 

[moproblems99]

I didnt say they didnt do it

I'm pretty sure your your first 6 words state exactly that. Maybe it isn't what you meant but it was exactly what you said. Let me quote you below...

They didn't do any of that, honestly. Animation....

 

[robot zombie]

Urgh. This engine needs to die. So help me, if Fallout 5 is on Creation Engine I will implode. Use the engine from Wolfenstein 2 TNC. It's Vastly better in every conceivable way.

Haha, that was my exact first thought when I read the article earlier. "What about that Wolfenstein engine?"

Before that, I thought "Of course. OF COURSE..."

I truly am not surprised. Can't say I'm even upset. You get dulled by it after a while, I guess. Skyrim's probably one of my favorite games, but man... ...it feels old for its time. And Fallout 4 feels a few years behind. You gotta wonder, when do they reach a point where the rest of the gaming world is so far ahead of them that it's like selling SNES games to kids with brand-new Xbox 360's? How much longer are people really gonna put up with that?

The insult to injury is how long they keep people waiting between major releases. When you have to wait several years for a game, you expect that it'll be a huge leap into the future. How else do you justify it? Development takes time. Everybody knows that massive AAA titles aren't born overnight. Problem is, I see a lot of time taken, but not much development. I swear, they spend 25% of the time tweaking the engine half-assedly and 75% of the time dreaming up worlds and ideas, 90% of which will never see the light of the day. How much time and manpower do you wanna bet they spend spinning their wheels? They always try to cram everything conceivable into their releases and it's like the whole release always winds up suffering for it.

I mean... they have SO many awesome assets. I love Fallout and Elder Scrolls... the world those games take me to is special to me. But every time I look at those games I wonder about what could've been, what could be... ..but what never will be. Because at the end of the day they spend so much time dreaming shit up that the rubber never meets the road. And when it does, they're still driving the same beater they were 10 years ago, so sometimes it breaks down and the ride is always kinda bumpy. You just kind of hope it doesn't fall apart on the highway.

Every time, what we're left with is a clunky, half-broken mishmash of very cool concepts with very poor execution that we, the players and the modding community then have to try and carve a polished game experience out of. And it blows. I mod the hell out of all of their games, but I still wish I didn't have to. Honestly now, I am a fan of their games, but I would never play one unmodded. And I'm not ashamed to admit that! That's a legitimate point of criticism. To me, it's bad when even your biggest fans won't touch the vanilla base game. No game is without its flaws, but it really is amateur level at times. It barely comes off like it's made by a major studio. If some small no-name studio came out with something like FO4, it'd put them on the map but a studio that's been around as long as Bethesda ought to be held to a higher standard. They get away with quite a lot of things...

Bethesda needs to get their heads out of the clouds. I swear, no sense of practicality or pragmatism over there. The best atmosphere, world, and concepts can't save a barely functioning base game that's perpetually trapped in the past. Not when there are more finished, polished games coming out now with just as much appeal. Who has time for that kind of frustration when there are so many current games that are more fully realized? Don't know about yall, but I work and shit. I've got responsibilities. My time is valuable to me, and to blow it making a second job out of simply playing an already long and involved video game is not appealing to me. Honestly it stresses me out :/ I don't have the time to "get it up and running." By that point, I have shit to do and now I'll have to wait to sit down and fully enjoy the experience. That is frustrating... ...to be constantly "fixing" and "improving" a game to make it worthwhile to you. Sure I'm not alone there. I want a game I can sit down and just play and have it just be good, you know? Too much to ask for them to toss us something like that every few years or...?

In some ways, I suppose we have ourselves to blame, for accepting our roles in making the games what they are to us. It's made us too complacent. Maybe I've been at it too long and I'm just too burned out to the whole modding charade to keep buying into it. I don't know. The modding community supporting these games is truly awesome, and they should be very proud. But still... ...this isn't how things should be. Studio clinging to dilapidated engine... Players diligently stringing it together... I wonder what such a dedicated modding community could do with a more polished and malleable Bethesda game with a more modern and advanced engine. Modding as a bonus rather than a necessity is probably a much healthier place for us all to be, Bethesda included.

 

[rtwjunkie]

Modding as a bonus rather than a necessity is probably a much healthier place for us all to be,

I think I’m already there with them. 80% of my mods are not fixed, but huge quests, new dungeons, new lands, more people (because Bethesda seems to think that 200 people should be the population of an entire country), more NPC’ (and I’m talking really good ones like Inigo), more but still natural wildlife, most forest, more houses and castles, bigger towns and cities, more towns.

You get the picture. Those are all modding as a bonus that I don’t have to do, but vastly make the game my own. Which also agrees with your point that the biggest fans of their games are fans of them modded and changed.

 

[robot zombie]

I think I’m already there with them. 80% of my mods are not fixed, but huge quests, new dungeons, new lands, more people (because Bethesda seems to think that 200 people should be the population of an entire country), more NPC’ (and I’m talking really good ones like Inigo), more but still natural wildlife, most forest, more houses and castles, bigger towns and cities, more towns.

You get the picture. Those are all modding as a bonus that I don’t have to do, but vastly make the game my own. Which also agrees with your point that the biggest fans of their games are fans of them modded and changed.

That's the best part about modding. Stuff like that can be considered as user-created DLC, basically. Which is cool. I think with any game there are bound to be times when you think "Wouldn't it be cool if...?"

I suppose it has its good and bad sides. Don't get me wrong. But I feel like a lot of the "core" mods we use are there to make up for actual inadequacies with the base games. That's where I really take issue. They do great friggin work and I'm glad to have that option available. Just rather not have to consider it in order to be wowed. I feel like the vanilla games would never hold me for long... I always try to but inevitably I reach for the mods. And just looking at what's there to begin with, I don't think it has to be that way. The mods can have sort of a "glossing over" effect. I'd rather have a game that I can play as vanilla for a long time and get a lot of mileage out of before tacking on mods and racking up replay value.

Though I guess replay value on a Bethesda game is already.... ...heh. I couldn't tell you how many hours I've put into Skyrim over the years...

 

[happita]

Someone really needs to create a petition to force their hand into using a more up-to-date engine that can also allow modding. Otherwise they'll milk this series for the rest of it's natural life, FO included. Dare I say they're becoming like Activision and the game engine they've always used for CoD?

Now, I've truly hung up the mantle on any future Elder Scrolls games and that makes me sad. I'd rather play a proper game/game series like The Witcher from a company like CD Projekt RED that actually listens to community feedback and aren't money hungry down to the last penny. If the overall game is what it's supposed to be (graphics, gameplay, story and all), the money will come regardless. Many studios don't get this. They think way too short-term.

 

[Vayra86]

Someone really needs to create a petition to force their hand into using a more up-to-date engine that can also allow modding. Otherwise they'll milk this series for the rest of it's natural life, FO included. Dare I say they're becoming like Activision and the game engine they've always used for CoD?

Now, I've truly hung up the mantle on any future Elder Scrolls games and that makes me sad. I'd rather play a proper game/game series like The Witcher from a company like CD Projekt RED that actually listens to community feedback and aren't money hungry down to the last penny. If the overall game is what it's supposed to be (graphics, gameplay, story and all), the money will come regardless. Many studios don't get this. They think way too short-term.

I have absolutely zero doubt that some other studio will come in and make a Skyrim killer. And a Fallout killer. Its not that hard either, its just labor intensive. It will take time though, and then another few years for a mod community to materialize.

Its a bit like getting stuck with Windows. You got so used to it, its hard to change the OS. That is also what Todd is actually saying; its too convenient for them, and for the mod community, and in that he is correct. But like you say, short term gain prevailed here. And it does that every single time for the last 15 years.

I'm pretty sure your your first 6 words state exactly that. Maybe it isn't what you meant but it was exactly what you said. Let me quote you below...

Yeah should have worded it better.

 

[Octopuss]

I wouldn't have a problem with the engine (and the sheer moddability is difficult if not impossible to find elsewhere) IF they actually did some serious work on it, not slap a few bandaid-like new features to it over ten or so years.

 

[remixedcat]

Exactly. That's why I was disappointed by Skyrim and Fallout 4... both are a boring mess with dumbed-down gameplay and lazy story. Outdated graphics and gamebreaking bugs were probably the last thing on my mind after seeing my favourite RPGs become nothing more than an equivalent of GTA in a fantasy/post-apocalyptic world setting.
Oblivion wasn't great either, but at least it got saved by the Shivering Isles.

Skyrim is fun but not enough khajiit lol. love the winter stuff in it. at least the community fixes were good. the vanilla OG skyrim was buggy AF and unplayable. setstage was needed too much and I gave up for a while till the fixes were out but it was too long a wait. BUGthesda got my money twice and I feel cheated.

FO4 was ok but ehhh. FO3 was the biggest crashfest evar it made me so mad at crashes I threw a mikes hard lemonade bottle scross the room and put a dent in the wall of my rental house at the time. kept crashing like 5 x in a row I had enough lol. and I cracked a keyboard as well.

Oblivion was a bit buggy but nowhere near as bad as FO3. Loved that one and got several hundred hours in that SOB. Shivering isles was awesome. My fav part of the game.

FO76 looks like it's fun and WV REPRESENT!!! but the requirements would have me dropping at least 500USD to play and I got too much stuff to get for the house. how in the hell they managed to bloat that same engine further is mind bogglingly stupid.

 

[silentbogo]

FO76 looks like it's fun and WV REPRESENT!!! but the requirements would have me dropping at least 500USD to play and I got too much stuff to get for the house. how in the hell they managed to bloat that same engine further is mind bogglingly stupid.

That's all that post-processing stuffed on top of the old engine. They've probably got the idea from NVidia with their Vault 1080 (also quite taxing, even on Pascal cards).