The Controversy Over Bethesda's 'Game Engine' Is Misguided [Kotaku]

[ToddBonzalez]

I've been thinking about making a post on here basically making the same point for a few weeks, but I've been too lazy to actually formulate the post. Jason Schreier makes the argument in a clear, and concise way.

Worth reading if you're complaining about Bethesda's engine.

https://kotaku.com/the-controversy-over-bethesdas-game-engine-is-misguided-1830435351

 

[qatak]

Schreier's recent stint of articles telling people to calm down have been great lol. Enjoyed his Diablo Immortal and AC Odyssey microtransaction coverage too.

 

[Admiral Woofington]

It's still worth discussing that Bethesda needs to up many aspects of their visuals, animation and bug squashing. Because with what we've seen open world games can accomplish now it's going to be hard to argue that their upcoming games won't look dated. I won't deny I'll have a good time with them as in all likelyhood I'll still love them.

 

[Phendrift]

This article was probably spurred by a very thread here that Jason posted in

 

[7thFloor]

Finally someone says what anyone who knows what they're talking about already understands...

 

[JigglesBunny]

Everything he's saying is technically sound but the reality is that the lack of polish, underwhelming performance optimization and visuals are still far below what they should be and no matter the cause, it's time for a major upgrade in those departments.

 

[SmarmySmurf]

I agree.

 

[LewieP]

Feels to me like it's entirely sidestepping people's actual complaints.

Yes there's a lot of misinformed people attributing faults in Bethesda games to the engine that may or may not be caused by the engine.

But people are using "engine" as shorthand for "technical problems existing in all Bethesda's games to some extent since Morrowind".

People wouldn't care about the engine if these games had good facial/walking animations, slick movement systems, few graphical/quest/NPC bugs/glitches, characters with eyes that suggest life, streamlined area transitions etc.

Me and a lot of people really love Bethesda's games for the things they get right, but hand-waiving complaints about their serious technical problems as being from people that don't know what "engine" means is not particularly constructive.

Obviously, no one else makes games quite like Bethesda, so you accept the rough with the smooth, or at least the market certainly does, but I can't' blame people for wanting Starfield/TES6 to at least approach industry standard levels of polish.

I guess every player has to decide their ABABAPPA for each game on a case by case basis.

 

[Yukinari]

It's still worth discussing that Bethesda needs to up many aspects of their visuals, animation and bug squashing. Because with what we've seen open world games can accomplish now it's going to be hard to argue that their upcoming games won't look dated. I won't deny I'll have a good time with them as in all likelyhood I'll still love them.

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The whiplash from seeing RDR2 to FO76 is so jarring that its like playing games that are multiple generations apart despite coming out in like a month of each other.

 

[benzopil]

Titanfall 2's engine is from 2004 and nobody cared

 

[Kraken3dfx]

All that work and still no functional ladders.

At the end of the day, it's probably not the engine as much as the people behind the engine, in addition to the time/expense of trying to fix the problems Gamebryo still suffers from. Having said that, they've obviously made huge strides technically building on the same engine and tweaking/rebuilding it where necessary to meet the idea of their vision, if sometimes falling short on the letter.

 

[StuBurns]

The article completely misses the point of the complaints.

It's entirely focused on people misusing the term engine, okay, fine. People don't know exactly what they're critical of, but they're still being critical for a reason, and a technological one.

This seems like the most pointless semantics debate to completely sidestep the actual issue people have.

 

[MosquitoSmasher]

I don't want to start worrying about games that are years away from us, but I DO hope Starfield won't look as dated as Fallout 76 already does now. It's a real shame that this is what we got three years after Fallout 4. I definitely expected much better graphics.

It is always said how they can keep upgrading the same engine, but this clearly didn't happen for Fallout 76. So will they for Starfield and TES VI?
Ok so we're getting new animations and I am excited about that and it's about damn time too, but what about character models? God knows they need a huge upgrade.

The jump from Fallout 3 to 4 was a real nice one. I hope to see that with Starfield.

 

[WhiteRabbitEXE]

Titanfall 2's engine is from 2004 and nobody cared

Click to shrink...

No, it's not.

 

[Atom Heart Mother]

It's not Gamebyro, its the people at BGS. Gamebyro is fine and I 100% understand Bethesda for sticking with their engine. But man, they need to work out some major issues.

Titanfall 2's engine is from 2004 and nobody cared

Click to shrink...

Everybody loves Source! Also, it's not exactly from 2004. It's way more revamped and overhauled compared to Valve's main Source branch, which is constantly updated. Source from 2004 is not the same as Source from 2018.

 

[7thFloor]

But people are using "engine" as shorthand for "technical problems existing in all Bethesda's games to some extent since Morrowind".

Click to shrink...

Believe me, most people are not.

 

[Deleted member 6949]

Fine, use the same engine. How about making a game with it that isn't absolutely riddled with bugs? Every Bethesda game has a fan patch that's as long as a CVS receipt that fixes a zillion basic bugs, but for some reason Bethesda can never get around to patching them.

 

[StuBurns]

The Source engine still has some Quake code in it. TF2's engine from '96!

 

[BrokenFiction]

I think what the article misses is that people aren't just bitching to bitch (well, maybe some are), but are saying this because they want Bethesda to be better and know Bethesda can do better.

 

[jschreier]

The article completely misses the point of the complaints.

It's entirely focused on people misusing the term engine, okay, fine. People don't know exactly what they're critical of, but they're still being critical for a reason, and a technological one.

This seems like the most pointless semantics debate to completely sidestep the actual issue people have.

Click to shrink...

But the article is not about people's complaints, it's about the string of inflammatory headlines titled "Bethesda says it won't change engines for Starfield and The Elder Scrolls VI" and why those headlines are meaningless.

 

[Saty]

Tell that to Telltale

 

[Hektor]

While educational articles about videogame development like this are definitely worthwhile, the contextual framing of it makes it come off as rather pedantic.

 

[Starlatine]

i feel like this is a lot of handwaving for things that are real issues but people are just not expressing their discontent "properly". Which, quite obviously, is not peoples fault but bethesda all the same

it matters little if the fault is the engine or "bethesda being too ambitious". They're doing this shit for more than a decade now. It's about time for them to tone down their ambitions properly and release a fucking functional product for once then

 

[BigTnaples]

Yep, been saying this for years. All the trolls saying "it's gambryo".

The engine is a good base, and they can revamp it as needed. Just look at Oblivion to Skyrim. Nearly a generational leap, on the same hardware.

Bethesda has tech problems for sure, but just throwing out the engine is not going to solve them, and may do more harm than good.

 

[Kindekuma]

While I'm sure that the Creation Engine lets you do a lot of things on a technical and gameplay scale, it just lacks in visuals. When I heard that FO76 got a new renderer I was confused because this game looks basically identical to FO4 to me. 76's visuals in general is just bad. Especially in interior scenes where shading and lighting just goes to some horrid mess.

So when ES6 comes out, it's going to look rough as hell in terms of a vanilla experience compared to other AAA games out alongside it. Despite all the cool shit Bethesda can let you do in those games.

 

[LewieP]

Believe me, most people are not.

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So what are they talking about?

 

[NoblesseOblige]

This morning, news headlines and YouTube videos [...]

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hold up, right there. Youtube isn't news headlines, at least not in reference to this. It's just a bunch of lame ass fuckboi gamer instigators clickbaiting on the hate for Bethesda/FO76. Anyone who goes to those sources for information doesn't give a damn what a game engine actually is. They're just trying to find places to feed them opinions they already had.

 

[Femto0]

Pointless semantic, they are years behind the competition in every aspect

 

[MosquitoSmasher]

Yep, been saying this for years. All the trolls saying "it's gambryo".

The engine is a good base, and they can revamp it as needed. Just look at Oblivion to Skyrim. Nearly a generational leap, on the same hardware.

Bethesda has tech problems for sure, but just throwing out the engine is not going to solve them, and may do more harm than good.

Click to shrink...

Absolutely! That jump is great, and so is the jump from Fallout 3 to 4 even if it's probably not as big as Oblivion to Skyrim. So that makes me wonder... why does 76 look like a Fallout 4 mod?

 

[Deleted member 16876]

I mean it sounds right but I feel like a new engine would fix many problems they have not because they can't do it on this engine but because then they would get a new chance at building the game from scratch.

Right now they keep updating the engine and not fixing the problems it had. If they fixed the issues instead of ignoring them because "they are too hard to fix right now" then nobody would be complaining about them. See COD for a good example of using the same engine without any issues.

 

[Staf]

Just make a good game and you can make the game on a Volvo engine for all i care.

 

[Deleted member 1003]

For me the performance being uneven is a concern but it's the character designs and animation that makes all the BGS games feel and look the same.

 

[Lulu]

So cheese wheels

 

[Deleted member 224]

The whiplash from seeing RDR2 to FO76 is so jarring that its like playing games that are multiple generations apart despite coming out in like a month of each other.

Click to shrink...

At some times it really does feel this way. I really wonder what's going to happen as next gen rolls around and franchises like Assassins Creed, GTA, and Cyberpunk completely blow Bethesda titles out of the water from a technical perspective.

Stiff AI and animations, serious performance issues, poor LoD transitions with massive pop in, tiny settlements/cities, low npc counts, loading screens to enter most buildings, general bugs and other issues. All of these issues needed to be fixed with Fallout 4 or at least over the course of the last 5 years. But 76 shows that there's still all of these major legacy issues with Bethesda games that haven't been addressed since Oblivion.

 

[7thFloor]

So what are they talking about?

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They legitimately believe that the engine is the root of the problem, which is of course not the case. Perhaps it's semantics but I still find it very annoying.

 

[Savinowned]

I get what he's saying, but the essence of the argument against their open world games still stands. I couldn't get myself to play Fallout 4 like I wanted to because I had MAJOR issues with bugs that affected almost every facet of the game.

 

[Velocity:Design:Comfort]

The whiplash from seeing RDR2 to FO76 is so jarring that its like playing games that are multiple generations apart despite coming out in like a month of each other.

Click to shrink...

Fo76 is not nearly as good looking as rdr2 but this is such hyperbole. Actually look at Bethesda games on older gens.

 

[Starlatine]

They legitimately believe that the engine is the root of the problem, which is of course not the case. Perhaps it's semantics but I still find it very annoying.

Click to shrink...

you'll live
you know what is truly annoying though ? buying their last five fully priced games and still finding the same bugs on them

 

[Proof]

Yeah, I appreciate a lot of what Jason does but this article is kinda pointless.

I guess it's an interesting distinction to make about what a "game engine" actually is and how the underlying technology of a game series can evolve over time...

Buuuuut... and there's just no way Jason doesn't understand this: the real issue and criticism is that Bethesda games end up looking, feeling and playing antiquated. If that's the bottom line, who cares whether the general gaming audience understands the nuances of game development or not?!

Regardless, now it's time to queue up the "yeah, gamers be overreactin' and actin' all childish and entitled!!" comment train...

 

[Aprikurt]

Hopefully Fallout 5 in 2022 will be on the level of The Witcher 3

 

[MotionBlue]

Jason Schreier: Defender of corporate interests. This is a wierd 180 from July when he said corporations should be held accountable.

 

[bad poster]

i really think bethesda would benefit from not chasing the AAA market

 

[Deleted member 5167]

So what are they talking about?

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I've literally seen people on this site saying shit like "oh, if they just used Unreal everything would be fine".
Blaming gamebryo for Bethesdas shortfalls is like a goddamn superstition at this point.

 

[Deleted member 41271]

People wouldn't care about the engine if these games had good facial/walking animations, slick movement systems, few graphical/quest/NPC bugs/glitches, characters with eyes that suggest life, streamlined area transitions etc.

Click to shrink...

None of these are engine related... barking these up to the engine is utterly misguided.
All of these are instead polishing and art direction. ESPECIALLY polishing. The problem is simply that Bethesda likes skipping on that step. Blaming the engine just misses the point so far that it'll even help Bethesda continue what they are doing - all they have to do is switch their engine (or update it) and pretend all is done, reap good publicity - and then deliver the same unpolished mess.

It's not pointless semantics. It's literally criticizing the completely wrong thing. It's like feeling that games are buggy, and whining that the sound director is at fault because some bugs cause audio glitches.

 

[MillionIII]

So a better dev can make something out of that engine? Are we going to pretend that the creation engine doesn't have it's problems and it's perfectly fine?
They can't even put a FOV slider without breaking stuff

 

[Deleted member 6730]

I don't know if it's a good analogy but since I edit video engine complaining feels like complaining about somebody using Adobe Premiere and then saying it's old because the first release came out in the 90s. Game engines are software and software is constantly upgraded.

 

[Starlatine]

They can't even put an FOV slider without breaking stuff

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or ladders

 

[LewieP]

They legitimately believe that the engine is the root of the problem, which is of course not the case. Perhaps it's semantics but I still find it very annoying.

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That's what my post said.

Players can't be expected to understand the intricacies of game development, or how games work.

 

[The Iron Banana]

It's still worth discussing that Bethesda needs to up many aspects of their visuals, animation and bug squashing. Because with what we've seen open world games can accomplish now it's going to be hard to argue that their upcoming games won't look dated. I won't deny I'll have a good time with them as in all likelyhood I'll still love them.

Click to shrink...

Yes that's true but let's not forget the point of the article. The games animation system, the way they build the character models, the detail used, etc. isn't necessarily indicative of their engine but rather their design philosophy, etc.. That can certainly lead to their products looking dated. Most of the vocal outcries are from people who have no idea what a game engine actually is and just parrot what others have said before them. The unwashed masses so to speak.

 

[MDSVeritas]

This is a really useful clarification and something important to keep in mind about a lot of game dev. Jason continues to do really good work.