What do you want titles for these topics to be exactly?
'Bethesda Game Studios next-gen RPGs to use some of the same technology as has plagued their games for the last decade +, maybe that's a problem, we don't know.'
Something like that?
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The Controversy Over Bethesda's 'Game Engine' Is Misguided [Kotaku]
- Thread starter ToddBonzalez
- Start date
'Bethesda Game Studios next-gen RPGs to use some of the same technology as has plagued their games for the last decade +, maybe that's a problem, we don't know.'
Something like that?
Jason is right and he is also wrong.
If you keep adding to an engine thats already poor, or even changing blocks of code for some things then all you end up with is an engine with lots of flaws and lots of development problems.
Creating a new engine is a massive undertaking (and no one ever codes it from scratch they would pull it from the existing code) and shouldn't be taken with a pinch of salt, but as every single Fallout and Scrolls games exhibit issues they've always had, doesn't look like they are fixing or changing stuff that matters. Mainly the issue with this is that you cannot always re-code something without breaking lots of things. So yeah so they added in multiplayer but it probably didnt impact things that would improve the core engine. The total war games has the exact same problem... when you have an old engine you cannot fix it properly, you are always building on top of a house of cards.
If you look at the Fallout engine its years behind something like RDR, Horizon, Spiderman and god of war. That's the difference of making an engine using modern techniques compared to building on top of an old engine and trying to push in new techniques into a game using a mish mash of stuff.
If you keep adding to an engine thats already poor, or even changing blocks of code for some things then all you end up with is an engine with lots of flaws and lots of development problems.
Creating a new engine is a massive undertaking (and no one ever codes it from scratch they would pull it from the existing code) and shouldn't be taken with a pinch of salt, but as every single Fallout and Scrolls games exhibit issues they've always had, doesn't look like they are fixing or changing stuff that matters. Mainly the issue with this is that you cannot always re-code something without breaking lots of things. So yeah so they added in multiplayer but it probably didnt impact things that would improve the core engine. The total war games has the exact same problem... when you have an old engine you cannot fix it properly, you are always building on top of a house of cards.
If you look at the Fallout engine its years behind something like RDR, Horizon, Spiderman and god of war. That's the difference of making an engine using modern techniques compared to building on top of an old engine and trying to push in new techniques into a game using a mish mash of stuff.
User banned (1 week): Antagonizing and insulting another user, acount still in its junior phase.
This is funny because, very obviously, Jason Schreier doesn't know what he's talking about and he's way too dumb to realize it.
A "game engine", as used in discussions in forums and articles, IS NOT A PIECE OF TECH. Nor it is a "collection", as he says.
A game engine is an heuristic. It's a term in language that works like an umbrella and that encompasses the overall "look and feel" of playing a game. *Playing* it, not building it.
Of course the look of Morrowind or Oblivion doesn't PRECISELY correspond to the look of Skyrim or Fallout, but the analogies and the general feel are absolutely there. You could make an experiment and let someone play a Bethesda game without knowing it's Bethesda and he'll know, if he's competent, within minutes. And certainly not because that game would be very complex.
If an engine is an engine, then it provides a structure. No matter how much you WRESTLE it, the structure is a structure and by being structure it imposes itself and will create limits.
No matter how many times Bethesda explains how they rewrote everything in their engine, PLAYING those games will always reveal the truth. And the truth is that they are too scared to abandon the pipeline they used until this point because they cannot afford to wipe everything clean and restart from zero. Because IT IS indeed an engine, and they don't want to discard it.
And yet it's the same shit, as glaringly obvious to anyone who played even for 5 minutes. All Jason Schreier says falls apart right there because it is PROVEN by playing the game and realizing how the "engine" is still the same.
What Jason Schreier says is only vaguely correct in the sense that "engine" is not a word used precisely in this context. But it's only a discussion on the specific use and meaning of that word, and it doesn't even remotely touch the actual discussion that takes place when players criticize this "engine".
A "game engine", as used in discussions in forums and articles, IS NOT A PIECE OF TECH. Nor it is a "collection", as he says.
A game engine is an heuristic. It's a term in language that works like an umbrella and that encompasses the overall "look and feel" of playing a game. *Playing* it, not building it.
Of course the look of Morrowind or Oblivion doesn't PRECISELY correspond to the look of Skyrim or Fallout, but the analogies and the general feel are absolutely there. You could make an experiment and let someone play a Bethesda game without knowing it's Bethesda and he'll know, if he's competent, within minutes. And certainly not because that game would be very complex.
If an engine is an engine, then it provides a structure. No matter how much you WRESTLE it, the structure is a structure and by being structure it imposes itself and will create limits.
No matter how many times Bethesda explains how they rewrote everything in their engine, PLAYING those games will always reveal the truth. And the truth is that they are too scared to abandon the pipeline they used until this point because they cannot afford to wipe everything clean and restart from zero. Because IT IS indeed an engine, and they don't want to discard it.
And yet it's the same shit, as glaringly obvious to anyone who played even for 5 minutes. All Jason Schreier says falls apart right there because it is PROVEN by playing the game and realizing how the "engine" is still the same.
What Jason Schreier says is only vaguely correct in the sense that "engine" is not a word used precisely in this context. But it's only a discussion on the specific use and meaning of that word, and it doesn't even remotely touch the actual discussion that takes place when players criticize this "engine".
My big take away from the article, besides getting some knowledge about "game engine" terminology dropped on me, is in the quote from Todd Howard. He says:
"We like our editor. It allows us to create worlds really fast and the modders know it really well. There are some elementary ways we create our games and that will continue because that lets us be efficient and we think it works best."
I may be taking this out of context heavily, but it seems that all Bethesda's decisions from here on out with this engine and it's associated assets are catering to the modding crowd and all that implies. The paid mod fiasco saw a serious backpedaling from Bethesda with the Creation Club created to assuage that. I don't know what to think about this precisely, but if the PC (and now console) modding community remain as vocal as ever, could they be the crowd that may further delay or stymie the transition to new creation tools for Bethesda?
"We like our editor. It allows us to create worlds really fast and the modders know it really well. There are some elementary ways we create our games and that will continue because that lets us be efficient and we think it works best."
I may be taking this out of context heavily, but it seems that all Bethesda's decisions from here on out with this engine and it's associated assets are catering to the modding crowd and all that implies. The paid mod fiasco saw a serious backpedaling from Bethesda with the Creation Club created to assuage that. I don't know what to think about this precisely, but if the PC (and now console) modding community remain as vocal as ever, could they be the crowd that may further delay or stymie the transition to new creation tools for Bethesda?
Sorry, this was a bad article. The problem with iterating on bad code is exactly that - it's bad code. Their engine is just a mountain of bad, unmaintainable code. But they've dumped so much money into it, it's easier in the short-term just to keep attempting to extend it rather than doing a full-on refactor.
What they're doing is repeatedly patching a leaky bucket. The only way to truly improve their workflow is to basically start over. This is an architectural problem.
What they're doing is repeatedly patching a leaky bucket. The only way to truly improve their workflow is to basically start over. This is an architectural problem.
I understood that engines evolve other time and that it wasn't the same engine that was used to make Skyrim that made Fallout 4 - my problem was/is that all of Bethesda's games have made me feel so naseaus I can't play them/even watch them very long. There's something about the way the camera moves that makes me feels sick. This has been consistant across the games with the engines which have been developed from each other. When they announced they were changing engine for Starfield, I thought it would be like how BioWare moved from Eclipse to Frostbite for Dragon AGe, and there was a higher chance I'd actually be able to play the game. Knowing now that the new engine will be an evolved iteration of their previous engine changes things for me, in that it makes it much more likely I will encounter the same issue and not be able to play. If the issue has appeared in every game made by the previous iterations of the engine, I don't really see how it won't appear in the new engine which is still based off the old ones. It does make me more disappointed tbh.
But developers market and hype their "engines" all the time.
Unreal
Crytek
Creation
ETC
So maybe don't blame the audience for using the words and ideas that have been hammered in our heads since BUILD ENGINE, DOOM ENGINE, QUAKE ENGINE, ETC ETC ETC
Well they don't really make the same games as bethesda, but I do know that obsidian made a fallout game with it and it was a mess too.
Except those specific complaints are all still out there and, as such, it's evidently clear what problems people have with Bethesda's games. Just because sometimes they may (the article doesn't give any real reasons why the engine could literally never be at fault) lead to semantically wrong demands doesn't make those complaints any less visible.
Bethesda's not dumb, they know what the issues with their games are, they've just chosen not to fix them despite being given many, many chances to do so.
The complaint wasn't raised about the title? It was raised about the full article quoted in the OP. Or I don't understand you response.
players have been very specific about wanting uncapped fps, ultrawide support, and fov sliders, but bethesda continues to make the same mistakes. as soon as fallout 76 was announced, you can find forum posts of players wondering whether the game would support 21:9 because fallout 4 didn't and still doesn't.
players blame the engine for it, which does make sense even if it's an incorrect assumption. in schreier's mario example, the sequel re-uses the physics from the first game, which is fine, except in bethesda's case where apparently their physics system breaks at higher fps. maybe bethesda should rebuild the physics in a way that allows for uncapped FPS rather than iterating on the same system that they've used for literally a decade+ that forces an fps cap.
Wait, is their engine open-source? Did you have access to it? How can you say that?
i don't think it's entitled at all to feel irritated that a team with the budget BGS has literally cannot implement better looking graphical effects than a single person (the ENBseries creator)
you should read the thread. He just explained that he has been blacklisted by bethesda for the last five years. so its really doubtful that he is an apologist. re-read the article and try again.
Buggy code typically equals bad code. In my experience anyways.
His complaint is about the titles of articles and YT videos.
'Engine' is just the catch-all people use to talk about technological issues within a game. Because a title can't be a paragraph long. He talks about people being right to complain, but how effectively and succinctly can you describe those issues in a title?
Engine is just shorthand, which the industry is even more guilty of using than the audience is.
great article, explaining these things for the masses. but what they do need, is to change frameworks. what they are using for the animation, needs to change. the design philosophy is another. these games don't look like the years they were released in. plain and simple.
I think what a lot of the complaints boil down to is that there should be no excuses for all the jank and same issues that seem to carry over from their previous games.
Years ago, bethesda was kind the only option for quality open world rpgs. Now, that isn't the case. You have rockstart, CDPR and a few new comers straight up taking Bethesda to the cleaners as far as quality is concerned.
I used to buy their games day one, after fallout 4 that shit stops. They have competition now and I can wait until their shit hits bargain bin prices before I touch them(looking at you Fallout 76).
They have to be held to a higher standard now because they are no longer "the only game in town" so to speak.
Years ago, bethesda was kind the only option for quality open world rpgs. Now, that isn't the case. You have rockstart, CDPR and a few new comers straight up taking Bethesda to the cleaners as far as quality is concerned.
I used to buy their games day one, after fallout 4 that shit stops. They have competition now and I can wait until their shit hits bargain bin prices before I touch them(looking at you Fallout 76).
They have to be held to a higher standard now because they are no longer "the only game in town" so to speak.
Those things don't address the performance, which I believe to be the most common complaint by a long way.
Many don't even realize that. There are some that still say that Call of Duty uses the Quake engine. Like yeah back in the day the engine was based off of that but almost none of the original code even exists anymore.
Seriously people think every problem can be fixed by saying: "Make a new engine!" like it's this simple thing to do.
If people that know explain to the audience patiently why the audience is clueless, and the audience whines that it's not their fault, but that they'll continue using everything completely wrong anyway, then yes, the audience is at fault.
You do have the chance to correct your mistake. You chose not to.
And thus bethesda will continue releasing unpolished, buggy games, since marketing doesn't see the demands as need for changes - gamers sure don't seem to mind the bugs and the lack of polish, after all, just the nebulous engine that the devs keep changing somewhat every time anyway. Next time they'll probably change it so the gamers shut up, problem solved.
And the cycle repeats. You can't solve a problem if you keep complaining about completely unrelated things.
I would argue even if people have the language to express themselves or even better if they work in development and are good at it, they should limit their criticism to what's real.
I see it as another way gamers try to dictate the product instead of being a consumer. Sure it is newsworthy but I don't see why it should be valid when the developers did their job to the best of their ability and delivered a game we like.
If so why don't we hear more about posters on these sites getting hired to fix these engines or these games? I do know it has happened in the past with some games (Dark Souls and Durant e come to mind) and in some other mediums like movies, but at the end of the day the team creating the game delivered the best product they could with the time/limitations they had.
Criticism is valid, but going beyond that seems like entitlement to me.
What? A game engine has everything to do with building a game. This is simply factually incorrect:
Wikipedia: Game Engine said:
I.. What? This is not some "aww shucks, we're all human and making games is hard" type of situation. This is a billion dollar company (at this point) that keeps putting out the same broken shit each time they release a game. People are not entitled for wanting them to get their shit together. They've been waiting a decade for Bethesda to get its shit together. This is a company that has the time and the money to get it right but they just don't and it's not like people are asking them to fix impossible things in their games. If unpaid modders can find a way to fix the untold number of problems in these games, then this company can sure as hell do it.
Where is this narrative that gamers have literally never complained about the issues with Bethesda games coming from? Gamers have been complaining about Bethesda's bugs, outdated graphics, awful animations, and terrible console performance for nearly a decade now. Arguing that they haven't and that Bethesda "just doesn't know" what the issue is is the definition of a false narrative.
Would you consider Fallout breaking as the frame rate is uncapped to be an engine problem? Or no?
the point of his article is simply about people misunderstanding and misusing the term "game engine". he's not not writing to disarm the complainers, he just wants them to understand what it is they are complaining about
On the bright side, future gamebryo game will have mods at the least. When mods and community patches hit peak that's when I jump in with Bethesda games. All that money from Skyrim and are still seemingly dependent on mod fixes going by Fallout 76.
I'm looking at a Fallout 76 review video and skipped ahead and I couldn't tell if they were using footage of a older Fallout game or the new game. Seems like the usual Gamebryo jank (or just too many bugs to fix nature of Bethesda open world style) + server problems = winning combination.
Or this combination could = profit, unless somehow Bethesda bans people for finding exploits, but really that's not happening haha.
I'm looking at a Fallout 76 review video and skipped ahead and I couldn't tell if they were using footage of a older Fallout game or the new game. Seems like the usual Gamebryo jank (or just too many bugs to fix nature of Bethesda open world style) + server problems = winning combination.
Or this combination could = profit, unless somehow Bethesda bans people for finding exploits, but really that's not happening haha.
That read like a bizarre puff piece in defense of Bethesda's continued use of a Gamebyro-based engine.
Schreier keeps repeating this line:
A line we see every time Betehsda ships out a new game, suggestions that they have an essentially new engine, which is what they claimed when they first trotted out their alleged Creation engine (which was still built on Gamebyro).
And maybe there are fundamental issues when your foundations are garbage? Skyrim had a game-breaking bug on PS3 that made the game run at 1FPS when you reached a certain amount of playtime.
Schreier keeps repeating this line:
A line we see every time Betehsda ships out a new game, suggestions that they have an essentially new engine, which is what they claimed when they first trotted out their alleged Creation engine (which was still built on Gamebyro).
And maybe there are fundamental issues when your foundations are garbage? Skyrim had a game-breaking bug on PS3 that made the game run at 1FPS when you reached a certain amount of playtime.
Open Source no but before they forked Gamebryo into its own thing for Fallout 4
Well it was just straight up Gamebryo and there's a but load of games that uses it. And they were not made by Bethesda.
Some notable names being
Catherine (the original I dunno what the upcoming remaster uses)
Civilization 4 (Firaxis then changed for Civ 5 )
Rochsmith
So on and so forth ...
So the article is on point when they say that the engine isn't really to blame here. Other great games using it came out and didn't face much of any of those problems really .
Again bein' able to lift Mjöllnir of the ground is a remarkable feat sure but that alone won't turn you in the best blacksmith of the world.
So anyone blaming it on the engine is way off base here true ... That doesn't address the elephant in the room though which is the bugginess and lack of polish that plagues a lot of Bethesda games...
Oh I see, gotcha. For some reason I thought you were talking about the thread's title and was very confused.
I guess I can see how the engine shorthand is useful for titles, but couldn't hurt to go more in depth as to specific issues. Also couldn't hurt to learn more about the tools that are used to build games if their development is something you are interested in or aim to criticize.
I would certainly agree with all of that post. With the exception that it kind of renders all criticism invalid, no?
Because it presumes that this is about a purchasing decision, I.E. I won't buy the next Elder Scrolls unless it doesn't have so and so issues that previous entries have had.
I see it more as shaping the hopes and expectations of a product. The same way we talk about games after the fact. I think the movement in RDR2 is clunky... Okay, that doesn't mean I can unbuy it, and I wouldn't even if I could. But it's still a criticism I believe to be valid. The difference being if voiced before hand, it's more likely to impact development.
Bethesda aren't going to throw away their core technology because we bitch about it, obviously, but if it even gets them to reevaluate a little aspects of it, and makes it even 1% better, that's a clear win.
OK, here is my complaint about them using their same in house engine. It's the same issue other studios have (SE for example). So much time and manpower is spent getting the engine to do what they want with their new game and then ironing out issues with the new functions that could have been spent better fleshing out animations, better art, and more qa/ debugging of game code.
Often, they are developing the new features for the engine alongside the developers who are building game functionality that utilizes said engine features. It slows game development down. Introduces new bugs in game code that used to work and now doesn't.
What Jason explains is why it's not the "SAME" engine with every game and he's right, but that's part of the problem. The engine is far behind on functionality and features that other engines offer out of the box. They can either spend tons of time playing catch up while taking time away from game development OR they can move to a middleware engine and after the initial hickup of moving over, focus solely on game development.
Often, they are developing the new features for the engine alongside the developers who are building game functionality that utilizes said engine features. It slows game development down. Introduces new bugs in game code that used to work and now doesn't.
What Jason explains is why it's not the "SAME" engine with every game and he's right, but that's part of the problem. The engine is far behind on functionality and features that other engines offer out of the box. They can either spend tons of time playing catch up while taking time away from game development OR they can move to a middleware engine and after the initial hickup of moving over, focus solely on game development.
Thanks I was going to respond to that. For a person claiming Jason had no idea what they were talking about they clearly had no idea what they were talking about.
A post that seemingly needs to be quoted in every thread like this:
When people complain about Bethesda's "engine" this is the shit they are talking about. Stuff that has been broken in the same way since before Oblivion.
When people complain about Bethesda's "engine" this is the shit they are talking about. Stuff that has been broken in the same way since before Oblivion.
So here's the difference between Bethesda's engine and engines like Unity and Unreal: Bethesda isn't trying to sell their engine on the side as a core part of their business model. Companies like Crytek and Epic Games have a massive incentive to hype their engines because it not only sells he games they make—which double as sales pitches—but also drives other companies to invest in the engine itself creating a feedback loop. Gamebryo was actually licensed and used by other devs, and looking at the list of games made using it, the problem doesn't seem to be exclusively the engine. Games like Civ IV and Catherine didn't seem to suffer from using it.
Read what that quote actually says.
A blueprint has nothing to with construction, but is essential in allowing people to actually build a house.
But they have their shit together though? The games work, you can play them to completion. Sure they have bugs that should be criticized to some extent, but if their game were really broken then they wouldn't be a billion dollar company would they?
They are humans and that matters. Why? I feel sometimes you guys think every game has the best genius developer working for them at every role. So if someone at Naughty Dog does something amazing./
Can you explain what this means:
Because I get your point but that is not how software projects work...you just don't fix things magically even if you know what they are. Sometimes decision are made etc.
If unpaid modders can find a way to fix some games, why aren't they raking in the cash and being hired and praised all around? Some have done so like Durante, were is the rest? If the Bethesda games are so broken where is our hero modder that will go to them and fix their issues?
That is why I call it entitlement because it is not based on the realities of software development.
This would be an accurate synopsis if it were an article focused on taking Bethesda to task for their extremely long lineage of identically janky games that also clarifies what game engines are, but instead that worthwhile aim gets a passing mention or two in a piece devoted to an extended semantic wrist slap. The result here is more of a rebuff of Bethesda critics not especially well versed in game development using a bunch of "making games is hard" language couched in just enough "some of your concerns are valid" to wash his hands of responsibility.