An ex-Bethesda employee has shared that he believes the Creation Engine — the engine running some of the most celebrated RPGs of the 2010s — is still good enough for Bethesda's continued use, despite its extremely old age.
News in brief
- The Creation Engine has been in use for well over a decade now
- Ex-Bethesda developer claims the engine is still perfectly fine for use
- Some claim the engine is showing its limits, as shown by Starfield
Bruce Nesmith is the ex-Bethesda developer in question, and he has defended the studio's continued use of a 12 year old engine, despite many thinking it was time for the studio to move to something newer. In fact, he went as far as to predict that Bethesda would continue to stand by their proprietary game engine, even as other developers move to newer engines, like those from Unreal.
According to Nesmith's interview with VideoGamer, the Creation Engine, which has powered games like Skyrim, Fallout 4, and Starfield, may be on the elderly side, but it's perfectly tuned for Bethesda's purposes. As such, he doesn't think it's likely Bethesda will drop it for a newer and shinier upgrade. Such as, to the Unreal Engine, as a number of other developers are.
However, he does have a warning for Bethesda, and it's simply that the engine is old, but not in the way you might think. Because the Creation Engine is based on the even older Gamebryo engine (which ran games like Morrowind and Fallout 3), there are parts of the source code that simply don't compile any more. That means they can't really be changed and have to be used "as is" — and this sort of limitation is likely to be the only reason Bethesda moves away from its own engine.
Is Nesmith correct? It's impossible to say. Starfield is an example of a game that made people really start to think that maybe Bethesda could do with updating to a new engine, but by no means is likely that Bethesda would switch now, especially since doing so would likely put back work on The Elder Scrolls VI.
