It's taken 15 years, but we are finally seeing a Bethesda engine overhaul. Since Oblivion, all of Bethesda's games have been building on the same core engine that has accumulated a whole lot of cruft, with players finding many of the same bugs unfixed in games separated by a decade.
Todd Howard revealed that this change is happening in his statement on Zenimax being purchased by Microsoft, stating:
With each new console cycle, we evolved together. From bringing mods to consoles with Fallout 4, now over a billion downloads, to the latest technologies fueling Xbox Series X/S. These new systems are optimized for the vast worlds we love to create, with generational leaps not just in graphics, but CPU and data streaming as well. It’s led to our largest engine overhaul since Oblivion, with all new technologies powering our first new IP in 25 years, Starfield, as well as The Elder Scrolls VI.
This also explains some of the delay on information of the new games, because the team is also taking the time to finally do a long overdue engine audit and cleaning. When you let things back up like that, it means you need to take more time later, and this is especially the case when your core engine base was two generations back, despite Bethesda rebranding the engine as the Creation Engine with Skyrim, which it undoubtably did have improvements for that, and Fallout 4, but was also showing its issues at points.
When it was announced that Bethesda was continuing to use the same engine with Starfield, and Elder Scrolls VI after the issues with Fallout 76, there was a definite pushback on the idea of the same engine, whether fairly or not. It does seem that regardless Bethesda has taken the hint that it was time to update their tools, and fix some of the legacy problems that have been haunting gamers for a decade and a half.
What do you think of the Bethesda engine overhaul? Think they'll finall fix some of those long running bugs? Is there any bug that has haunted you for a decade? Let us know in the comments below
