Let's Talk About Bethesda's Creation Engine 

you know what really holding them back ? the fact people will buy their games regardless of quality.

I find it really weird that Bethesda decided to forsake one of their strongest aspect of design, which is a huge handcrafted and continuous world. I feel like if Starfield is scaled down to one star systems but you can roam anywhere in one instance, it would make space exploration a lot more fun than 1000 loading screen.

One of the things that I realised makes Starfield NPCs so weird is not just the animations and bugged-out eyes but the fact that every single person turns to look at you as soon as you walk past them. Walking around New Atlantis like I've got something on my face everybody just staring at me it's weird.

The problem with loading screens is immersion. If players traveling between planets would trigger a sequence where a ship turns towards the destination, enters the gravity blossom, travels through the gravity stream during the loading period, then have the stream blossom open into the destination system without fading to black, that would be huge. Similarly, when landing if there was a longer landing sequence (similar to the taking off to leave sequence) I think that would also help. Basically whenever players are forced to wait to load something to travel, they should be showing stuff happening in the mean time.

It's not just the engine, the way Bethesda approaches game design on a fundamental level is what holds them back. Very rarely does Bethesda ever actually learn from their mistakes or try actually innovate game mechanics, in fact with every game they release they seem to dumb down and streamline things even further it's like they're actively unlearning lessons and going backward.

The major problem isn't that the engine is "old." It's that they have refused to fix engine issues that have been present in every single game made in it for years at this point. Things like bugs that caused issues in quests from Oblivion can be found in every single game since then. If they fixed the core issues of the engine instead of constantly slapping a new coat of paint on it and calling it a day more people would be fine with it, but they won't so we get the exact same bugs, glitches, and game breaking issues, that have finally pissed enough people off to finally drop them.

Their writing and understanding of what makes a good story is holding them back.

Speaking as a former Skyrim modder and current indie developer, the Creation Engine isn't just holding Bethesda back, it's holding the modding scene back too. Because while much more talented modders than myself have done some incredible things (and arguably take the Bethesda games further than Bethesda ever do)... if you knew what the engine is like, and how Bethesda build their games, you'd understand that it's a matter of crowbars and duct tape. It's not just that the underlying engine is creaking under its own weight and age; it's that the design philosophies, tools and implementations that are laid atop that foundation? Are really cluttered and headache-inducing. This is why even non-modders have that feeling, when playing any new Bethesda mainline title, of instant familiarity; why it looks and feels the same as the older titles, even with a new layer of paint. Why the same old bugs keep manifesting. Doesn't matter how many additions there are, how many new features or graphical layers; eventually, the new stuff actually accentuates the old design flaws, making it more obvious that it's running on ancient technology. The problem is that the original engine design was flawed, and the studio's design philosophies are flawed. You could iterate, fork and build upon that engine for a hundred years, and you'd still see the same problems - junk in, junk out. You can't wrap a broken core to make it less broken. Also, no, that engine is not how or why Bethesda was able to make "that sheer quantity of content". It's why they were LIMITED to that quantity of content. Because the content isn't actually that vast, when you cut away the copy and pasted stuff (think about how long the core story content is in Skyrim, and the fact that none of the side quests actually interact with each other - they're all isolated storylines that are fairly short; doing a bunch of shorter storylines is a lot easier than one big one). If the engine and tools had been better, they could have done greater quantity in addition to greater quality.

You’re essentially the only one that successfully explains this type of stuff to me. Thank you. -40 yr old, smooth brained, diesel mechanic

The engine is holding them back in the sense they keep updating it without fixing most the bugs in the previous version, meaning quite a few of the bugs in these games have been in these games since around the time they first started using it. There's really no excuse for bugs from Fallout 4 and Skyrim to be in this game like there are. But there's nothing wrong with just updating an engine to make it better instead of switching to a new one.

13:09 As a technical artist who is batched in with just the art team, when an AAA game is in the very early stages of pre-production, the leads will have the art team create extremely basic placeholders for the game with the limited information we have access to via the designers, concept artists and so on. We do this so that when the designers, and writers are done with their thing, they can instantly cobble a prototype together. (completely untextured and with limited to no animations) This cobble of work then becomes a very early prototype for the game. Not the vertical slice, but a prototype to test the waters and see if the game would even play well. After that, art is informed of the game. Designers give art the complete asset lists and off we go making a game. Indie studios may not work like this, but this is how we do it in AAA studios for the most part.

Realistically, Bethesda has NO incentive to fix their engine. Their games sell super well every time they release something, even though it's the same game with a different theme, they also know that community will fix the bugs and problems with their games for free via modding. In truth, THIS kind of crap is what the community wanted, Bethesda is only delivering.

The engine does not excuse the poor quest design and writing. You can make a fun game with a bad engine. You can also make a boring game with a good one.

I feel they also need to look at some of their outdated design idioms. A lot of generic NPC chirps make it sound like you're trying to interact with them even though you're just walking by. They interrupt actual conversations you're having and most just feel like they're saying "I am a piece of software."

Theres a reddit post that speculates Starfield was supposed to be more survival based than what we got. With needing outposts to refuel and explore the right side of the map, actually planning around hazards and afflictions.

I consider myself pretty tolerant to loading screens but starfield is actually pretty bad, after 50ish hours I really started to be irritated by all the loading screens. I also started to notice how every POI on the map is the exact same buildings with the exact same enemy placement and loot in the exact same spot every time. It really brings you our of the experience to notice you've already been in this building.

With Starfield I see a lot of regression, and not only loading screens but also in just plain editing.

The only thing I remember when talking about elder scrolls 6 is when Todd Howard said " the technology just simply doesn't exist to create game we want to make" So jf elder scrolls is on creation engine then we are all doomed.

The best skill in starfield is jetpack because it lets you bypass many loading screens by just flying to the location instead of using an elevator, or the NAT in New Atlantis etc. The worst thing about the fast travel is that some of it clearly isn't even necessary and is in fact slower than just traversing the environment

To add to this: Starfield can do seamless travel between planets, and Bethesda had a trick to hide the loading screen when travelling between star systems, but they cut it because according to someone, "it wasn't fun." You can see remnants of these features in one of the trailers, and in the game itself. Set the speed of your space craft to an impossible amount in the console and boost your way to another planet. It just works.

The Creation Kit 2.0 should launch soon ™, so we can take a look at the tools and any improvements over the previous version. But judging by the chests still hiding under all vendors I'd say not and makes me worried for ES6.

During the early years of the Star Citizen controversy, a common opinion was that CIG made a huge mistake basing their game on CryEngine. What a lot of the critics didn't understand was that no off-the-shelf engine could do what CIG needed, so they could either start entirely from scratch, or use any random engine as a starting point. They had several Crytek senior engineers on board from the beginning, including some of the original architects of CryEngine, so they obviously were intimately familiar with the codebase and the tools, which made it a decent starting point. Probably a great decision in the long run too, given that the version of CryEngine they used as a base for StarEngine is now open source under the MIT license (just like Godot) and royalty free. Bethesda has similar specific requirements and an established workflow and toolset, so switching to something else would be quite difficult. It's not like they didn't have other options - they outright own id Tech after all.

Starfield Would have not been impresive 8 years ago .

Creation Engine (Gamebryo), has always been amazing for custom content, mod support. They've been slapping minor graphical updates on it every game they do but they don't fix the core issues underneath that keep plaguing every release. Bethesda is great at making a customizable sandbox, they aren't great at making games.

This is a silly argument. The biggest thing holding Bethesda back is being Bethesda; releasing shoddy products and expecting their long suffering fans to fix them for free.

Starting to wonder if Microsoft's acquisitions are worth it. They seem to be buying companies who are on a downwards trajectory.

One of your best videos of late. The intersection of folks that can actually make games, can talk about games, can talk about the industry, with fidelity and quality is very narrow, I feel like Bellular's somewhat unique here. I'm willing to bet most viewers don't realise how much sweat goes into the porcelain and tools companies create over standard 3rd party tech to get things done and how this pins them and their staff on a specific engine. Also, that in-house tech, so surgically sharp to begin with often fails to scale, especially on tooling affordances for things like scale up on level design, never mind the scope creep you mentioned around gaming models, because in-house tends to focus downward into technical improvements rather than being an-house product for use by others. At the same time wrt Bethesda. Definitionally RPGs have to get faces right and stay near state of the art, especially as we move past dialog trees to subtle in-world state and the rise of VA talent: what Starfield does here is veering towards unacceptable for AAA. I wonder how ES-6 will fare even while accepting it might not matter because Starfield is clearly driving Xbox sales. Loading screens, yes,. but loading times have become less acceptable in this console generation because of the NVMe bet and similarly BG3, while leading on so many dimensions. has load/save times that are excruciating on console. Which probably speaks to your point that engine choices are basically tradeoff choices.

you know, the funny thing is that some of these load screens aren't necessary, the game loads the entire star system in space, you CAN fly directly to the other planets, the game just doesn't load you into the orbit of those planets and I imagine once the creation kit is out and the community tools are all updated an interplanetary drive will be one of the first popular mods

Sticking to the same game engine is possible if you make an effort to improve it over time. Paradox Interactive created their Clausewitz Engine back in 2007 specifically to handle grand strategy games and it has worked pretty well until today. I think part of the issues for Bethesda is that their games are pretty different from eachother and thus it's hard to work on the Creation Engine to be able to handle them all.

This reminded me of another video I saw years ago that delved into the technical issues Bethesda games tend to face, & how it's less about the core engine itself & much more about the implementation of various tools & systems. It looks at the history & origins of the creation engine back to netimerse & what it was originally built for, other games you may not know were built using gamebryo that didn't have the issues Bethesda games always tend to have, a look at Skyrim's scripting system & the role that plays in some of the issues, the list goes on. For anyone curious about the subject, the video is called "The creation engine did nothing wrong". It's a bit tongue in cheek but pretty informatigve & well worth checking out.

Really appreciate these introductions to project scope and management to add on the general gaming discussion. While I agree that regular gamers shouldn't really care how the sausage is made and only care about how good it tastes, it's still very good to bring these concepts to the table - if only to improve the feedback that gamers can give to developers when they don't like the experience they're having. Being at least somewhat informed means they can ask more pointed questions, rather than just "game bad, make game good" and think that's being constructive.

I don't see any reason why they couldn't hire more people. For example to make better facial animations, or better procedural generation. It's not like they're an indie studio. I agree that it isn't an engine issue, but I do think it is still AN ISSUE. The face lighting shouldn't be this bad for example, modders on Skyrim fixed that a decade ago.

I heard that each engine got their speciality, Unity isn't so coding heavy, Unreal Engine best for shooters and Creation Engine is designed for Bethesda rpg. I think Bethesda attitude is the problem. When they decide that product good enough they stop updating it, that why you find old bugs from their new products. Minimal viable product principle.

If bethesda used their new engine they couldn't rely on modders to do the second half of the development cycle for them

Game engine dev, the eye thing isn’t a game engine issue (unless the facial anim is a core feature) it’s a lack of a blend-shape in the model. You could probably add the movement to the smile blend shape without adding any code as long as it isn’t used for any other expressions.

Everytime i open creation engine and start working on anything, i always think "why do the devs torture themselves like this..."

First 5 seconds in, and no. The Creation Engine is not what's holding them back. It's just a symptom. It's laziness and complacency is what's holding them back, their unwillingness to change engines is just the result of it all. I can easily see AMAZING games being made with that engine just fine (example: New Vegas), but their game design team are incompetent, their writers are abysmal, and their QA is obviously a very distant afterthought.

The creation engine is old. It's clunky; it was showing it's stretch marks in Skyrim, let alone fallout 4. What's really holding back Bethesda is laziness. The constant laziness to not improve or be better.

I really appreciated the time you took to make this all understandable, thanks you.

What kills me is how they dont copy some of the features they already made in other titles. Starfield is missing so many QoL features already put into Fo76.

I appreciate this little developers perspective on engines and game development.

Sheer quantity? I'd trade everything from Fallout 4 up for one good game comparable to Oblivion. Sure, Skyrim was "bigger" than Oblivion, but had way less shit to do. Also, pretty sure removing the loading screens in creation is impossible because interior and exterior spaces are treated way differently, at least it was the last time I delved into Skyrim modding. They used interior spaces being different as a quick, easy way to change ambiance and lighting, as well as a way to divide up town spaces with heavily object population into smaller bits more manageable for the computers at the time.

I also think the passing of Adam Adamowicz in 2012 hurt Bethesda, as he was one of the great designers and Skyrim was his last work before he fell ill to lung cancer and died. His last fully dedicated work was Oblivion and Fallout 3,

I believe the thing holding them back is themselves. They use to make great quests, memorable worlds,deep lore. You can make those in Daggerfalls engine.

The problem isnt the game engine the problem is the devs are bad at their job

Considering Modders have made better content and the major bug fix mods in some cases, I wouldn't say the issue is the engine. its that Bethesda is for some reason unable to optimize their own in house engine, which is an amazing state to be in.

@bellularnews you made an error, the "creation engine" is the old gambryo engine that they bought for oblivion, and have just upgraded to add graphic fidelity stuff. the reason they had to "change" the name to the creation engine is because the original version of gambryo they bought fell out of support by the creators of gambryo, and there was a deal around 2010-2012 that bethesda would buy a source code license, and re-name what they called it because it was no longer the original gambryo engine, but rather a "new" engine stemmed from gambryo with updates handled by bethesda. so its the same engine from 2003-2005 gambryo they got for oblivion, that they maintain and update to add features for their new games.

I like what you said about the game showing its 'artifice.' that really puts the feeling into words in a new way. I grew up with Morrowind, and i miss the tilt towards the fantasy world simulator. I want to lose myself in a world again, feel like im a person in this living setting. But all i feel is like i pulled into another theme park 😔

New Engine? I'd rather have a bunch of mods on an old engine than a bunch of different bugs and no mods on a new engine.

Is the engine not up to par? Yes. But it's not the engine holding Bethesda back, it's themselves and their lack of wanting to improve their craft. Engines where pretty shit back in the 90s, but that didn't stop devs making some of the greatest games ever back then

My mans also does peak discussion videos. I have only recently started indulging in your content, but from everything I can ascertain your positions seem very rational, not fanboy takes. You analyze many aspects to form a complete view which I appreciate and enjoy regarding discussion based topics. Espcially gaming discussions. Thank you for your long form videos.

Great video. It was really interesting and insightful. I like your take on the situation at the end as well. Thanks for making this video!

After +6 years of development, we received an okay game that is fundamentally worse at every single aspect compared to previous Bethesda titles. They even had one of the best settings full of potential for a videogame, Space, yet the came to us with the most uninspired, bland, bare-bones, down-to-earth take possible on it yet.

I thought the whole thing with starfield and ES6 was they were going to use an entirely new engine, and I thought the whole reason for delays was because of it. When that wasn’t the case that’s what made the game look so disappointing aside from deeper issues.

Glad to see you back!

It was the content of a talk with a colleague of mine recently, the engine at its core has aged a lot, but it's the only one that supports all the tools they needed. I think that eventually they possibly do a rewrite of their own engine or indeed switch to another one eventually. Yes, it does take time and manpower to develop your own engine, but due to the fact that you are making it highly specialized there could be some shortcuts that lead to much leaner production time.

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the engine only hold them back if the games they want to make exceeds the specs of what they can alter to the engine to adapt. so yes and no since it depends on what result the wish to go for and depends on the modules and plugins how those work and are adapted.

ya know, I remember first time a few years ago watching your videos for the first time, I bounced off really hard. Thought you waffled on a lot. It's improved so much! I find you such a good gaming news source now. Really good to see

So basically the engine does hold them back but they also haven't adapted their game design philosophy to stand up to the test of time too.

Good video, you make a lot of really good points of course. As a software engineer, I know how it feels to have a legacy system that you desperately need to refactor. It can be hard to justify refactoring a system when management is pushing you forward and asking for new features. That being said, it is healthy for the development cycle of a product to bake in some time to go back and refactor large parts of the code base. A lot people, in tech and outside of it, have this perception that developing software is like developing any other product, that you can build it as you would with a product on an assembly line. This approach to software development is what we call waterfall and it has almost universally failed because software is almost always a moving target. Even if you have strict parameters for a piece of software, very rarely do you get to a point where you are completely finished writing it. You can always find better algorithms, better idioms, cleaner ways of writing things, squash bugs and more performant ways of doing things. This is an aspect of software design that is overlooked even by large and mature software teams because most of the higher ups are not software developers themselves (and even engineers sometimes don't understand this problem). I've been working in the industry for at least 20 years now and I've had to explain this so many times that I've lost count. Even in cases where I was a team lead on a project I've had to deal with this issue because its somewhat counterintuitive to go back and refactor a system that the management deems to have been "completed". Even if you have concrete evidence that the system in question is holding back future features, it's still a battle to convince everyone to go along with the refactor especially in larger teams.

Thing that made me laugh was when I booted it up and had shader compilation....one of my irks in many modern games was added to the engine lol

I watched your video twice just to make sure that I fully understood your explanations! Thank you for making such an interesting video! I genuinely appreciate it! :)

For the loading aspect... its a bit like being stuck in traffic (loading screen) and instead you take a longer but flowing detour (star citizen fly there) because you know that you are progressing towards your destination because you associate moving with progress.

People really need to stop talking shit about the engine. Issues with their games don't stem from Creation engine 1 or 2. To the contrary, there would be no modding community without this engine. People who complain here want better visual fidelity. If you want it, go elsewhere. I would rather sacrifice visual fiedlity over the modding capabilities. The facial animations and bugs stem not from the engine but from the coders who worked on the engine and did not put more on those parts of the engine. For those unaware, the engine in Starfield is not too weak for everything to work in a singular world, it's the fact that it's also on consoles and actually less time for development that made it into a loading screen simulator. It is 100% fault on BGS Not the engine. It seriously pisses me off that people with 0 knowledge about the engine continuously talking shit about it. People made an open cities mod for Skyrim. It works well, until quests kinda break, because it's not a separate cell anymore. Honestly I probably could rant and rant about it, but seriously, if people think a completely new engine will make BGS games better, you don't know anything 😂

This video is perfect. I was complaining about the constant load screens on a discord I was in when it comes to player housing. And people just didn't get it. So to see my same complaint in a bellular video is a relief. XD I'd like a space station player home. One load screen, inevitably, but you've got your home in space, easy access to storage. Have quick access to ship storage from the house storage, easy win. Solves the exhausting inventory limit problems.

I love this channel so much. Thank you, guys. You offer such a succinct and well-rounded perspective for dunces in the gaming space like me to digest.

What really made this video stand out for me, Was your knowledge on the various game dev tools.

Something that parallels this is COD. Back during COD: Black Ops III, if someone used the in-game VOIP, the game would freeze for a second. During that era of COD, all COD games used a modified version of the IW engine (from COD 2 all the way to COD: Black Ops IV). They rebuilt the engine for development on COD: Modern Warfare (2019) and COD: Warzone. When it comes to engine development, you can't keep building on an outdated core as what you are developing on that engine begins to outgrow it and hardware becomes more advanced. You can do so for a while, but you can only iterate over it so many times until it makes your head spin. The creation engine was made for tes: marrowind (2002). Back then the standard for CPU architecture was single core driven. And the excuse that "they can't abandon it because of modding", FALSE. You can very easily build a new engine while also maintaining its modability. The creation engine is only this modable compared to other engines is because Bethesda doesn't close the engine off. Any engine can be modible if the creator of the engine allows the functions to be public and gives out the tools to mod it. Terraria was never made to be a modable game, but there's mods for it because of MOD TOOLS and Relogic provide SUPPORT to the modding community. Same thing with Minecraft, although Mojang does not actually provide those tools, it is modable in nature because it is programmed in java. But nonetheless, the point still stands that the creation engine isn't the only engine that can ever make Bethesda games easily modable, it is the architect of the engine that puts the tools in place that allow what is built using the engine to be so. If the engine is built with the intent for it to be modable, then the games running the engine can be modable, creation engine or no creation engine. They can rebuild the engine with the same level of modablility (if not better) and fix the core issues they run into with the current creation engine rather than trying to build around those limitations. It's called SOFTWARE ENGINEERING.

If you worked in AAA studio you know how it works. There are usually older devs that don't like changes, so they convince managment that using existing inhouse engine will be cheaper and easier. It's usually true, but getting talent is very hard and features are lacking, cause there's no way 10 people team of engine devs can caught up with Unreal Engine or Unity. There was a great saying that using inhouse engine is like building rails while the train is running. You need something? Ask engine devs, wait like a month or two, and you can continue with your work.

Fast travel in Oblivion was Todd "Cut Everything" Howard's sacred cow, so it's no great surprise that it's the central mechanic in Starfield.

The engine isnt holding them back, its themselves who are holding them back. When you completely remove features that players loved, or when you completely drop the ball on certain gameplay aspects like Melee, its not the Engines fault.

I think another issue is the fact that the writing in older games was set in a fantastic setting, a post Apocalypse world in Fallout or the fantasy setting in the Elder Scrolls universe and that is Bethesda's writers Strength is. They made all kinds of strange missions (some better then others but it felt charming and wonderful). Starfield was too realistic in setting 1000 empty planets with rocks and the writers strengths in a fantasy setting was gone here. You simply have a lot of humans that send you on unimaginative fetch quests and few alien creatures that can never pose a threat to you. All the missions in starfield were so vanilla tasting it is strange its the same studio, all the followers are good, and most of the factions good, even the evil faction limits how evil or bad you could be. You cannot get immersed in a game where all of the named NPC are deemed Essential and cannot die. Basically if you like Dad jokes and being the good simp and want to play a extremely limited loading screen dialogue dump you will love Starfield, if you like a immersive universe where you can role play an evil or good person and have wide replay ability then go play past Bethesda titles.

I'd have played a shitload more Starfield if it had more focus on quests(they CAN make good questlines as evidenced by Crimson Fleet and Vanguard stories which i've thoroughly enjoyed), faction and NPC relations, *unique* locations, world-building, et cetera. Rather than on radiant exploring with radiant planets that have radiant points of interest with radiant NPCs and radiant enemies. So, no, i don't think the engine is the core issue here, not for me, at least. General game-design approach is.

The engine is the only reason they have a community of dedicated modders. People are used to how it works, becuase they've learned it over the years. Theres also a ton of learning material and community out there. Any engine switch would kill of unpredictable portuion of user mad content, which would be a disaster.

Opening question: "Is the..." Me interrupting: YES!!!!

Some dude went from one planet to another in Starfield and it took like 8 hours in real time. So apparently you could do it with NO load screen. At least that's what it looked like. Didn't watch the whole thing to be sure. But he encountered other ships and even pirates along the way!

Strangely enough the Gamebryo engine didn't hold back Morrowind from telling a good story or having engaging gameplay mechanics. In all seriousness Starfield was surprisingly the least buggy game release from Bethesda. The only thing holding it back wad the poor design choices made by the devs. The engine had very little to do with shitty UIs, crap storytelling, the lack of things to do in outposts, or even lackluster levelling progression.

I appreciete getting an overview of stuff yhat goes in building games. Thanks for the fun vid

The Creation Engine was only part of the problem. The rest was Bethesda's refusal or lack of integrity to actually hire good writers and gameplay designers. Their games' main stories have always sucked. It's been nearly 2 decades and modders still make better animation and gameplay than Bethesda.

I don't think the engine is the problem. If you look at Skyrim or Fallout 4, modders are able to change and add insane amounts of stuff, from animations to mechanics, graphics, etc. I think the problem is the way Bethesda thinks a game should work. +If they change their engine they will kill their PC community, if Bethesda released Elder Scrolls 6 running on Unreal I would play it maybe once and never again, the reason I have 800h of playtime on Skyrim are mods, and the truth is there is no other Engine as moddable as Creation Engine.

The Creation Engine isn't holding Bethesda back but Bethesda is holding the Creation Engine back.

Amazing analysis. Subscribed!

As someone who generally picks up their games years after to play with mods, I almost feel like I'm not buying a game. I'm buying an engine update with a really long winded demo. Fallout London will probably be the bigger release for me this year.

i rather have the jankiness if i also get the interactability and the moddability

Amazon didnt get pissy about Star Citizen. Crytek got pissed that they moved to Lumberyard and tried to sue them.

They can keep loading screen when entering the town in TES VI to save some computational power BUT it must be THE ONLY loading screen. Once the player goes through that, every interiors of buildings must and should be already there without more loading screens.

Yes it absolutely is. The game is beyond dated regardless of what benefits the creation engine provides. 80% of the mods are popular because ingame quality of life options and settings are garbage, that's literally what all 20 mods I have installed are doing. Starfield is a loading screen simulator and it hurts the game immensely even aside from graphics being mid af and performance being garbage. You "fly" (teleport) to Neon, you're walking through a mini hallway and get a loading screen, then you reach the main street and EVERY single room of interest is a new room behind a loading screen. Doctor's office, Enhance, Prison, everything is an isolated area with like 1-2 rooms inside it. The space travel is a joke because the game is designed this way, I never wanna step inside my space ship because I'm not getting anywhere, nothing is happening around me 95% of the time, and planets that you fast travel to have like 1 landing area that you again teleport to. This wasn't egregious in 2004 and 2011, it became noticeable in 2015 with Witcher 3 being right there as an obvious comparison, and it's just horrible in 2023.

the bethesda engine is a double edge sword. on one hand it does hold them back they will never reach the fidelity of a unreal engine powered game but at the same time due to the familiarity modders have with bethesda games they can make intricate mods within the first week an some times before even launch.

awsome belular i am so happpy for you mate, keep going.

I always love learning about all the new features and stuff each new engine has.

It's crazy how Bellular explains a lot of behind-the-scenes technical stuff and people just ignore it. It's really unfortunate that consumers don't care to understand what is happening and where good, valid criticism should be levied and instead want to complain about illogical things that anyone who understands, knows doesn't really apply to Bethesda and Creation Engine.

Been two weeks, time for all the articles and videos about how Starfield actually wasn't great after all to come out now that money is safely in all the pockets of the stakeholders. I'm not accusing Bellular here of anything (because you can see his video on it and even it's title suggests it's 'OK'), but you see this a lot. People will LOVE games for the first two weeks and then the honeymoon ends and oh actually this isn't very good - but it's too late because the studio already has all of your money. Press is not entirely to blame for this because publishers and studios will do their damnest to conceal reality from them up to the very last minute. Just look back on the launch of Cyberpunk 2077. Now fill your soul with the knowledge that was CDPR's most successful game and year ever in the history of their company and they made millions even while the whole of the internet was lighting them up. Pre-order culture and obfuscation makes it impossible to push back on studio's for flops unless they do it repeatedly over a long series of time, and even then they'll have pyscho fans who worship the company and the product as their religion and have otherwise sensible and reasonable voices saying "b-but it's fun" (looking at Destiny 2 and SkillUp)

Bethesda pre release: it’s our most ambitious project Bethesda post release: ya maybe not everyone was on board with it

Awesome point of veiw. Thanks for sharing!

There's not much to say about this, there is no need for a 32 minute video. The Creation Engine is what gives Bethesda games any value in the first place as any other engine wouldn't be nearly as moddable and trying to move away from it would bring a swift end to Bethesda as a game developer at least.

When it comes to facial animations, part of that is that Bethesda didn’t use MoCap, and Larian did What you can do with each isn’t really comparable

You guys ever bringing the Pale beyond to Xbox or ps store?

'I'm Dying' 'You just don't understand how life works'

I'll take thousands of loading screens over a playthrough and be glad, so long as the Creation Kit exists, and the literal decades of shared knowledge around it are useful. Bethesda have had a couple hundred people figure out what a Bethesda game is over 26 years. The Bethesda modding community is made up of thousands upon thousands of people who have been doing the same together since then.