Creation Engine is 'perfectly tuned' for Elder Scrolls 6, former Bethesda dev says

Bethesda's next-gen Creation Engine 2 has been reiterated from the ground up for Xbox Series X/S consoles, and is likely to set the stage for all future Fallout and Elder Scrolls games.

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Based on all of the work that went into the Creation Engine, it seems unlikely that Bethesda will switch to the more standardized Unreal Engine. Bethesda Game Studios has invested a lot of money and manpower updating its custom Creation Engine 2 for newer games like Starfield and The Elder Scrolls 6. In 2020, Todd Howard said the jump to Creation Engine 2 was the "largest engine overhaul in Bethesda's history."

In 2023, Howard also commented that all the various work and tweaks on the Creation Engine 2 "took so long to do." That kind of investment won't be shrugged off too easily, despite the sizable benefits of moving to something like Unreal Engine 5--the reduction of tech debt, or the accumulation of outdated code (think of a house being continually over-built on a potentially jeopardized foundation), and less need for specialized coding because of UE5's more ubiquitous nature.

It's an interesting proposition though, and we've seen other first-party studios like Halo Studios (formerly 343 Industries) drop their own proprietary games engine, Slipspace, and move to build Halo games in Unreal Engine 5. Somewhat like Bethesda's Creation Engine, which was built on Gamebryo, Slipspace had been built on the bones of Bungie's original engine. But Halo Studios is not the mighty Bethesda Game Studios, and the latter has more money and manpower to invest into projects thanks to billion-dollar hits like Skyrim.

So what do developers think? Bruce Nesmith, a former Bethesda veteran who served as lead designer of Skyrim and design director for Oblivion, says that Creation Engine 2 has been tailor-made to Bethesda's purposes with big RPGs like Starfield and The Elder Scrolls.

"Gamebryo is no longer a business, it hasn't been for a while. But that engine has been constantly tweaked, updated and refined to do exactly the kinds of games that Bethesda makes: The Elder Scrolls, the Fallouts, Starfield. It's perfectly tuned to that kind of game," Nesmith said in a recent interview with Video Gamer.

What we know about Creation Engine 2

• Uses advanced high-resolution photogrammetry textures for in-game worlds
• High-end motion capture technology (Skyrim grandma will be in TES6!)
• Emphasis on smooth frame rates and 4K visuals
• Tweaks on physics systems
• New lighting and graphics tech
• Built for Xbox Series X/S

But it's not the engine that makes the game. Just look at Morrowind versus Oblivion, for example, or even those games against Skyrim. Same engine based on more powerful tech, but the actual gameplay and mechanics are much, much different (Morrowind, for example, lets players fly around with levitation spells--something that hasn't been in the last two Elder Scrolls games).

Nesmith says:

"We're arguing about the game engine, let's argue about the game. The game engine is not the point, the game engine is in service to the game itself. You and I could both identify a hundred lousy games that used Unreal. Is it Unreal's fault? No, it's not Unreal's fault."

It'll be interesting to see what breakthroughs that Bethesda can make with Creation Engine 2 in regards to Elder Scrolls VI, and whether or not specific physics-breaking magics like hyper-jumps and levitation can return to the series using Starfield's jump-and-flight mechanics.