There’s also a discussion currently circulating suggesting that Bethesda should abandon their current proprietary game engine in favour of one of the commercially available ones. Both Unreal and Unity have been suggested. If this is an example of a Bethesda game scenario rendered in Unreal Engine, I’m far from convinced. The makers have had to cut an awful lot of corners to get it to work.
1 Like
Could be right. I think Bethesda just reported almost half their team is still working in Starfield with a DLC coming soon. So they believe work on the next Elder Scrolls has not really begun. Now would be the time for them to make a change. Honestly, in 6 more years, there is no way the current engine will be acceptable.
1 Like
Anyone suggesting Bethesda move to Unity is out of their mnd (or more likely has no idea what they’re talking about).
Starfield though… yeah, I’m not sure how smart it was to put starfield on that in-house engine either.
Nah, they should just completely overhaul their engine already. The darn thing was developed for oblivion, and still incorporated the general architecture from morrowind. They really should spend the money to modernize. They have it, for crying out loud!
2 Likes
I quite agree. I think Bethesda are probably sticking with their old engine as long as they can for compatibility reasons. They know it works with older equipment, and the various modding communities (who now form a large and influential part of their user base) are familiar with it, and have developed a lot of tools to use with it.
1 Like
There is a lot of value in mature code. But then, there’s mature code and code that has simply not been further developed. I’m not sure how much they worked on their face engine since oblivion, for example (same as bioware since the first mass-effect, quite frankly), and it starts to show quite hard…
The tooling is a good point, though. That’s why in the end 3rd party engines will mostly win. All these things are getting so complex and expensive that it just simply doesn’t pay anymore to have an engine that gets used by only one studio for a game every couple years…
Unreal or Cryengine would in my opinion be feasible candidates. But unity is definitely not up for AAA-games. If the engine cannot run C++ natively, you can pretty much forget about high-performance games.
Here’s hoping that some crazy-mad-insane studio develops a competitive engine in RUST, so high-end game development can finally start profitting from a more modern language that is designed not to let you shoot yourself in the foot at every step. Game stability would profit sooooo much from it 
Though it would probably take at least two decades for studios to move away from their legacy code…
3 Likes
1 Like
Dust 514 was one of the most played games on my PlayStation 3.
1 Like
Ohhhh. So that’s why Starfield runs on my old PC that is below their minimum spec. 
(Mind you, it stalls every minute for 5 sec, the graphic quality has been tuned down to the level of the original Deus Ex, and when I fast-travel or go through a door, I have time to go refill my drink 
– but I expected it to not even start!)
I kinda understand their choice, but also expect them to be working on a new engine already, did they never say anything about such plans?
Speaking of Deus Ex (which was also based on a predecessor of Unity…?), how did they make full new games in less than 5 years in the late nineties? 
I mean, what is slowing down development today? I’m sure people said, “use a game engine, it will save you so much time!” But the better game engines get, the longer it takes to release a game, kinda ironic. I assume engines make it easier every year to add more features and people now expect them (shiny graphics and physics and fully voiced audio and accessibility and localisation etc.), does dev time needed increase exponentially?
PS: Oooh, and what became of CryEngine? It’s also only used for its own franchise, I don’t see many other games using it. Last thing I heard was that Amazon forked something off it and released Lumberjack and then there was a bit of confusion where Star Citizen either had to prove it was paying for a CryEngine license or prove that what they were using was actually Lumberjack. 
I watched a few recordings of CitizenCon and they’re still as half-finished as they were then. 
2 Likes
CryEngine was very innovative in its day - but it was also extremely demanding. Lots of people with fairly high-end PCs couldn’t play Crysis. The problem was so well recognised that people started using Crysis as benchmarking software, because it pushed ordinary PCs well beyond their limits.
Ultimately, I don’t think this reputation did CryEngine any good in the marketplace. Who wants to risk their 5-year development on a software platform that only 10% of computer owners can actually use?
Of course, since then, both computers and CryEngine have improved - but once you’ve got a reputation for causing problems, it’s hard to change people’s perception.
2 Likes
4 Likes
It’s good to know that the existential threat posed by AI is balanced by equally positive benefits to humanity.
7 Likes
I think we were all playing Starfield last time I was in this topic. One day I just didn’t go back to it, burned by too many bugs and just not as immersed or invested in it as I had been with say Skyrim or Oblivion (or somewhat fallout). Then another day I needed space to download something so it got uninstalled.
I have no urge to go back to it, and none of the places felt alive like they would in a small elder scrolls or fallout town. I guess thats the cost of scaling up and trying to make big bustling cities with 100’s of npcs wandering around, and then seperating all those towns by light years.
I felt more like I was fighting to get the game to work the way I’d like it to rather than fighting off alien monsters and shitty space humans.
I wasn’t even hyped or excited for it so my expectations were low going in, I just want another Elder Scrolls
Anyway I’m just here to post a video I havent even watched. Because I trust Nakey Jakeys quality, but it seems he has some beef with Bethesda.
3 Likes
It’s kind of weird, because I’ve been saying that sentence essentially since morrowind… Honestly, a lot of the negative things I keep hearing about starfields design sound very appealing to me. A large world that puts some persepctive on scale with a lot of projection area for my own ideas instead of being choked to death with prewritten content? Yes please! Sounds a lot like Daggerfall in space to me, and I’ve been wanting something like that for a long time.
Trouble is, the system requirements of the thing aren’t from a decade ago, so I’ll have to wait until my laptop expires to play it. Which might still be a long way off…
2 Likes
I have sort of a neutral feeling on Starfield. I am enjoying it and find some of it quite engaging. But the bugs I have encountered were really, really, really bad. They cooled my enthusiasm.
My favorite major side quest is Ryujin. All that sneaking.
5 Likes
Starfield has the same bugs and glitches that all Bethesda games since Oblivion have shared. I’ve come to expect, and even (to some degree) enjoy them. When you play a Bethesda game, you know that the game will randomly crash as you move from one cell to another, and when the game tries to save inventory. You know that crucial items may fall into the ground. You know that vital characters may accidentally die, or glitch into the scenery - thus rendering your quest unplayable. You know that defeated enemies (and their important inventory) may be randomly launched into the stratosphere, only to be found several miles away. It’s all part of the experience. Save often, and be prepared to go back through your saves to salvage your progress when the inevitable disaster thwarts you. It’s a Bethesda game - that’s the way they are.
I believe I do, however, detect the dead hand of Microsoft in the release version of Starfield. The main quest is far too easy and far too quick. Presumably this is to satisfy the “instant gratification” console crowd. They may have the intellectual capacity of an illiterate seven year old - they may have the attention span of a goldfish - but they’re paying customers, and we can’t go upsetting them by requiring them to actually think.
The answer to this is, of course, to ignore the main quest as much as possible, and enjoy the rest of the game. It’s really quite varied, and lots of fun.
3 Likes
I agree. I am enjoying Starfield just make sure that save file is solid.
2 Likes
Sounds like you had the same experience with Starfield as I did with Fallout 4. It was such a big game, but eventually I realized how soulless and dead it felt and lost interest. I haven’t gotten another Bethesda game since, and it was soon after that I got interested in No Man’s Sky. While NMS is still far from perfect and can also seem empty at times, it has a sort of soul and personality to it which I found more meaningful than Bethesda’s games.
Maybe since Hello Games is scaling down a bit with Light No Fire, the game will finally be the right size and completely full of life; kinda the opposite of what Starfield did.
4 Likes
Yeah. All the complainers about NMS planets and diversity, should hit up some Starfield planets.
3 Likes
Well, I agree the installations on Starfield planets can get a bit samey, and you have to walk a long way to find any. But to be fair, every planet has thousands of possible landing points - every one different, and every one stocked with enemies and loot. If you pursue the maker skills path, finding planets with the right combinations of resources, creating mining and manufacturing outposts, and using your wealth and skills to upgrade your gear, can be an absorbing pastime.
Apparently there’s no real limit to how far you can level up - but there is a limit to the skill points you can assign (328, if you’re interested - that’s a lot of levelling up).
So far, I haven’t bothered with most of the official quests - I’ve been busy exploring, building, and getting skilled and rich. Lots of fun.
1 Like