Skyrim lead designer says Bethesda can’t just switch engines because the current one is “perfectly tuned” to make the studio’s RPGs
Lead Skyrim designer and former senior Starfield systems designer Bruce Nesmith reckons Bethesda Game Studios won’t move to a new game engine – and explained why it doesn’t need to.
Speaking in a recent interview with VideoGamer, Nesmith outlines why Bethesda’s in-house engine still works for the studio despite its age. “We’re arguing about the game engine, let’s argue about the game,” he says. “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.”
While Bethesda’s engine has been used to create what are arguably many of the best RPGs of all time, it’s also ever-evolving – what started as the company’s version of Gamebryo, a now long-defunct engine, gradually blossomed into the Creation Engine. “Gamebryo is no longer a business, it hasn’t been for a while. But that engine has been constantly tweaked, updated, and refined,” continues Nesmith.
According to the ex-developer, the Creation Engine has evolved “to do exactly the kinds of games that Bethesda makes: The Elder Scrolls, the Fallouts, Starfield.” At this point, “it’s perfectly tuned to that kind of game” – and that’s why swapping engines wouldn’t be ideal. There’s that, plus the sheer number of years it could take to implement, and how it would slow down the development of any current projects. “That’s the penalty side. That’s the risk side,” Nesmith notes.