They don’t make the engine to make that game. They make the game to prove out that they didn’t miss something egregious in building the engine; or, “eat their own dog food”. It has gained features over a long period of time that would fit common use cases from other developers, regardless of what Epic has built.
Meanwhile, nothing will convince me that Bethesda’s tech stack is worth keeping.
The overall point still stands though. No off the shelf engine will have all the features a game needs unless the game is staying within the bounds of what the engine already covers.
At this point, switching engines means a hell of a lot of work only to eventually end up exactly where they are now again.
It’s a legitmate question without an easy anwser, as to whether that work is better spent moving to a new engine or improving the existing one.
Unfortunately the path Bethesda is seeming to go with is to do neither. I can’t imagine making a game like Starfield and not at least trying to find a way to make more of those loading moments “invisible” to the player rather than full on “yank you out” loading screens.
If that’s the overall point, it was nested in several worse points. The problem is that they’re still using the same tech, and switching to Unreal is the fastest path between two points in time that anyone can propose. Really, they should have been working on a new engine after reviews criticized them for it in Fallout 4 back in 2015.
They shouldn’t, if they’re going to be an engine company. But anything that isn’t for keeping Fortnite pulling in billions of dollars is secondary.
It has gained features over a long period of time that would fit common use cases from other developers, regardless of what Epic has built.
Gained and lost. Very basic things necessary to make all the new features work with anything “not Fortnite” were missing when UE5 was released. It absolutely released as an engine for making Fortnite type games and everything else was/is an afterthought. You either had to make atrocious work arounds, engine changes, or wait for stuff to be fixed/added, delaying your project.
Meanwhile, nothing will convince me that Bethesda’s tech stack is worth keeping.
Do you have inside knowledge? UE5 isn’t the be-all end-all of game engines. Not everyone should switch to it. And frankly, as gamers and devs, we desperately need a good competitor to show up soon. Epic is gaining way too much control over our experiences.
They were an engine company for two decades before Fortnite, and it has tons of features that game never uses.
I have used Unreal but not Gamebryo/Creation, and I don’t think I need inside knowledge to see how far behind the best output of the latter engine is from its peers. Unreal is not the end-all, but it allows a company to switch to a new engine more quickly than building one themselves, and in this case, their sister company, Obsidian, has already built an imitation of Bethesda style RPGs in Unreal.
With any luck, REX will be that competitor. But also, quite frankly, so few companies can afford to make a game that pushes graphical boundaries and the latest technology that I’d rather champion Godot.
They don’t make the engine to make that game. They make the game to prove out that they didn’t miss something egregious in building the engine; or, “eat their own dog food”. It has gained features over a long period of time that would fit common use cases from other developers, regardless of what Epic has built.
Meanwhile, nothing will convince me that Bethesda’s tech stack is worth keeping.
The overall point still stands though. No off the shelf engine will have all the features a game needs unless the game is staying within the bounds of what the engine already covers.
At this point, switching engines means a hell of a lot of work only to eventually end up exactly where they are now again.
It’s a legitmate question without an easy anwser, as to whether that work is better spent moving to a new engine or improving the existing one.
Unfortunately the path Bethesda is seeming to go with is to do neither. I can’t imagine making a game like Starfield and not at least trying to find a way to make more of those loading moments “invisible” to the player rather than full on “yank you out” loading screens.
If that’s the overall point, it was nested in several worse points. The problem is that they’re still using the same tech, and switching to Unreal is the fastest path between two points in time that anyone can propose. Really, they should have been working on a new engine after reviews criticized them for it in Fallout 4 back in 2015.
They shouldn’t, if they’re going to be an engine company. But anything that isn’t for keeping Fortnite pulling in billions of dollars is secondary.
Gained and lost. Very basic things necessary to make all the new features work with anything “not Fortnite” were missing when UE5 was released. It absolutely released as an engine for making Fortnite type games and everything else was/is an afterthought. You either had to make atrocious work arounds, engine changes, or wait for stuff to be fixed/added, delaying your project.
Do you have inside knowledge? UE5 isn’t the be-all end-all of game engines. Not everyone should switch to it. And frankly, as gamers and devs, we desperately need a good competitor to show up soon. Epic is gaining way too much control over our experiences.
They were an engine company for two decades before Fortnite, and it has tons of features that game never uses.
I have used Unreal but not Gamebryo/Creation, and I don’t think I need inside knowledge to see how far behind the best output of the latter engine is from its peers. Unreal is not the end-all, but it allows a company to switch to a new engine more quickly than building one themselves, and in this case, their sister company, Obsidian, has already built an imitation of Bethesda style RPGs in Unreal.
With any luck, REX will be that competitor. But also, quite frankly, so few companies can afford to make a game that pushes graphical boundaries and the latest technology that I’d rather champion Godot.
We have yet to see the modding capabilities of Obsidian games, but Outer Worlds had nothing.
It is a great game don’t get me wrong, but Bethesda’s writing has been subpar since Oblivion, so losing mods would be horrible for them.
Agree. Unreal engine use in BG3?
Baldur’s Gate 3 is built on the Divinity Engine.
Oh thank you.