The main problem of Bethesda games

When the conversation concerns games from BGS (Bethesda Game Studios), someone will certainly raise the question of an obsolete engine. Like, he is an old, curve, unopetimized, works on bones and is generally to blame for all sins of Bethesda games. A similar fact is already perceived as a given, although they think a little about which engine is specifically we are talking about and how really it is really bad? Now I will try to shed light on the great and terrible “Bethesda engine”, dispel several myths regarding it and offer my answer to the question – “What is the main problem of Bethesda games?”

Old engine

For the first time, the so -called “impressive engine” (hereinafter I will use this version of spelling, excuse me) appeared in TES III: Morrower, though it was then called Netimmerse, but in a couple of years it was renamed the more familiar Gamebryo. In fact, Gamebryo was a very popular game engine in the middle of 00x. It came out of such games as Civilization IV, Bully, Divinity II, as well as all games from the Hizard itself, from Morrolind to Fallout: New Vegas, but most of all the games in the Mmorpg genre were published on it. Gamebryo himself was optimized precisely under the creation of large locations, with the maximum savings of resources, which is natural for mmorpg. This fact will still play an important role in the future.

One way or another, but starting with TES V: Skyrim, the grocery went to a new, its own engine called Creation Engine. How much he was new and his own? Of course, even with the naked eye it can be seen that Skyrim and Fallout 4 have the same bugs, the same console teams and the same crutches as earlier than the gestures – the lack of vertical stairs, constant loading, soaring in the air and disappearing objects. If we look at Skyrim scripts, we can easily find Gamebryo mention there – right in the game code, and in Fallout 76 Skyrim Code. Moreover, the developers themselves, openly, say that when creating Fallout 76, they came across pieces of code from time to Morrowind … that is, in a good Creation Engine, this is just an improved Gamebryo, and not a completely new engine, and all the games of the milde, starting with Morroud 76, have been running over for twenty years now.On one engine.

Old, but not useless

Now, let’s figure out how bad it is.

With the names of game engines, in fact, a strange thing. Find out which engine actually is used – if you are not a developer, it is almost impossible. So, the names of game engines are more likely only marketing. Take, for example, the well -known Source. The first games on it were published back in 2004 and looked like this: but there were also games that look like like that. At the same time, this is still the same Source, although it is clear that for many years multiple improvement and refinement have been introduced into it. But only the version of the engine has changed, the name itself for 15 years remains unchanged.

The opposite approach is held by ID Software. So, the New Order, published in 2014, works on the ID Tech 5 engine, the second part is already on the ID Tech 6, and doom: Eternal on ID Tech 7. In total, in just six years they changed two generations of the engine. That’s just, I personally do not see any noticeable visual or technical changes between all these games.

Funny story with Dunia Engine, this is the name of the engine of all parts of Far Cry if you did not know. Initially, the first part of Far Cry was developed on the company engine of the German Crytek studio, but after their roads with Ubisoft dispersed, the second part was transferred to the development of the Ubisoft internal team. Which in just a couple of years bungered a completely new engine – Dunia. True, I can’t believe it at all. Why write a new engine in general, when you already have one of the most technological engines of that time in your hands? Most likely this was done only to remove the mention of foreign brands, in trailers and screensavers. The real percentage of the source code that remained there from Crytek is not known to anyone. That is, the name of the engine is nothing more than convention. Necessary just to highlight your game among others.

Okay, it is not the essence of which the engine uses the grocery. He is still very old and it’s bad. Yes? Well, not really.

Use fragments of the old code is a completely normal practice. There is absolutely no sense, every time to rewrite the engine for the new game. Some things remain unchanged, both in 2002 and in 2022: coordinates of movement, basic physical model, interaction scripts. I have already cited Source for example, in fact, games of completely different generations came out on the same engine. And I am sure that if you rummage around the Apex Legends code there you can find fragments from CS: Source. By the way, GS: GO also works on Source, like Team Fortress 2, and these are one of the most popular online players today, with a common online players daily. Not bad for the engine from 2004.

I think everyone has noticed such a feature in GTA games when you find a certain car and most of the traffic on the streets begins to copy your car. This is obviously done to save resources. It is much easier to reject five identical models than five completely different. It is interesting that such a trick is used in GTA III, and in GTA SA, and in GTA V. Although the early parts of the series worked on the Renderware engine (I made a small video about it), and the fourth and fifth of the Rockstar – Rage engine is already on its own engine. But this did not prevent Rockstar from drag a convenient feature to a new engine.

The game engine is only a tool. He cannot be bad or good. He can be suitable and inappropriate. Frostbite is able to issue an incredible picture in some games, but it works terribly poorly in Need for Speed ​​because it was not intended for these purposes. Or why Battlefield 1 looks better than Battlefield 2042, although the latter uses a more modern version of the engine. This is the problem of the engine? Or developers?

Bad actor

Both Creation Engine or Gamebryo 2.0, quite a good engine for their purposes. The main evidence of this is fashion. Moders do everything they are not capable of developers from grater. From improving graphics to adding new mechanics and correcting bugs. Moders once again prove that Gamebryo is an incredibly flexible engine, adding the most incredible mechanics to the game. Skyrim with graphic modifications can look like an incredibly beautiful game, and the grocery itself did not deign not to even update the textures for the ten -year reprinting of the game. In any game, groops, over the past twenty years, there are no functioning vertical stairs. Developers assure that making such stairs is very difficult. Well, yes, to do what is literally in any, even the simplest and oldest game is difficult, and the moderners took and did. One of the main problems of games from the Hizard is bugs. They are rarely super-critical, but there are a lot of them, a lot, many of them are repeated from playing the game. And fans are made by patches that rule most of these bugs. Moreover, these patches themselves weigh only a few hundred kilobytes. Probably, unbearable work for programmers of impressions.

Todd Howard constantly tells how they respect the moders and how important the fan community is for them. That’s just, in their games, for the normal installation of mods – other mods are needed! It’s absurd, but it is. The standard interface and the functionality of launches of the Vemanders does not allow you to set a large number of modifications, for this you need to use third -party software and additional patches.

Why what fans can do – people who do this for free, at pure enthusiasm, in their free time – they can do all this with an outdated engine, and the studio itself – not?

I say all this to the fact that the main problem is not an obsolete engine, but an outdated approach to creating games. This can be traced easily, just look at the presentation of the Hizards to understand what I’m talking about. In absolutely all of his presentations of new games, impressions, and Todd Howard, in particular, constantly focuses on sizes. “Our biggest game”, “giant dynamic world”, “more than hundreds of different dungeons”, “Sixteen times more than the previous one …” They always focus on what a big open world they created this time. And this becomes a problem, as the quality begins to suffer due to the number. Hastens spends so much time on creating hundreds of a dungeon, planets, locations that they do not have time and resources for polishing the game, to add some radically new mechanics. The plot also suffers from this, if in Morrowind and Oblivion the story has an important place in the general world of the game, then already in Skyrim, and even more so Fallout 4, the plot fads into the background. The game is increasingly turning into a sandbox without a clear structure, with a weak plot, a bunch of similar side tasks – protect the settlement/kill the bandits 120 times – with dialogs, in which there are only two response options. The manic desire to make your games more led to the complete degradation of all other elements of gameplay.

Talented scriptwriters and programmers work in the gesture, and I am sure that they could write a good script and optimize the game code, only no one requires this from them. And why?

An obsolete approach

Ducerial Vysheld approach – worked earlier. In the middle-end of the zero, they were the kings of the industry. All their games were sold by multimillion -dollar circulations. And all, because they did not have competition. In the zero, video games with a large, dynamic, open world was practically no. I can recall, except that a series of games about the great car attorney, and, in fact, games from the Hizard. BioWara never made games in the open world, the first two parts of The Witcher were linear, the stalker was also divided into separate locations, and the liveliness of the world could not boast of much. In principle, then there was no technology yet that allows you to easily create your own OPEN-WORLDs of the game. Hastens in those days created unique projects and their approach to development – worked.

But today, the situation is different. The first bell that it was time to change something in 2015, along with the release of The Witcher 3. The Witcher went out in one year with Fallout 4, and looked much better, there was a sane combat system in it and there was no loads every five minutes. Moreover, the world of the Witcher was as large as in Fallout, only Noviyera to devote any “city” in the fourth follower.

The second bell rang three years later, in 2018. Then the ill -fated Fallout 76 came out, which was advertised as the largest and most ambitious game of the studio. And in the same year, Red Dead Redampiotn 2 came out … between these games there is simply a giant abyss in the level of graphics, animation, and the quality of elaboration of the abstract world. But it’s not only about RDR. During the posts of years, a lot of projects with the open world have come out and all of them work better than gestures games. The conditional Starfield will need to compete with the two Horizon, Elder Ring, Spider-Man 2, and in general, a lot of games open now. The gigan card is no longer surprising, on the contrary, people spit from gigantomania in Far Cry 6, do not understand why Ghostwire: Tokyo generally screwed the open world. The presence of Open-World is no longer something unique, and when Todd Howard talks about “hundreds of planets that you can visit”, many people cause only a negative reaction.

Returning to the topic of this video/article. As you could already understand, the main problem of gestures is not an obsolete engine, but an outdated approach to creating games. They know very well about all the problems of the engine, but do not improve it – because they do not consider it important. They could correct all technical shortcomings, stop using crutches and patches from past games, write a strong script (without finding a son, father, brother, dog, but they will not do this, because of their obsession with the creation of a giant world. And this obsession led them to the complete degradation of the rest of the game.

Will their approach to https://coldcascasino.co.uk/ Starfield change? I doubt it very much. Fallout 76 was a failure, but it seems not large enough to change something. Yes, and according to the material we have, Starfield looks like the same Fallout in space. The game even in trailers looks crooked, animations and models seemed to migrate straight from Fallout, a primitive skill system, but there will be a thousand different planets for study, and they, by the way, said literally a few words, as if it were something insignificant for the game.

Some part of me wants Starfield to fail. I understand that this will not happen, that they probably have already repelled the cost of development on some pre -orders. But still, if the game will have significant negative reviews, if mass returns go in the first days, and boots will rise on the Internet, as was the case with Fallout 76. That, this will no longer affect the state of Starfield itself, but perhaps change for the better The Elder Scrolls VI ..

The best comments

Here to recall the Fallout Mod: The Frontier, in which one person fluent with his skilles to be able to squeeze all the juices of the engine. The mod itself is so -so, but the technoplyushechki delivered.

And no one canceled the old folk wisdom: the crooked dancer and the floor of the curve. Dozens of indie manage to make cult games on simple engines. The design solves, not the engine.

For me, the main problem of the gazebo is just the lack of design. I’ll tell you a hatch thing now, but Skyrim is a bad game. Yes, how is the world for escapism it is beautiful, but playing it is simply disgusting. A thousand mods who are trying to fix it is an excellent example of this statement. But if you consider Vanilla, then one single option clearly demonstrates everything – the ability to set the difficulty at any time. You can set the lightest and be just boring. It is difficult to expose and for the time being it will be interesting, but sooner or later you will come across a complex impassable place, because the enemies are fat and it hurts painfully. And you have three options: 1) it is to leave the quest and go swing. They will do this normal players? No. 2) to steal and invent, but this is possible only if you play for a thief, if you are a weak magician or warrior, then you will not do anything. 3) reduce the difficulty right here and now, as most will arrive. And at this moment the whole game breaks, because if you constantly switch the difficulty, then something is wrong here. The game is a challenge of the developer to players, and such maneuvering is said to them.

Moreover, the gazebo knows about this problem. Why? In Oblivion, everyone spat on the Autolevity of the NPC. But for some reason, everyone is silent that the gazebo solved this problem by Grindwell in Skyrim. Such an awl for soap.

And this is not only the problem of scrolls. In New Vegasa, the Khordcor regime is not so chordcore. She is light on it.

The gazebo makes good worlds, but I haven’t learned to give up all this. And she understands all this. The awareness of this process began in Fallout 4 (in fact, in the addition to Skyrim, in which you could buy a house). No one noticed that the craft system looks ridiculous according to the Board of the game? You need to look for your son, not plant potatoes. Continued this in Follach 76 and legends. And in Starfield they don’t deny anything at all: the game exists only for the sake of craft.

And it is difficult to criticize the gazebo, because you need to criticize the players that they need sandboxes, and not full adventures. Fallout 76 Disgusting Fallout, but she still is active in players.

A separate conversation are the games of the ID and tango. Ivil Vizin, Wolf and Duma – amazing games, but they painfully support mods, unlike the motors of Skyrim and Fall, so they have already died because the players cannot do anything for them. So it is worth considering what is better: a steep engine without mods, or an ancient mammoth with the work of fans.

The material is interesting, but I advise you to work on grammar. It looks like you are using a machine translation

since the quality begins to suffer due to the number. Haster spends so much time on creating hundreds of a dungeon, planets, locations,

I will supplement, there are a lot of typos – you need to better read the text:

The word “once” is missed, “so that” is merged here.

A comma is not in place.

BioWare + a comma instead of a point.

The first bell that it was time to change something in 2015, along with the release of The Witcher 3.

Either the “bell sounded”, or “there was a bell” + what, in fact, was;After “changing” the comma is missed.

The bracket is not closed.

This is on a vapid. There are a lot of mistakes, everything is just too lazy to list.

I will say from my own experience that the point here is not in grammar, but in the features of compilation and editing of the text. Repeatedly noticed this in other texts and at home.

The bottom line is that you first build a phrase one at a time, then you change its construction, but you forget to edit some previous elements of the text. From the above examples, I would suggest that phrases could be built as follows:

I will offer my vision of the issue

since the quality begins to suffer due to the number. Haster spends so much time on creating hundreds of a dungeon, planets, locations,

since the number begins to affect the quality. The impressive is so focused on creating hundreds of dungeons, planets, locations,

The second example, already looks somewhat stretched, but it may be a matter of something like that. The third – already clearly looks like a banal mistake.

This does not cancel the need to re -read the text before publishing. But when you re -read your personal text, then often mistakes just pass by. You see in the text what should be there, and not what is. 🙂

PS: The article is interesting.

PS2: errors should still be corrected. 🙂

About Bully, the game originally worked for Renderware, a port for Xbox 360 was released on Gamebryo

Co Starfield everything will be the same as past games for sure – “Moders will correct everything”

The most ridiculous, Follych 4 and Skyrim (Se/AE) are saved only by modern, if it weren’t for them, what kind of it was given (except to run once, and not reinstall after a couple of year olds), so so far there will be such enthusiasts, most likely their approach will not change either.

I do not understand how the scriptwriters of the gazebo manage to invent various nonsense in each of their games. Take at least I hated f3. The city around the atomic bomb where there are people who worship it and nearby a grandfather in a Penthouse, who wants to blow her up, because the city spoils his appearance, the city of children, vampires, a war of two cosplayers: robot and ants, exploding cars. In the four synths, an institute, a son who is a father, at 76, in general, a bacchanalia is going on from battles with some flying lizards to the music of a bumblebee flight. How can this be invented and promoted on serious droves

An interesting opinion, even probably now I will not stink like “here, again on the old shit-slide will release the game”). There would be more such reasoning.

You write so that the size of the open world is the only feature of the gazebo games and any game with the open world is a direct competitor to it.

But here’s what things, spending time in the field, Skyrim, 3 follyche, relatively in New Vegas and in, sorry, 4 folcisha, I wonder and in 3 witches, headlights and other games with the open world – there is no.

I can only agree with 4m Folych. The local local stories have become criminally few, the global plot is altogether at all, and most quests were given to the generator.

Author, thank you very much.
For me, the article opened my eyes to understand the old engine, (the engine is not old – it is restrained, like good wine), it remains to wait and watch how the sublains store and improve their engines and how it affects their new projects.

The ID engines are characterized by optimization, each of the next version looks better and less iron requires, while on the old engines it is not optimal to use resources.

For a long time, everyone has known that the Trehads arbor (just compare F3 and HB), but protect the engine? This feces of the mammoth need to be thrown out and never make games on it again, or already fully redo it. This engine cannot normally load the textures, it does not just allow you to make vertical stairs and is stupid with transport (halon hat, hello!). But the most interesting thing is that in the compartment with the technical backwardness of Tesa and Folachi are bad and scenario, from which I still do not understand how their games are bought! This is a frank hack!