Please Todd, please.
Fallout 3.76
I remember the first time I played The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. My first thought was that it felt a lot like Fallout 3. At that time, I was fairly unfamiliar with Bethesda games and I had never played Oblivion. What I didn’t know at the time was that Skyrim was the first game to use Bethesda’s brand new Creation Engine. That engine was great at 2011. In 2019, though, not so much.
Jank.
Since Skyrim, the Creation Engine has been used in the re-releases of Skyrim, Fallout 4 and Fallout 76. While the engine was updated for more recent releases like Fallout 4 and Fallout 76, a lot of the same problems that plagued Skyrim also seem to pop up in Bethesda’s latest RPGs. There’s just something about the Creation Engine that makes everything feel rigid and robotic. The games are always fun to play in my opinion, but anyone familiar with previous Fallout games or Skyrim can clearly see common elements between them. Common, annoying elements.
Not the right tools for the job?
On one hand, I am happy Bethesda Game Studios has an in-house engine they can rely on for cost saving and development time saving measures but I really wish they would update their Creation Engine. I’m talking about the jerky animations, the visual glitches, the physics bugs and broken quests. Throwing a grenade that has a slight delay between the animation and the grenade seemingly leaving your hand. Or how about when the game slides your character into place so you can enter your Power Armor. You might not care about such things at first, but give it a couple of years and you’ll begin to feel that maybe they’re not doing the best they can.
What’s next?
A lot of these things I mention here can be classified as nitpicks. But it’s been 8 years since Skyrim came out. Even more since Oblivion. It’s about time the Creation Engine gets a massive overhaul. ‘The Elder Scrolls VI’ will most definitely use an updated version of this engine, but if it feels like Fallout 4 did, it will be a real shame. The next version needs to wow fans. It needs to get rid of the plastic-y character models and massively improve the fluidity of animations and their blending. For the love of God, Todd.
What do you think? Do you agree that the Creation Engine is severely outdated or do you find that it just works? Nintendo is obviously listening after watching the Breath of the Wild sequel trailer. Let us know below.