Now, before I make this thread, this ISN'T an anger thread by some bug I'm experiencing, just a constructive view. If anyone want's to come in here to play 'Bethesda Defense Post', allow me to save you the wall of text and say 'Cool story, Fan bro'

That said, Fallout 3 introduced me to the wonderful series of Fallout. Oblivion, my first Bethesda game and won my heart immensely. New Vegas, was beautifully made as well. All built on the Gamebryo engine. I don't have Skyrim for money reasons (I got Saints Row the Third, but this isnt about my purchase choices), but from what I understand, this Creation engine used by Bethesda is more or less a variation of the Gamebryo engine. Now, my biggest complaint is, I, as a console gamer, PS3 to be precise, need to conserve space on my console. Considering Creation, just like Gamebryo, records your every action into the game, it can make your file dramatically huge, which is just painfully lag inducing, possibly even unplayable. With such a frustating issue, not barring the other animation glitches and inground spawning kind of glitches, isn't it time for Bethesda to find a new engine that handles these kinds of things better?

Yes please. I'm sorry Bethesda, Skyrim is an amazing game but it looks like [censored] when compared to games running on engines like Frostbite 2.0, CryEngine 3 or whatever the hell Ubisoft Montreal uses.

There is a good reason Gamebryo isn't being developed any more.

I wouldn't be bothered at all if Fo4 used Skyrims engine. (I know skyrims engine is a tweaked Oblivion/Fo3 engine). It is an amazing piece of a game engine they are using. For Skyrim, they tweaked it so heavily it could be called a new engine. Think of the core of the engine as a soul gem inside a dwemer centurion. Take the soul gem and build around it a whole new centurion, giving it new properties, while still keeping the core of the old engine.

That's the key word though. 'Old engine'. If you keep rebuilding around an old object, despite however much of a gem it was in it's hayday, it's going to become crap with time, as all you're effectively doing is repainting that old farmhouse it's old color in it's prime, not checking it for structural damage.

Isn't that what they done with the Creation Engine?
Gave it a repaint, new and better graphics than Gamebyro, and then tweaked the coding for it so that it runs smoother/less buggy.

I don't mind them just tweaking and improving their engine with each new game since this is what a lot of game companies do to save money and time, like IW for example, they have had the same engine since CoD4 it has just been retweaked with each release of MW. IW Engine < IW 4.0 < MW3 Engine. Actually almost http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IW_engine and yet each on was better than the last.

I think they should just improve on what they already have instead of going out, buying an engine and hoping it can run something like Fallout/TES

In general, I'm not fussy about the latest craze of graphics. If it looks like it's a good game to play, I'm happy. That said, my issue with the engine is it's still having animation and spawning bugs like New Vegas and 3, and on top of that, they never bothered to try and implement a way to fix the 'more you touch and explore, the larger the save file.' JE Sawyer explained it best, even if you simply nudge a pencil on F:NV, that is recorded and logged in your save file.

It's fairly obvious that it's only "new" in the strange world of marketing. Perhaps the age-old Bethesda engine has seen a few updates but it's stretching the truth to describe is as new; I think in particular as it still has a number of bugs and quirks that date back to (at least) Oblivion. Maybe it's a Gamebryo feature, though: Larian did the same thing when they claimed that they had a new engine when Ego Draconis became the Dragon Knight Saga, and again it looked suspiciously like the old engine.

Edit: I'm not unhappy about the likely modding potential, however: a genuinely new engine could've been quite a setback.

Edit 2: hurr durrr, guess who didn't read the topic properly before replying. Well in answer to that, no, they just need to fix the bugs.

I would be fine with them utilizing the same engine for a while longer. The thing I have issue with is all of the little mess-ups that pop their heads in. Things like people walking into objects, glitched physics, clipping, poor pathfinding. Those are the things that really standout to me.

How savegames get larger and larger over time because the game remembers everything you've done is a bit problematic, but I don't know how a new engine would fix that if you still want an open world game.

After Fallout 4 is released they really need a new engine. Creation is just crap compared to pretty much any of the newer engines. It's the same as Source, an ancient engine that they just keep trying to squeeze new stuff out of. Portal 2 was pretty but Source can still only handle one dynamic light for goodness sake. 4A is where it's at.

Speaking as one who hasn't played Skyrim, from what I've heard, the Creation Engine doesn't seem to purge old info from the save files

while logging the position of any pencil moved makes sense that info should be dumped when & if the world refreshes IMHO

I do wonder what It would be like if Beth had IdSoft make them a new engine

I don't think it can, really. I've played other games that don't keep detailed status information about stuff you've interacted with and it's quite irritating to go back to find everything's been reset to its default position and state, so it's probably the lesser of two evils. I guess it'd be possible to timestamp stuff and purge it after a certain amount of time has passed, but that seems like a complex solution that may simply be a compromise rather than an improvement.

It really can't be fixed, at least not without having every cell reset, wiping out everything you've done there.

[Condescending Statement] With Bethesda's current focus on the console market, that may actually happen though. But don't worry, consoles don't have a negative impact on gaming.

I would just like to point out that apart from some repeating bad textures, Skyrim is beautiful.

I think they will be done with it soon and by their first game on next-gen consoles they will use a new engine.

I would appreciate a new engine. I didn't think the current one would work for Skyrim, but it does. Some new things could be exploited with a new engine, though. I want to see some fresh ideas.

Yes, it's about time. Both Morrowind and Oblivion were cutting edge technology for their time and Skyrim is ... well, not far behind.

Given that id now uses the megatexture approach (one gigantic texture that covers the whole gameworld), Skyrim's size and the fact that the game has to be run on consoles... It would not be a pretty sight

You must not play on the ps3 version. Ok morrowind came out in 2002 , I think they started work on it during 1998- or 99, we are playing on a fourteenish year old engine. That is older than most of skyrim general.(The engine is older than the fanbase that was brought here) You do not see a problem with engine that is that old and recycled? You are contempt with ps3 users getting the shaft since fallout 3? I could excuse Bethesda for Oblivion because it was their first time on the new consoles but still.

this, i am sure that there is a better way to keep track of how the game keeps track of where every thing is. but for me it would be a game breaker for the game to refresh and dump that information from the save files, other wise all my stuff that i keep hidden in chests in the wild and so on will disapear...

which actually did happen to me once with umbra in oblivion... i was storing it at the bottom of a pond. but it disapeared

What on Earth makes you think Bethesda isn't going to change engines when the next TES game comes out? That will be on the next platform, so naturally they'll change engines.

Bethesda using their current engine for Skyrim was plausible, logical, and honestly the best bet, since they know the engine and have obviously pulled out every stop regarding it. Skyrim is a great game, and anyone denying that is mistaken. It has flaws to be sure, as does the engine itself, but they made the right choice by using it again for Skyrim.

I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that they will change for the next installation for the series.

I doubt there's any way to solve the memory problem, even a game like Mass Effect that's much smaller then Skyrim in terms of content still has it's memory size go up. I can see Beth making tweaks for optimizing but they aren't going to do that if it makes the game even worse.

Big Red
I dunno, the games they make are massive and their engine is alright at handling them. Engine doesn't play a big role in graphical quality; performance and stability are the functions of an engine - at a user level, of course. Their engine gives okay performance and, relatively, poor stability. If you want them to write an entirely new engine, that would be a waste of time and money. Improving their, note these are assumptions, rendering (maybe bumping it up to DX11) component to make the game run smoother and script handling (what I assume is the cause of many crashes) would be better. It seems too many of the scripts run by the module are running at once, maybe even conflicting, and causing the game crash often. I come to this conclusion only because they've patched in stability in the past, while keeping the patches small, so I assume they're fixing the main game module, not the executable. Who really knows, though.
The raw number of events going on at any one time in TES games just baffles me that I can run the game at all. Where with a Bioware game like Dragon Age, it's mostly procedural stuff, loading a level and handling what's going in there; Skyrim handles where you've been, where you're going, and what is going on there on a grand scale. It's really impressive, for me at least.

I do have to agree that the game engine Bethesda currently uses is a bit dated showing its age. Same thing goes with the HL2 engine where even Gabe himself commented on it concerning HL2: Episode 3 where I believe they want a new shinier engine.

The ultimate problem is utilizing and familiarizing a crew with a new engine can be a bit time consuming. Right now most companies want to use the engine they have for atleast 5 to 8 years since they can shift people around that are familiar with it. You bring in a new engine it'll really muck up the works requiring new plugins for 3D model programs, new code being written to games and not to mention a bunch of test time. Have a feeling Bethesda will be updating the heck out of the coding for FO4 when it gets released then they'll probably use something new.

I don't think Oblivion generally deletes stray objects (at least to the best of my knowledge) but they can fall through the floor, the ground and otherwise be whisked away by naughty pixies only to reappear much, much later. The likes of Decorator Assistant seems to frighten off said pixies, but I think one has to accept that anything left lying around is subject to being eaten, and there's no guarantee that it'll be regurgitated.

Designated areas can be marked as "untouchable", as is already the case with certain containers in the Oblivion engine, but even knowing that there's always an element of uncertainty until I go and check in the Construction Set or whatever...