Matthew

Loving this discussion. Hard to find, these days. It's all ranting and pitchforks and trolling.

I'm definitely of the same opinion, creatively and business wise. I think for them, it's probably a case of Zenimax looming over them with numbers and wanting to get as much return for minimal investment. Business wise, if you're making good bank for little cost in comparison, why not? I would still say the games made with CE are still much more fun than many games made with other engines, so I can see why they would do that. But, personally, yes - I would rather invest and push an envelope.

Therein lies why I'm an indie dev - I have passion and I don't tolerate having my vision limited. The downside of me being an indie dev - AuDHD, so getting me to STOP having ideas and focus on one idea is hard. One day I'll finish a project and publish, though... One day. Don't get me wrong - I can (and have) worked in companies of 50+ developers, but could I do that for 20 years? No. Big, grinding machines tend to not allow too many experimental or highly creative outlets. People who try are usually strung up in tape and hung from the ceiling as an example of not trying to push the boundaries.

Examples - Minecraft and Hyperlight Drifter, amongst others. You can imagine pitching the scope of the first and creative vision of the latter and how that would go down in, say, EA or Ubisoft. Anyway, I think I went off on a tangent.

In general, I do think gaming technology is starting to plateau. There is only so much closer you can get to photo-realism before games cross the line that is being blurred. Then you need to ask yourself if they're still fun. Part of what captured the senses in older games was the mimicry of life without it being identified as real. If we get too close to that, I think we lose something.

Anyway, tldr - I agree, but I see why Zenimax squeezes oranges into non-existence for juice. Also, keen to discuss on FB or other platform. This is fun.

I can't reply to yours either, just this initial one. Weird. Anyway.

You have a good point about certain limitations as a ceiling on improvements. I'd wager that yes, in that sense, they're hitting the limit on what it can and can't do performance wise. That said, UE5 and prior versions are similar in that they're built on top of past versions. If anything, I'd say Bethesda has been lazy in reusing the same tech as much as possible with less iterations than they should have been making to improve it. Case in point being UE up to 5 now, as you've stated. However, even UE5 still has some original UE foundational code. Some things just work and don't need reinventing.

I think the issue is that Bethesda tried to play with minimal improvements for too long. Then again, UE has more time to dedicate purely to the engine. Do they still actively pump out games using new iterations or just stick to letting others use it? I haven't seen a purely Epic-made game using UE in a while.

Regarding bugs, a lot of them are development related per game - broken quests, broken bones / rigging, mismatched dialogue, missing item references, etc. Engine-related bugs would be more save file issues, CTDs (depending on the cause and how it's handled), memory leaks, shader and texture issues, excessive drive usage, etc.

Another thing is their entire team is so well versed in its own engine it would be a massive undertaking to need to train everyone up again on different pipelines. It would be like taking someone who used UE through to UE5 and now getting them all to adapt to using CryEngine.

I still do give them credit for what they've brought CE up to, but in general, yes, it is still not the greatest engine as a whole. I don't expect Bethesda engines to ever be at UE level, but the games are also a much larger scope than most games made in UE - at least from my understanding. Happy to learn about other open-ended games using UE5 to try out, too!:)

There are definitely a few bugs, but I've not had those before! That's very odd and I feel for you; I think I'd be pretty annoyed with missing voices and broken saves. The most I've had are occasional graphics glitches, a few CTDs, and some bugs I can overlook since they're just odd and not a big deal. Dunno if it's because I'm an 80s kid or not, but I can overlook a lot of things and still enjoy them. The main NPC of Shattered Space is currently still walking around after the end of my game and it just makes me laugh, lol.

What inclusions do you think they should have in something other than creation engine? Why is the engine being blamed rather than how it is used? It's like the new gamer trend is to sandbag engines without understanding what they do (not saying you are, it just seems to happen a lot now in general). A lot of the problems you listed, like bugs and combat mechanics, are tweakable formulas and shouldn't be blamed on the engine, depending on what the bugs are. It's like a code framework - the base isn't bad, but how it's used can be. Happens with excessive code bases and really large scopes.