The engine that drove the previous ElderScrolls and Fall Out has been dropped and looks like the devs are taking it in a new direction. So do you think this will turn out for the worst?

Nope I do not agree with what you said, yes they are developing a brand new in house engine from scratch this in turn could be a bad thing. But in the podcast recently and on twitter we have been told that Skyrim has been in development not long after Oblivion was and that on twitter we were told that the new engine is making this game look rather spectacular. To bolster this more in the game informer article they described to what they had seen to be very impressive in the amount of content that was shown. So do not loose faith as of yet and for my honest opinion, they are taking the right step in the right direction.

The bugginess of Bethesda's games had nothing to do with the engine itself but poor programming and animations. Civilization 4 was made in Gamebryo too and it's almost bugfree (nothing is completely bugfree).

nah bethesda is always great, they never disappoint

Gamebryo was a painful painful engine. I was SUPER happy when i heard they made a shift to a new engine.

What he said.


Not what he said.

Gamebryo is a rendering engine only, and the problems people constantly blame on it are Bethesda issues, not Gambryo issues. I don't exactly have a great deal of faith in Bethesda's programmers as a result, but I've heard that they are consulting with some of id's programmers, so... well, let's just say I still don't have exceptionally high hopes. I'm sure it'll look nice, it'll probably run nice, but other than that I really don't expect much at all.

I think it will be a good thing. They had tweaked gamebryo to the point of it being their own anyway, so why not just create their own in house engine.

Especially when they have John freaking Carmack on call if they need any help :celebration:

Good,
It was outdated (made for Morrowind).
Had rigid scripting, and mesh assignments.
Poor physics engine.
Poor AI

When John Carmack comes to town... ermm... he writes code and stuff.

Depend's on how good the new engine is.

Poor physics? Havok wasn't bad.

Except not at all made for Morrowind. NetImmerse was a third-party middleware engine used by Bethesda for Morrowind. Gamebryo is the most recent version of that engine. It is not a Bethesda engine, it is an engine that Bethesda paid in order to use.


Gamebryo is a rendering engine by Emergent. These were both done by Bethesda.


Gamebryo is a rendering engine by Emergent. The physics were handled by the Havok physics engine, and it was Bethesda who managed the specifics on how those physics looked and felt (see: general floatiness). Most games that use Havok have considerably better physics because they use Havok far better.


Radiant AI is entirely a Bethesda creation. Gamebryo is entirely not a Bethesda creation. Gamebryo has literally NOTHING to do with AI.

What this guy said, and to be honest I doubt the engine to be bad, its been a good 3-4years in development (according to todd via podcast) and to me that has given them a lot of time to start from scratch look what they can do, what they can't do (I doubt they can't do something they do almost anything possible) and if game informer and a tweet from bethesda both say that it is looking mightily impressive well that to me is a good indication what we will expect.

Game Informer is owned by GameStop and generally exists primarily as a PR device for major developers and to help GameStop boost pre-orders of high-profile titles, and Bethesda is the company making this game. I wouldn't really trust either of them on the subject.

Well to be honest it can be used for that as well as it is also can be reliable at the same time but then you have to use common sense by taking in development time and bethesda always making a masterpiece. It is very likely that it is good, if I wrong you can kick my butt haha

In Oblivion, I didn't feel like I could do anything "interactive enough". More and new animations would be great. Anything Bethesda does 'll be great.

Good, without question.

Overall quality of Bethesda's games aside, consider what it is that they tend to get the most wrong the most often (note how these kinds of issues are very, VERY important for a game engine):

• Performance
  
• Stability
  
• General "loose ends" like (sometimes obvious) bugs and glitches

Now consider that they haven't made an engine since the XnGine in the mid-1990s. Now, finally, consider that they're making their own engine.

"Good" is not my expectation. "Good" might happen, but I'm not going to put any money on it.

Good, well better then what they hacked together with Gamebryo, the engine just wasn't made for what they wanted to do. At least, now they can make an engine to respond to their needs.



Anyway, Emergent put all of its asset for sell in November. Which mean that Gamebryo will not be improved further...if ever.

The engine doesn't matter at all. They know what they want to program into the game. It's not like Gamebryo came by default to be able to run TES. Wasn't it originally for RTS games or something?

Either way there's no way to know until the new game comes out. It will be disappointing if they do not release mod tools, or if they restrict modding tools.

Could you imagine if you could only use mods through a Bethesda run mod network? It would be horrible.

gamebryo svcks period. yes bethesda programmers are mostly to blame but that engine was not initially developed for 1st person games. no one would use cryengine for an RTS cause if you did you would have to change so much of it it wouldnt be recognizable anymore. not all engines are equal and some are just plain svcky. i would have preferred that they use a modified version of cryengine or dunia or even the latest quake engine possibly even idTech 5 since they now own id, i dont know much about its capablities though and its untested as of yet. dammit i cant wait for RAGE.

personally im glad to hear that they got some help from the id guys although i would feel even better if the id guys actually did the coding.

That's some strong optimism you have going on over there.

VERY GOOD.

Most new popular games got really good engines. Let me give you some examples...
We have Crysis (CryEngine2/3 engine), we have Just Cause 2 (avalanche engine) and Red Dead Redemption (RAGE engine; note the engine RAGE, not the game RAGE).

A great engine gives you so many more opportunities, not only visually but also in regards of performance and gameplay.

Look at these two youtube clips and see if you can manage to tell me that keeping crappy Gamebryo would be a good thing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Kvl31g77Z8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-D9oINHI11E

I'm hoping it'll be good. Bethesda's version of the Gamebryo engine was terrible. Hopefully whatever they've put together isn't as buggy. They've had plenty of time to work on it, and they easily have the resources and allure to hire highly skilled programmers, so I think this will turn out very well.

I'm tending towards optimism when it comes to Skyrim, so I think the new engine will be a major factor in giving us a superior game.


CryEngine 3 looks extremely cool; if Bethesda's can do half of what is showcased there we'll have plenty to be excited about. And while I play on PC exclusively, it's nice to see that spectacular things can be run on the consoles as well (ie, they needn't be excluded due to console releases).

In particular, did you notice CryEngine 3's colour grading and blend shading? With that kind of power over the environment, the frequently hoped-for changing seasons would be a real possibility. But yeah, I'm being optimistic. Roll on January's screenshots & info.