For me, I have several major things that I would hope this new engine is already doing at this stage in the development phase. Wasn't able to find a relevant topic specifically dealing with engine improvements.

First and foremost is creating a completely seamless world. What do I mean by this? I mean eliminating the need for loading screens (except of course for fast-travel). When you enter a house, you don't click the door and get magically transported inside, the door actually opens and you walk through. When you go into a mine or a cave, there isn't some artificial obstruction that keeps you from seeing what's down there, you just enter. In Oblivion and Morrowind it always felt strange that somebody had managed to build doors over every naturally occurring cave in the land. This also means you could potentially look through windows in houses and see what people were up to. This would also mark a return to open cities from Morrowind.

What would be the downside? Most likely the game would require a quad-core processor or better for PC and the initial loading time would be much larger. However, I would be more than willing to wait 1-2 minutes for the game to load if it means I don't get my immersion broken every time I enter or exit somewhere. This also means a much more robust and complex 'cell' system that allows for location-based streaming, instead of load areas.

Secondly I would like to see a more interactive combat style much like that of Dark Messiah. This would also include dual-wielding one-handed weapons and mounted combat. This requires a much more fluid and procedural animation system, similar to what Force Unleashed used.

I would also like to see a small amount of destructibility which allows for property damage. If you throw a fireball in a tavern and it hits a chair the chair should either burst apart or catch fire. Either way, you owe the barman a new chair and until you pay, that chair is gone. So the Barman would come at you and demand money to replace the chair and whatever else might have been broken in the process. This would of course only be possible with destructibility.

Lastly, the engine NEEDS to allow for far greater combat AI to be active at once. The 'great battles' in Oblivion were a joke with only up to 15 or so AI in combat mode and the rest standing around, waiting their turn. The engine needs to make sure that large-scale battles (50+) are possible.

What would you like to see improved or added from an engine perspective?

Some of the main flaws in Oblivion were technical. I can remember Todd Howard admitting this in an interview, and he said that they were concentrating on sorting out the engine.

Im fairly confident that we will have a much better engine for Skyrim, although I dont think it'll be quite up to your standard. It would be nice to see that though.

I personaly am more interested in content.

I want to see ladders.

^Lol.

Cities in the same world space, so levitation can come back.
Doors open close on their hinges.
Plants picked or containers opening if you search them.
Running water.

Rain that isn't just a cover over the screen when your outdoors, but can get blocked off by something above your head!

I want heads and limbs that are actually seamless and not somehow staying on the body and are one continuous skin not a tan neck and then a paler body.

Fist and foremost I want to see the engine have better animations, currently every game from Oblivion onwards as had the same style and they are, frankly, bad. With that simple improvements in combat as well as the character models, in partiuclar faces would be a welcome change. However, I'll have to wait to see this new engine before I get my hopes up as to what types of changes we can/should expect.

I want better animations and some amazing little scripted events, example; you almost fall down from a mountain and just barely manage to grab something and climb your way back up.(just imagine all the snow flying everywhere :tongue: ) It would also help make it feel less "static"
Very action-y stuff like that would be great.
Better rain.
The whole skin tone thing.
Real wounds when you hit someone.

Better weather effects. Rain that gathers in puddles on the ground and snow that piles up. Wind that blows leaves around and animates banners. Fog, blizzards, hailstorms would be nice as well, although admittedly resource heavy.

Open cities, realistic weather, more realistic scenery, and better animations. That about covers it.

Fog, blizzard(as in White outs where you pretty much have to compass navigate), hail and the like would be great. As for puddles and snow levels... it would be too resource heavy. Maybe changing snow levels but it would have to be static changing levels(as in it changes while your away) rather then a dynamic build up. I can't imagine my processor would be happy about that.

The game must run on console, it's difficult this.
Anyone knows which directX it will be using?

I'm hoping directx 11 and tessellation support. Obviously improved animation too. If it looks anything like The Witcher 2 I'll be happy. I just hope the PC version of the game isn't graphically gimped because it has to support 'legacy hardware', i.e. consoles.

I'm happy Bethesda is using a new engine, but we have to remind ourselves that Bethesda games have always had issues with glitches and bugs way before the Gamebryo engine was used in Morrowind. The graphical possibilities are exciting, but I also want Bethesda to use a lot more of their time resolving scripting issues, animations and other bugs BEFORE Skyrim is released. I have a PS3 version of Oblivion gathering dust because of all the bugs Bethesda decided they would never address again, including the infamous vampire glitch. Not to mention official addons not being available on the PS3, but that's something else entirely.

Also, the day I can pick up a book in Tamriel without seriously altering the gravitational pull of the entire shelf would be great!

Most certainly DX11 (=at least tesselation). Consoles can have the crappy DX9-path. :flamethrower:

you know il say somthing about the engine alot of people were complaining about there being no news on tesv now we have news, now people complain as long as i dont see graphics to bad and has the woop arss story it always has n side jobs, im happy as hell but no matter hat you do alwayz people complaining. now its annouced ul think people r happy look on these forum sites oh this will be on it oh thats a problem oh make it like morrowind blow me its a new game come to the future or just go play morrowind.

dear santa...

• dynamic lightning (seroiusly, we're not living in the 90's anymore)
  
• DX10/11 effects for pc-version
  
• no loading screens between interiors and exteriors, atleast in small ones
  
• ^open cities
  
• since the game takes place in skyrim, and there's probably lots of snow, i'm waiting to see some snow physics or atleast footprints like in lost planet
  
• good animations
  
• ^animated ladders, no teleporting
  
• effects from different elemental spells, ie. firespell puts things on fire, ice freezes and so on
  
• small trees can be chopped down

...and a lot of other improvements that aren't just visual

so is this new engine purely for Skyrim as its first use? Or has it been used for Fallout 3: New Vegas?

no, it was the same engine you saw in oblivion. it was just tweaked a bit

I wouldn't get my hopes up too high. I hate to say it but a game this big, a year from release, is almost set in stone. Theres not a huge amount of things they can or will change in a year.

Actually, now they are saying it's a brand new engine. Earlier they said it was thoroughly reworked GameBryo. In any case, "tweaked a bit" falls far from the truth.

Edit: From ElderScrolls' Twitter-account: "Bethblog Seeing lots of speculation about #tesv game engine. It's brand new... and it's spectacular!"

Less loading screens, better animations and character models.

whoops, i was supposed to mean the F:NV engine


why not? i thought F:NV used gamebryo

No, that doesn't change a thing. Also, read the edit on my previous post.

I'm just glad they are using a new engine. The previous one they used for Morrowind, Oblivion, and Fallout was quite possibly the worst engine ever coded.

You can see my suggestions in the Official Suggestion thread. To sum it up up here I would like to see a better, less buggy editor which easily creates less error prone mods. An editor that has more terrain features including the ability to make caves and tunnels. I also want to be able to be inside a house and look out the window, and when it rains I don't want it to go right through the roof. I would like to see long distances without fog, unless the fog was a true weather effect.

But what would be really awesome and bordering on impossible, not because it can't be done but because it's cost prohibitive, would be to have an engine that could create the entire world, literally the planet, which resides in the Elder Scrolls universe. NOT an MMORPG either, a literal world where the player can visit every continent and every town mentioned in all the previous games. A place where the player can climb, jump, swim, and do anything else we can do in the real world. No need for invisible walls, if the player starts walking, swimming, flying in one direction eventually they will come back to where they started. This is my dream not only of this game, but all RPGs. I long for the day I have an entire world to explore, and I am limited only by my skills and equipment. No borders, no walls, nothing but sheer adventure. The technology to create this exists, has existed for 4 years or so now. You might still find the trailer I used to link to at Gametrailers. Now you can not only create procedurally generated textures and terrain, but also buildings! When this technology matures there is a chance we will see entire worlds in a a game, because it will take less time and resources for developers to create.

But as for ES5, just the few suggestions I posted here, as well as some of the suggestions others have shared -
- Deathbliss

Couple of things to bear in mind before you get your hopes too high.

Firstly, the game will have to run on a console. The market's too large these days to ignore. We've seen the effect this has on the interface of the PC version of a game, let alone the graphics. Think DX9! Unless all the major console makers have new secret hardware for release in the next year, we can assume this is a given!

Secondly, all I've seen so far is marketing statements regarding a new 'engine'. No technical details at all. Worse these aren't too clear on whether that means game engine or graphics engine.
At a minimum, it could just mean that the scripting language has been revamped (or torn out) again, along with a new CS.

Until we get clarification on what is meant by 'engine', we really are speculating in a vacuum and some people might be disappointed.