I think that Id makes the best game engines and Bethesda makes the best games.

Do you think that there is a possibility that we can see the next Bethesda Fallout RPG using Id Tech 5?

That would be so freaking awesome.

Bethesda wouldn't have to work on the game mechanics nearly as much, and could spend all their time doing what they do best... making a fantastic multilayered game world.

The Gamebryo engine had great graphics but the animations were not great. I wonder if Id coming to ZeniMax will make it more likely for the companies to share their tech.

Conversely, I'd be just as happy to see an Id game with a little more character development and depth of game play.

What is the likelihood of either of these things happening in the near future, for example, Fallout 4 using Id Tech 5?

Beats me why people are so much concerned with such purely technical issues. :whistling:

As far as I'm concerned if the game plays well and looks good I'll be happy even if they made it in Flash.

(I won't answer the poll because I simply lack the technical knowledge to understand each engine's capabilities and limitations, neither could I guess which engine the developers of the next game would be most comfortable and successful with)

Well, because the game engine makes the feel of the game.

How well the game responds to your commands, the animations of your player and the other NPC's, the weather effects, the environment, everything I guess.

Fallout 3 was pretty close to a FPS in its gameplay. I'd love to see it run on an Id engine, but I just found this after I posted this...

"We're not going to splice id Tech5 into anything Bethesda is doing. But anything they want to cherry pick, they're more than welcome to."

- that is from Gamasutra, but it is awesome news!
Sounds like Bethesda is free to examine Id Tech 5 and take whatever greatness they find in it and transplant it to their next game!
That will make for some sweet FPS/RPG.

Between the two... I agree. :thumbsup:

But here we disagree; (specifically in the case of Fallout 4). If Bethesda were to use Id Tech 5,[I think] nearly all here would want a heavily modified version of the engine that is geared more for an RPG than a drive-by-shooter.

The engine is under the hood... The feel of the game [IMO] is the atmosphere of the assets, and the activities imposed by the rules ~also the manipulation of events via the player's use of the rules.

I know you're probably meaning the responsiveness of the controls as well, but that could be a symptom of too many operations going on at one time, or bloated assets, and this can happen with any engine, not just Gamebryo.

I consider that its greatest flaw.

That could be really neat, if it were not a (Quake & Prey-like) shooter, with multiple choice dialog tacked on.


** I voted
1. Heavily modified Gamebryo
2. Improved Gamebryo

I think that sometimes the RPG fans get worried, and rightfully so, that another one of their last bastions will fall to become a run and gun.
This is not what I'd like to see, at all.

I'd just like to see a real serious RPG running with the fluidity, mechanics, animations, and precision of a great FPS.

If the gameplay where good enough for a multiplayer frag fest but not used for that purpose and instead repurposed for a kick ass Fallout 4 RPG... I'd be a very happy vault dweller.

It looks like that is the direction we are headed too!

They haven't developed a system for putting "soul" into a game yet. In the meantime the focus is on the the technical things that can be done.

For years i've read articles saying that eventually people will become jaded with the graphics and gameplay arms race that's been going for a while, but i don't see any sign of it slowing down.

I'm not against graphics at all, just not at the forefront of priorities.

I think you are right (and it has) ~but that's not how it is with me...
I love RPG's, and I love First Person Shooters, and I even like both in one ~sometimes, but Fallout (as an entire series) wasn't like that, and isn't supposed to be [IMO]. The company that made Fallout had made FPP RPG's before ~yet they did not make it a post Apoc Doom/Quake/Duke clone ~This was almost certainly deliberate. The first Fallout was designed as to be the best implementation of the GURPS rule set for the PC. The Gurps license was yanked from them, but their intent remained despite redesigning the rules in a rush. Years later the same guys started again (After Fallout 2) and created a new game (see the first link in my SIG); SPECIAL has become a great rule set all it's own, but what's great about it is the intimate ties that exist between the stats and the dialog, and the combat engine. As such, SPECIAL is the best Pseudo-GURPS implementation for the PC (and MAC) ~Fallout 3 cannot make that claim... as it was never the intention ~the driving design "compass" that would affect every idea, and modification of the core series' mechanics.

The Next Engine for Fallout 4 could well be either or, and I'd be fine with it... but what it comes down to is 'How will they use it?'.
On reflection I am beginning to shift towards Tech 5, because modification might prove easier (see the 2nd link in my SIG ~done with Doom3).


Both are old, but they are the best FPP RPG's that I know of...
http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/arx_fatalis
http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/stonekeep

We all want that; The question I have is 'how could it be re-purposed without becoming mutually exclusive or being totally divorced from the series'?

Yes it does.

I think it's easy to confused (I've taken classes in this stuff and the differentiation still confounds me sometimes) between what the various engines do within a game (and there's usually at least two these days,) and what's just "programming the game," for lack of a better word.

If you'd like the animations to be better, or the graphics to be better - then (in general) what you really want are better animators, modelers, and texture artists. If the exact same team from Fallout 3 had made that game with Tech 5 instead of Gamebryo, you might have some differences - but chances are not to the extent that the majority of players would be able to tell the difference. (Personally, I think those guys did a pretty good job with Fallout 3 overall. Bethesda's never been top dog with animation - and there could be any number of reasons for this - but they are starting to show some improvements in that area, at least.)

Essentially, the main difference between what "engine" is being used to create a game is all development end. There's always going to be the matter of some fundamental processes that each are going to handle in different ways (how the code is compiled, different methods of making the data run faster, etc.) And of course there's always the matter of the physics engine that's being incorporated, which will procedurally generate those processes on the fly. But for the most part we're talking about the difference between an artist using 3D Studio Max or Maya (or whatever) to create a 3D model. Some people are going to have their preferences, but it's always going to come down to the various talents of those working with the program.

That said, it does appear that one of the things that Tech 5 is supposed to be very good at (and one of the key focuses of the program) is an easier, more intuitive, and greatly streamlined development process. From what I hear, there's some reasons why if I were a 3D modeler I might prefer to use Tech 5. And it stands to reason that if I were working with a tool that I was more comfortable with, that I'd be able to put together a better end result. There is, of course, no reason why Gamebryo couldn't release a new version of their program and accomplish the same things.

For my own two cents, I voted for Tech 5. It's an engine developed by a company that is owned by ZeniMax (which just about is Bethesda,) so there's a fair chance that it might make good fiscal sense to begin with. And id has always been highly notable for their technical prowess - it's entirely possible that there's some under-the-hood calculations taking place that could likely make things run a bit more efficient. And at the very least, seeing as they're a tech-savvy company, it's possible that the tech support guys that would be helping Bethesda in these matters might have some interesting tricks up their sleeves.

But when you get right down to it, it's not something that I, as the consumer, really need to be getting involved in. It's up to them to decide what the best tools for the job are going to be - what works for them. It's my job to harshly criticize all their hard work...

Voted for id Tech5 (and expecting to see modified Gamebryo in F4). But what I would like, would be the Dunia engine from Far Cry 2. It looked amazing while not having any problems running very fluidly it on highest (DX9, don't remember if there even was DX10 option) settings on an "average" computer. And, for a sidenote, I don't think games even need to look any better that that.

you've got some good points there.
I guess that I usually transfer the play control, animations, NPC speech, environment and effects, etc... all to the game's engine. Maybe that is incorrect.

Hopefully, whatever engine is used (looks like it might be an updated gamebryo with some Id Tech 5 features, per the gamasutra article)... hopefully the developers can make the game look as good or better than the best FPS offerings in 2009 / 2010.

I'd love to have the crytek engine too (for F:NV !!), but I bet Id Tech 5 will be as good or better than what we see in Crysis 2. Only because it is coming out later, not because the Crytek guys are any less capable.

Gamebryo did a great job in 2006 (graphically). So, whatever we get in 2011 or 2012 ought to be pretty darn good.

I did not enjoy assassins creed II because I thought it was pretty boring and repetitive, but what it did excellently (maybe better than anything else) is the feeling that the player really was climbing up a wall or falling off a building. I'd like to see that kind of immersive detail in the next bethesda game.

Wind blowing through the players clothes or hair so the character doesn't look like a hard piece of plastic.
No more treadmilling over the entire gameworld
If using FPS style then get the blur and focus right and improve accuracy in shots.

Well, different companies are going to have different focuses, as well. There's any number of things that factor into that, but for example, it's pretty clear that animation and fluid controls are an important element to Ubisoft. They probably spent as much time on the animation as anything else in that game. They probably hired the best animators they could get their hands on, and the lead designers likely spent more time looking over those guys shoulders than in other areas.

Bethesda is very good with obsessive amounts of detail. They probably worked harder on finding good modelers and artists than hiring and training animators (and the better ones probably went to other companies for that same reason - though I don't want to knock the guys working at Bethesda now; I'm sure they're still a bunch of highly talented people who worked very hard on what they did.)

I agree that I'd love to see Ubisoft's quality of animation in a Bethesda game. (And since we're talking about engines, I think that what would be right up Bethesda's alley would be some procedural animation technology next time out.) But at the same time, once Bethesda gets to Ubisoft's level, those guys are going to probably have something that really blows our minds in terms of animations.

More good points to ponder... which I am, pondering.

: )

I wouldn't presume to tell the artist what canvas to use, or what brush strokes to paint, thats his job. Bethesda should use whatever they think gets the job done the best.

This is a pretty silly statement, isn't it?

I mean, doesn't that pretty much says that we shouldn't evaluate anything, and just accept whatever we get?

If the tools impact the final work then I'd say we ought to use the best tools available.
Obviously, the original question was only posed because Id and Bethesda came under one roof.

No, in fact I'd say it means exactly the opposite: you evaluate what you get and not how it got to you.


That's fair if you actually know which tools are the best available for that particular job (because not every tool is ideal for every project, right?) and what the implications of using them are.

Looking in to the future I think it's likely that Bethesda will eventually move to id's engine. While Bethesda does have considerable experience working with Gamebryo it will be hard to argue against the financial advantage of purchasing an engine from their sister company. Not only does this keep money 'in the family' but it helps promote id's engine. However I think it is extremely unlikely that Bethesda's next game will use id tech 5.

Id joined Zenimax about eight months after Fallout 3's release and Bethesda almost certainly had their next game in the works at this point. In fact by the time Fallout 3 hit beta it wouldn't surprise me if their next game had close to a full team - remember that FO3's pre-production was done while Oblivion was being wrapped up. So I see two likely possibilities:

1. If Bethesda's started work on a new engine for their new game then it already has 6-12 months of work by the time id joined Zenimax. I don't see Bethesda scapping that work so we'll probably see several new games with this engine, just as we're seeing three games on Bethesda's current engine. When their new engine is retired I think Bethesda will likely move to id tech X but that's going to be quite far in to the future, I'd guess six years at the very least and closer to eight or nine.

2. It's also possible that Bethesda decided to use/improve their Oblivion/FO3 engine for one more game. In this situation we'll almost certainly see id tech 5 for the game after that. Bethesda has the resources for staggered developement on two major titles and once the FO3 DLC were done that means it's conceivable that pre-production on a second unannounced game began while most of Bethesda worked on their next title, which had no doubt entered full production several months before. By the time this hypothetical pre-production for their next next game started id would have been their sister-company and I think it's quite likely they'd give id tech 5 serious consideration.


Other situations are certainly possible. For example if Bethesda found that id tech 5 couldn't handle sufficient 'stuff' or NPCs for their purposes. Also I've heard that the megatexture technology of id tech 5 works best with an internet connection - I'm not sure if this is true but if it is then the engine might not be a good choice for a single-player exclusive game. It's also certainly possible that Bethesda is working on their own engine and by the time they're ready to retire it id tech 5 is too old for their uses and id tech 6 isn't far enough along its developement to meet Bethesda's needs.


But as I started this off saying I do think we'll eventually see Bethesda switching to id's engines, it may just take a while things to line up and make that feasible.

We're more likely to see Unreal 3.0 than id Tech 5 in Fallout 4. id Tech 5 (at least to me) doesn't seem ideal for massive game worlds; new state of the art engines rarely are.

The question though is this. Can iD Tech 5 support a fully open world like gamebryo or will we have "areas" with load screens. From my experience playing and and being on mod teams for iD Tech 4 (Doom 3, Quake 4), and iD Tech 3 (Quake 3 Arena), unless iD Tech 5 is a complete revamp of the system, I would say no.

No, it means let the master do his work, stop trying to make his decisions for him.

Da Vinci didn't decide which paint/canvas/brush to use for the Mona Lisa based on what marketing thought was kewl, he had a vision for the masterpiece, and used the tools appropriate to the vision.

From my understanding RAGE will have wide open areas but there certainly is a difference between large areas on a closed map and something as expansive as the exterior world maps seen in TES III, TES IV, and FO3.

Bethesda has certain things that they're looking for and you're right that if id tech 5 can't support them Bethesda is unlikely to use it.


If Bethesda started working on a game with id tech 5 by the time it was released the engine would no longer be new

I don't think so.... Tools magnify talent ~true, by expanding possibility and greater ease of use, but a great talent can achieve fantastic results with simple tools that they just know how to use well; A great sketch artist doesn't need a 35$ ink pen to do a great sketch; and I'm not going to personally outclass Ubisoft by using the Unreal 3 SDK (not yet anyway ).

A 'master' paints what they want on what 'canvas' they choose, with what 'paints' they wish and the only thing to judge is the final result. (That's when we accept what we get, or pass on the purchase in favor of something else or nothing at all.)

What's better.... A fledgling effort on a powerful, feature rich, [though unfamiliar] engine, or creating the same game on a 4th generation refinement of the engine that they know like the back of their hand? I'm open to either, but it seems to me that by using the familiar tool, more of their time will be spent on level design and event scripting than acclimating to the quirks and methods of a new engine. :shrug:

As much as I love gamesas games, I wouldn't buy another one that looked and played like Oblivion. I can't say whether that is the engine or not, but I do imagine that it is the limitations of whatever tools where used to produce Oblivion, Fallout 3, New Vegas.

Oblivion looked fantastic in 2006 when I played it on the PS3, but even then it had really poor animations. I know a lot of people complain about this.
Also, the accuracy of the weapons was terrible from a FPS perspective and mediocre from a 3rd person perspective.

That being said, I put over 1,000 hours into both Oblivion and Fallout 3 combined.

I love the games, but since 2006 I've had some major revelations about what a game should look and play like.

Demon's Souls comes to mind... what an awesome game.

I guess what this thread really comes down to is which engine is likely to give the end user the best experience?

I admit I'm uneducated when it comes to making a video game, but many people talk about a game engine as if that is the core essence of a game. If that is the case then I'd like to see the next gamesas game heavily influenced, if not run, on Id Tech 5 - because I feel that Id has consistently produced excellent gameplay even though the depth of story in their in house game is quite shallow.

I've also read that RAGE is going to be a huge open world type experience in contrast to the narrow hallways of Doom 3, and I expect it will have all sorts of excellent features that make the games run on it pretty and fun!

Things I'd like to see in the next gamesas game are enemies with enormous scale - like resistance 2 or Demon's Souls
Blur, lots of blur - when aiming, when looking off in the distance at a mountain, etc.
great animations like Splinter Cell or Assassin's Creed.

If these things are not related to the game engine then I'd really appreciate someone letting me know!


Also, of course, I'd like to hear more than 5 voices in the next gamesas game... but I don't think that has anything to do with the game engine, lol.
Seriously, what is the deal with using the same voice actor over and over again, in the same game!?

word. I have experience with like 5 normal modelling programs,a couple 2d bitmap editors, and a couple sculpting progs. my work looks the same no matter what I use. they all do the same stuff at the end of the day. one just has to know how.

from what we see bethesda's current build of gamebryo is substaitially modified already, i speculate the trend continuing. Todd even said as much in the last interview popcast I heard. for a start they have their own unique word builder editor. which is completely scratch build, though it isn't too disimilar from the actual gamebryo package. They have also made a lot of in house edits to the nif format to suit their needs. < the amount of Beth specific nodes tripled from Ob->F3. they also I belive have a unique implementation of the havok 3rd party physics engine/system.

Beth to the rescue
Super Todd( a bit like Super Ted) also said the animation system was being extensively overhauled. I speculate more 3rd party goodies :hubbahubba: . http://www.naturalmotion.com/


All of the nutz and boltz of tes4 and f3 basically coded by beth programers. Basically the entire game. Though the renderer is still basically some version of gamebryo under the hood.

if any of you guys start messing with a game engine you'd soon realize it's a pretty blank canvas. And for anything to be happening you have make it do it. And you can change just about anything you wanted to if you had the skill and time. Some engines are geared for more specific things. Generally speaking, the top engines are quite versatile, and could prove to useful fro any game type. I have seen a whole bunch of different things for unreal and gamebryo as well....though after a while you can almost tell which is which. I suppose its the rendering engine being similar between games. :shrug:

Anyway I'm 99% convinced bethesda is sticking with gamebryo. Todd said as much iirc. and they'll be improving on all the key and weak features. TES5 modding is going to absolutely rule(please!)

the next gamesas fallout game.. too far away like what 4 more years? I don't know at that point. the whole entire industry will be gearing up for the next gen consoles, and I have no idea how that will impact the scene.

thnx for the input.
Sounds legit to me.

This is how I feel about it.