every1 is talking about skyrim's new "engine". what excatly is that engine? how does this affect us, the players?

do you even know what an engine is?

Ask the source

it's fueled by steam.

@murderous: yes, i know what is an engine, but what i don't knoww what's so special about it that it's new.

it's more stable and prettier and can handle and do more. as a player that's about all that matters to you.

New implies that it is faster, and the great lighting comes from the new engine, and the Radiant AI/ Radiant Story comes from it. also, that means the game will "feel" different from previous games. for instance, you can sort of tell when a game uses the unreal engine, because they all play similarly. Im' probably making no sense right now.

Has essentially been rebuilt from the ground up to manage all of the graphical, AI and other components more effectively. The previous one was based on an existing engine called Gamebryo which was then altered by the devs. The main difference is that the new engine (called the Creation Engine) will run the game much better than the old one could have both on the PC and on consoles.

It's called the creation engine, it's basically an upgrade of the Gamebryo one.

i still don't undersstand. what in it will feel different then in oblivion? is it how you move? how you attack? how you interact with things? tell me how

Things like combat will feel very different. And dialogue, as you are now no longer frozen in time as you speak to NPCs - you can move around as you speak to them. Also, look at the screenshots and videos - everything has dynamic shadows which basically will make the world feel a lot more realistic. This and many other improvements would either have been impossible or would have been a lot harder to achieve if they had simply modified the old engine again, because the new one will have been designed specifically around all of these new features.

Heavily augmented Gamebryo.

Yet still Gamebryo.

It's more to do with behind the scenes really, things like more npcs, better AI, better textures, better scripting etc

It's rebuilt so it can handle the improvements better otherwise the game would be a slideshow on old hardware, it's the reason Skyrim looks better than OB.

It's called 'The Creation Engine'.