Tim Cain's magnum opus receives a facelift: The Outer Worlds Spacer's Choice Edition

For discussing role-playing video games, you know, the ones with combat.
User avatar
wndrbr
Turtle
Turtle
Posts: 1150
Joined: Feb 4, '23

Post by wndrbr »

rusty_shackleford wrote: March 9th, 2023, 13:21
I wonder if there's any plans for Microsoft to have Obsidian and/or InXile transition to using Creation Engine for their action-oriented RPGs.
Would simultaneously remove the Epic cut which can be large for major developers, and move towards a more unified engine approach towards games.
seems like MS are doing the opposite by taking a path of least resistance.

State of Decay was using Crytek, the sequel was made using Unreal. Halo devs struggled adapting their own engine to larger open-world areas, and MS just allowed them use Unreal. Playground studios struggled with their Forza engine when developing Fable reboot, and MS allowed them use Unreal. Tango Gameworks and Arkane both ditched their idtech forks in favor of Unreal. I wouldn't be surprised if Machinegames will follow the suit and switch to Unreal for their Wolfenstein/Indiana Jones games.
User avatar
KnightoftheWind
Posts: 1526
Joined: Feb 27, '23

Post by KnightoftheWind »

From what I hear, the Creation Engine is really only something Bethesda themselves can understand. It is tailor made to produce Bethesda-style games, with large open worlds, radiant AI, etc. The last time an external developer used it was with Fallout 76, with disastrous results. I also hear that most of the engine is filled with haphazard patches and band-aids, so they really need to go back in and redo a lot of the code.
User avatar
rusty_shackleford
Site Admin
Posts: 8922
Joined: Feb 2, '23

Post by rusty_shackleford »

It was already used by Obsidian, and the devkit they ship is very similar to what they actually use in-house. Obsidian used the Fallout 3 creation kit for months(weeks?) until they could get Bethesda to get them the one Bethesda actually uses, btw.

Iirc Sawyer has referred to it as the most developer friendly engine he's ever worked with. No surprise, Bethesda has poured endless hours into developer tooling.
User avatar
KnightoftheWind
Posts: 1526
Joined: Feb 27, '23

Post by KnightoftheWind »

Perhaps Obsidian can wrap their heads around it just fine, but I doubt any other development houses are interested in it. Unreal is shiny and new, and automates a lot of the work more than Bethesda's engine can. Whether that's a good thing or not, the publishers don't care. They just want to publish more games cheaper and faster.

I don't know if Avowed will be competing with The Elder Scrolls, but if they use the same engine it would only risk cannibalizing ES VI's potential sales. Creation Engine games tend to play and feel similar, after all. Ideally if they didn't want to pay royalties to Epic anymore, they'd use Based free software like Godot and build games using that, but I won't hold my breathe of course.
User avatar
Roguey
Turtle
Turtle
Posts: 535
Joined: Feb 4, '23

Post by Roguey »

KnightoftheWind wrote: March 9th, 2023, 16:30
Perhaps Obsidian can wrap their heads around it just fine, but I doubt any other development houses are interested in it. Unreal is shiny and new, and automates a lot of the work more than Bethesda's engine can. Whether that's a good thing or not, the publishers don't care. They just want to publish more games cheaper and faster.

I don't know if Avowed will be competing with The Elder Scrolls, but if they use the same engine it would only risk cannibalizing ES VI's potential sales. Creation Engine games tend to play and feel similar, after all. Ideally if they didn't want to pay royalties to Epic anymore, they'd use Based free software like Godot and build games using that, but I won't hold my breathe of course.
Sawyer dunked on Unreal for being behind the curve when it came to handling open worlds:

not to be dismissive here because the UE5 early access looks nice but breaking worldspaces into cells is how Bethesda's engine has worked for well over a decade.

UE is historically not great at doing open world stuff so this is a step in the right direction but also... lol.
The rumor is that Avowed was originally trying to be Obsidian's Skyrim with an open world but they ultimately had to downscope it to hub-and-spoke like The Outer Worlds because they just couldn't get it working properly.

And yeah I doubt Bethesda would share their tech with Obsidian unless MS actually forced them to (which they're not interested in doing at this time).
Post Reply