Fallout 76 is just around the corner. It uses Bethesda’s Creation Engine, which to be honest is a bit dated now, having been used for multiple titles in the past, dating back to Morrowind. You would imagine that Bethesda would switch engines after so long, but that is not the case.
Fallout 76 has already been derided because of all the bugs it has and it turns out that the same engine is being used because modders know their way around it. This is ironic, considering that whenever something goes wrong with any Bethesda game, a modder fixes it. Bethesda effectively relies on the modding community to fix their games.
Bethesda CEO Todd Howard touched on the matter in a recent interview:
“We like our editor. It allows us to create worlds really fast and the modders know it really well. There are some elementary ways we create our games and that will continue because that lets us be efficient and we think it works best.”
You would think Bethesda would learn from what is happening with Fallout 76, but that does not seem to be the case. Howard has confirmed that upcoming games like Starfield and Elder Scrolls VI will also be based on the same engine. Although the engine will be updated for the upcoming games, it is still the same dated engine at its core.
“Fallout 76 uses a new renderer, a new lighting system, and a new system for the landscape generation. For Starfield, even more of it changes. And for The Elder Scrolls 6, out there on the horizon, even more.”
Keeping all this in mind, I think that the engine is still pretty old and will not meet expectations in 2018. Getting objects and characters to look realistic using this old engine is going to be a major problem.