Bethesda has reasons not to bet on Unreal Engine, says Fallout 76 quest designer
A former Bethesda employee who was responsible for quests in Fallout 76 has given reasons why Bethesda is unlikely to switch from the Creation Engine to Unreal Engine 5.
More and more games are being made on Unreal Engine 5, Fallout 76, explained the reasons for the reluctance to change the game's engine.
In an interview with Starfield mentioned that switching from one game engine to another is not as easy as it may seem. One of the problems mentioned was the process of switching from one technology to another, which basically means starting from scratch.
If you wanna throw away your engine and restart, you have to go through the whole entirety of restarting. […] But when you’re making a very specific game in a very specific way, with the systems that were built in a way that people are familiar with, it means you have to make changes fundamentally, it means you’re no longer on the golden path.
A new engine would also mean trouble for modders accustomed to creating on Bethesda's technology. Of course, over time they should adapt to the new tools.
Another important point is the team responsible for the engine and adapting it to new technologies. The new system requires training developers, and this may take quite a long time. The learning process would probably significantly delay work on other projects.
There's [in Bethesda] a lot of people there who've worked there for like 20, 25 years… even if you go into Unreal, you gotta take your whole technology department. And you've got to now train them into learning all this. That's a lot of time. However long it takes you to make it, you have to ask yourself, are you going to buy that time back in order to make that transition?
According to Nanni, Bethesda will have to switch to a new game engine sooner or later because the current one is outdated. At this point, it's worth mentioning, for instance, loading screens in Starfield, which can be a bit annoying.
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