It’s time for Bethesda to ditch the Creation Engine
Fallout 76’s release has not gone as smoothly as anyone would have liked, which may be the understatement of the year. According to players, the game is a godawful mess. It’s perhaps the buggiest release Bethesda has put out so far, which is saying something for a studio with a long track record of buggy releases.
While I do enjoy Bethesda’s games, I’ve been telling people for a long time to avoid getting them for consoles. While the PC versions are certainly a better visual experience, it’s more to do with the mods. Specifically mods which are necessary to fix the astronomical number of issues present in each release.
The occasional flying giant may seem charming the first few times, but crashes and broken quests aren’t. And things get messier when you realize how long some of these problems have been around. Skyrim on Switch, released in 2017, still features some bugs present in the 2011 launch edition. Yet some issues in games right up to Fallout 76 are even older. Some dating back to Morrowind.
It seems Bethesda is more than happy to do as little work as possible, while cashing in and leaving their QA testing and patching to the community. Which is absolutely unacceptable for such a large “Triple A” developer.
Making matters worse, Bethesda has confirmed that its two upcoming games, Starfield and the Elder Scrolls VI, will both continue to use the Creation Engine. The very same clunky, broken engine that they’ve been using in various forms since 2002.
During Fallout 76’s early development, Bethesda tasked out BattleCry Studios to integrate Quake’s netcode to work with the Creation Engine. A task which was considered difficult even by seasoned online gaming experts. Part of the issue was that some components of the engine, such as how it handles quests and world loading, were nearly 16 years old. An eternity when it comes to game design. You’d probably have an easier time adding modern 3D graphics to SCUMM.
This would certainly explain the various anomalies Fallout 76 suffers in regards to its online components, such as enemy pop in, wonky quest flags, and frequent server disconnects. The developers tried to bootstrap on netcode with duct tape and chewing gum, then tried to push it as far as they could until it started to fly apart. It was at this point they slapped the golden “ready for retail” sticker on it and called it a day. All the while ignoring complaints from public beta testers.
Presumably this was done as a cost cutting measure. Fallout 76 has been accused of being a “mod” to Fallout 4 given how many assets the game shares with its predecessor. Itself already a dated looking game for the time of release. (Fallout 4 came out the same year as Witcher 3.) Now, this normally isn’t that big deal. New Vegas shares the bulk of its assets with Fallout 3. However, that game was saved through solid writing and diverse quests. Fallout 76 has none of that given that it’s mostly an empty world with no NPCs. Proponents of the game argue that “it’s better with friends”. Which again is fine, but it’s kind of a problem when the game’s broken netcode keeps booting your friends offline.
The joke behind all of this is that Bethesda’s parent company, ZeniMax Media, owns id Software. The same company behind the truly excellent id Tech engine. Quite possibly one of the best optimized game engines around right now. Yet for some strange reason, they’ve insisted on keeping it exclusive to id properties like Doom and Wolfenstein, with Bethesda reportedly not being allowed to touch it.
Granted id Tech isn’t designed for open world, radiant quest based games. Nor is online really its strong suit. Yet the company does have the talent available that could pull it off. So it begs the question, why aren’t they using that in-house resource? Cost? Cost savings don’t mean much if people aren’t buying your broken games. Which certainly seems to be the case with Fallout 76 with deep discounts already going up just a week after launch, as well as a sharp decline in interest on Twitch.
Fallout 76 may be Bethesda’s first ever big bomb, and a well deserved one to boot. Hopefully it serves as a wake up call to the company. Even though gamers tend to be brand loyalists to a fault, they do have limits. It’s time for Bethesda to nuke the Creation Engine and dig something better out of the vault. And maybe start taking QA seriously for a change. Unless of course they want to keep losing caps to angry fans.
