Microsoft Bethesda's New Engine Rumor/Speculation Leak

[JPDunks4]

 

Sorry don't know how to reformat it.

[JPDunks4]

For those that can't read it or click the link.

 

Next Gen Creation Engine Update *RELOADED*

Rumour

 

 

NEXT-GEN CREATION ENGINE

General: (facts/public info)

 

Let's start with some general facts and interesting things regarding the size of this update the creation engine has received. The number of employees who soley worked on engine upgrades has increased by a magnitude of 5 (meaning theres now 5 times as many people working on engine stuff than before - sorry for the confusion). This is coming from Todd Howard itself. They now have several core engine programmers and various other coders and programmers to work full-time on engine stuff. Previously they didn't have their own engine team but rather upgraded their engine on the fly/throughout development time of their next game.

 

"This overhaul on our engine is probably the largest that we've ever had, maybe larger than Morrowing to Oblivion" -Todd Howard

 

And he's right. They did....alot. Like I said they now have an entire dedicated team to engine related work. Which is why it took them longer than expected. This is going to power Starfield and all games after.

 

Even an outside company called theForge is helping them out with updating/customising their next-gen creation engine.

 

This is going to be b i g.

 

Visuals/Graphics/Rendering: (facts/public info/speculation reg. raytracing)

 

The stuff most people usually only care about when they hear "engine upgrades". Which is why I put it on-top of my list.

 

In 2018 BGS implemented Vulkan API into their engine. As I'm not an expert in that regard I can't really tell you what kind of improvements we will see because of that only that a) it probably makes raytracing more possible and b) its something alot of games are using nowadays.

 

LOD detail, Rendering distance, volumetric and atmospheric lighting aswell as subsurface scattering and realistic space-screen reflections will see remarkable improvements. (belongs to lighting segment but I let it stay here)

 

New layered material system:think of a vast library of decals in all sorts of shapes and sizes easily being appliable onto surfaces. Games like Star Citizen or Doom Eternal use this tech to easily change the looks of a wall or any kind of asset. Its fast, easy and very modular. Perfect for creating or changing the environments.

 

This can also be applied to textures.

 

Photogrammetry:3D real environment scanning will be used from now on and you'll likely see it in Starfield (heck you can already see it being used/experimented with in Fallout 76 to a smaller extent).

 

They are using realityCapture for archiving, photographing and capturing all the real world assets.

 

Shadows: (inside info/speculation)

 

Right now creation engine handles shadows in a different way than other game engines do. Shadows, shadow draw distance and shadow quality will be much better from now on.

 

Right now the way the engine handles shadows is by using the CPU, instead of GPU. This will change with a new renderer that they implemented. The days of ugly shadows shall be over.

 

If raytracing is implemented into their new engine expect it to handle alot of shadowy aspects of it.

 

Lighting: (public info/speculation reg. raytracing)

 

Bethesda Game Studios is now using real-time global illumination/dynamic lighting tech called "Enlighten" from siliconstudios. Global Illumination adds alot of realism to a scene and can do wonders in games.

 

Ray-Tracing:Before anyone gets hyped about it, no. There is (almost) no indicator that future games will support ray-tracing, due to the changes they've made and now having a core engine programmer team they might support it however. "So you're telling me theres a chance?" Yes. There is a chance. A lot can happen within 3-5 years. However if their next game Starfield supports ray-tracing I doubt it was a design decision from the very beginning.

 

Animation: (public info/leaks/speculation)

 

Their new engine will support/power an entirely new animation system. Since future games such as Starfield will have to support zero-G and now...for the very first time in a BGS game ever....working ladders!!! ...its animation system is going to have to support a whole lot of new animations. This imo is going to be one of the most interesting engine upgrades creation engine has ever received.

 

Animators recently switched to Autodesk Maya to create/animate their animations. Maya is one of the "industry standards" for animating in video gaming. Other companies such as Naughty Dog or Ubisoft use it aswell. It's only a minor change and probably won't change much but I thought to mention it aswell.

 

Facial Animation: expect to see a huge leap over facial animations.

 

General improvements: character movement and controls, predictive foot IK, cloth simulation, bone scaling (which personally has me hyped for modding purposes), more advanced player customization (which will also further improve more diversity in NPC's).

 

Havok behaviour has been replaced with a custom animation system (which doesn't mean Havok is gone/replaced entirely).

 

Physics: (public info/leaks/speculation)

 

/Crabrave 60fps cap is gone /end CrabraveOf course this is going to to be implemented from 76 into Starfield and every other game. Tying the physics and game to the framerate may have worked in the past for them but also came with a huge set of limitations. Everyone should be thankful its gone.

 

I added Physics right under animations because they usually go hand in hand. Bethesda isn't going to ditch Havok. Instead it will be further improved upon and modified to support things like zero-g environments and other stuff that will be needed for Starfield. (This is also why BGS now needs a dedicated core engine programmers team). People seemed to suggest that they might ditch Havok but that contradicts to what job listings in the past have indicated, they instead improved on it and maintained it. Now animations, streaming and physics are going to be vastly improved.

 

I can see the usual "stiffness and staticness" that we are so so used to in BGS games being a thing of the past. RIP.

 

Procedual Gen/Streaming: (facts/speculation)

 

Procedual generation:has always been a part of creation engine. Back in Oblivion times their Forest generation tech was incredible, never before have we seen such detailed and procedually generated forests in a video game.

 

This time alot of focus has been put on procedual tech. ...Which is understandable when you want to make a space exploration-based video game. This is where Starfield is probably going to set itself apart the most (apart from being well...in space) from Fallout or The Elder Scrolls.

 

Rendering distance:"sixteeeeen times the details". Yes, that ain't a joke. Rendering distance was one of the MAJOR improvements in Fallout 76 and will be/has been further improved for Starfield. If you're flying around in your spaceship which is also a fast, moving object you will need a much more improved rendering distance to see objects like other space ships, asteroids, planets, stations, etc...

 

Cell Streaming Tech:

 

Now this is going to be one of the biggest changes.Cell loading and streaming has been improved with every title so far but this time it's going to be the biggest jump as I think this was one of the biggest hurdles Bethesda had to figure out throughout the development of Starfield and their next-gen creation engine.If you're going to fly in your spaceship in space (or in atmoshphere) you're going to have to make substantial changes to the way world cells are loaded in and out. SSD's facilitating quick content streaming will definitely help out on that regard."When we saw what we could do with the new tech..." -Todd Howard

 

Interior Cells: More and more interior cells are part of the worldspace nowadays as you can see from Fallout 76. More cluttering objects and more complex worldspace cells are going to be the norm and further advanced for Starfield and beyond.

 

NPC/AI: (facts/public info/inside info)

 

As per Todd Howards words, future games will offer alot more NPC's on screen than in previous games. This isn't directly a thing because of engine upgrades but everything is connected in a way such as the more fine tuned and upgraded creation engine is and the better the consumer tech is the more will be possible to bring on screen at the same time.

 

You will be able to see entire cities filled with lots and lots of NPC's on screen. I do not believe they are going into the direction of Cyberpunk but more like what we are used to from them just with more npc's.

 

Radiant AI will make a return and be more advanced than in previous games. Random spawn entities in space is going to be very interesting.

Voice modulation tech for NPC's. With this you can add lots of variety to npc's voices without needing a bazillion different voice actors.

 

Pathfinding: (public info/speculation)

 

Todd already mentioned to expect improvements on AI pathfinding and hey, if everything else on the engine gets attention so does pathfinding. You'll need tech to support for example pathfinding in zero-g environments, aka SPACE. Space isn't 2D, you cant just throw doritos everywhere and expect ships/spacesuiters to follow them.

 

Space is a 3D environment which requires alot of changes and new stuff for the creation engine. They never really had real 3D-traversal environments in a BGS game this is imo going to be one of the most interesting things to see how creation engine will handle it.

 

Features/Game Systems: (leaks/speculation/public info)

 

This part of my write-up has not really something directly to do with next gen creation engine but its improvements will definitely have an impact on the game's systems and new features:

 

LADDERS, yes ladders will be in the game and they will be CLIMBABLE (think I said that above already)

 

flyable spaceships

 

ship customisation

 

zero-g

 

artificial gravity (not per-se a game system probably but still someting cool lorewise)

 

space and ship-to-ship combat

 

crew management system

 

Modding: (leak/speculation...)

 

Next gen creation engine will be better than ever for modding and also push Microsoft's platform-wide modding system for consoles which is coming at a later date.

Okay, I think that's it for now. I'll eventually update each individual section should something come into my mind again which I may have forgotten to talk about.

Again DISCLAIMER, this entire list is a MIXED BAG of known things, facts but also speculation, stuff based on rumous or leaks, what people told me behind the curtain and also what is publicly available on the internet.

 

Some of the stuff listed here might or might not show up in the game. Some of it is to be expected and guaranteed.

 

(ladder gang says hi)

 

We'll see about that vEry vEry vEry soon

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

I feel like even if this is all true, the next game they release will only look marginally better than Fallout 4. Just because Bethesda. 

[JPDunks4]

4 minutes ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

I feel like even if this is all true, the next game they release will only look marginally better than Fallout 4. Just because Bethesda. 

 

The fact its bound to be a cross gen game has me tending to agree.  I think it should look improved, but not as drastically huge a jump as some may hope.

[Bacon]

As long as their games remain as moddable as before. Mods usually make Bethesda games, and I am not just talking about what mods fix. 

[Bacon]

I thought fallout 4 looked good enough. I just think that the human models still need better faces and shit. 

[best3444]

God, that is great news if true. I can't imagine what Elders Scrolls 6 will look like. I'm really looking forward to that. As for Starfield, I have no idea what the game even is lol. I'm not really looking forward to that. I just want Elders Scrolls 6 in my veins. Probably 2023 release. 

[XxEvil AshxX]

2 hours ago, Bacon said:

As long as their games remain as moddable as before. Mods usually make Bethesda games, and I am not just talking about what mods fix. 

 

As long as Bethesda isn't willing to give the women G-cups and metal bikinis, they need to remain moddable.

[Keyser_Soze]

RIP Gamebryo 🌹

[Kal-El814]

28 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

RIP Gamebryo 🌹

 

Long live Gamebryo 1.2

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

How's this for a Bethesda rumor?!?

 

"Starfield rumor claims Tom Cruise is starring in Bethesda's new game | GamesRadar+"

Starfield rumor claims Tom Cruise is starring in Bethesda's new game | GamesRadar+

WWW.GAMESRADAR.COM

---

Could Bethesda be recruiting some heavyweight Hollywood talent for their new RPG?

 

[Bacon]

I mean, if Tom Cruise is the actual Main Character I will not get it. If his role is as extensive as Liam Neeson's and Patrick Stewart's then who cares? 

[TwinIon]

I didn't really play Fallout 76, so I don't know what improvements were already present in that game, but pretty much all of this feels like table stakes.

 

Having a big team to work on a custom engine is good, and I'm happy to hear reports they're working harder on it, so yeah.

 

Material based rendering, photogrammetry support, and better shadows are all good good, but again, expected. Global illumination is good, but not designing for ray tracing seems like a bummer, but probably best they don't bite off more than they can chew. Most of this felt like it was just catching up to other modern engines.

 

Reworking animation and pathfinding is a godsend if they get it right. Hopefully they put a lot of work into this, because they're two areas that make Bethesda games feel so jankey. I won't expect them to be up to Last of Us or Assassins Creed standards, but please be at least decent. After Cyberpunk, maybe I need to be more appreciative of their NPC AI.

 

However, if anything this makes me a bit worried. I hadn't considered that Stanfield might require 3D movement in zero G, In animation they're pretty far behind the curve on a nice flat plane, expecting them to make a big leap in overall quality and make it work in 3D might be too much.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm excited for Starfield, and have been wowed by Bethesda's tech in the past, but at this point it's a rather distant past. Morrowind and Oblivion were marvels, but in the 15 years since, they haven't really impressed. I'd love for that to change with Starfield.

[Fizzzzle]

5 hours ago, XxEvil AshxX said:

 

As long as Bethesda isn't willing to give the women G-cups and metal bikinis, they need to remain moddable.

If my Bethesda games can't have big titty anime bitches with jiggle physics, I don't even want to play.

[best3444]

Tom Cruise lol omg 

[skillzdadirecta]

Say what you want about Tom Cruise as a person the man makes GREAT movies.

[Xbob42]

All this work when the dipshits could just license Unreal Engine for 10% of the price and 1% of the effort and have something that'll look and run 10x better than whatever stupid unfinished bullshit they're gonna drizzle onto our faces.

[XxEvil AshxX]

I heard a rumor that the game has been done for a year and it's been in debug/polishing mode this whole time. Take that for what you will.

 

Perhaps the game was looking to see release in the fall of last year, but the MS acquisition put it on hold so that it could be the first big release under their umbrella (cuz marketing). And if you're Bethesda, and someone else is paying the bills and saying "hold off on that" then why not just spend that extra time fine tuning it?

 

This is all highly speculative and not very likely, but hey it's nice to dream.

[JPDunks4]

Most rumors right now are pointing to 2022 earliest, possibly 2nd half of 2022.  But who knows at this point, and who cares.  We will know in a few weeks most likely.

[XxEvil AshxX]

22 minutes ago, JPDunks4 said:

Most rumors right now are pointing to 2022 earliest, possibly 2nd half of 2022.  But who knows at this point, and who cares.  We will know in a few weeks most likely.

 

True. It's also very possible that the 2022 release date is a recent decision internally at MS. I'm sure they don't want Halo and Starfield to cannibalize each other, so I'd be willing to bet the two were in a swappable release window. If Halo needed more time, drop Starfield in the fall. If it's looking like Halo will be ready to go, bump Starfield to early spring. 

 

Again, highly speculative on my part but not that farfetched. Like you said, we'll know next month.

[Keyser_Soze]

I'd make a saucy bet and say it's a no show next month.

[JPDunks4]

2 minutes ago, XxEvil AshxX said:

 

True. It's also very possible that the 2022 release date is a recent decision internally at MS. I'm sure they don't want Halo and Starfield to cannibalize each other, so I'd be willing to bet the two were in a swappable release window. If Halo needed more time, drop Starfield in the fall. If it's looking like Halo will be ready to go, bump Starfield to early spring. 

 

Again, highly speculative on my part but not that farfetched. Like you said, we'll know next month.

 

Ultimately, I think Xbox going forward is going to be looking at Game Pass, and how do they keep the positive influx of news coming, so they have big news monthly.  Dropping Halo and Starfield so close to each other, may make a HUGE month of Game Pass subs, but will they stay subscribed long term, or play through both campaigns in a month or two and unsubscribe.  

 

I think their huge tent pole type AAA releases will be spread out strategically moreso they than just dropping things when they maybe done.  

 

Also the fact that Xbox and PS5 will be supply constrained til 2022 probably plays into it too.  If they expect to be sold out regardless of Starfield releasing this fall, keep polishing and wait til next year when supply is in a better place.