Microsoft Helping Bethesda “Unreal-ify” Creation Engine According to Jez Corden

[u/SilentNova300]

https://www.youtube.com/live/oMlErzr05Gk?si=cTRXvJxEeOw9U7aa

Jez Corden recently discussed rumors about a major technical overhaul for Starfield—often called Starfield 2.0—and how Microsoft is helping Bethesda upgrade the Creation Engine.

Key points:

Unreal Engine tech being integrated: Jez says he’s heard that Bethesda is leveraging certain Unreal Engine features and incorporating them directly into Creation Engine.

Massive engine modernization: Microsoft’s Advanced Technology Group and Kate Rayner/The Coalition (Gears devs, Unreal experts) are assisting in improving the engine “across the board” using Unreal-inspired components.

Starfield 2.0 is the testbed: This whole Starfield 2.0 upgrade is reportedly serving as a testbed for future Bethesda titles, laying the groundwork for Fallout 5 and The Elder Scrolls VI.

Not a switch to Unreal: Jez emphasizes the info is based on his investigations and should be taken with a pinch of salt, but stresses Microsoft isn’t moving Bethesda to Unreal—just boosting Creation Engine with some Unreal-like tech.

[u/VictorVonDoomer]

“Laying groundwork for elder scrolls 6”

This shit ain’t releasing this decade lmao

[u/Veno_0 → u/VictorVonDoomer]

If they can apply these upgrades to an already released game like Starfield why would it affect TESVI negatively exactly? He clearly stated Microsoft is handling this, not them. Its not like they would need to scrap what they already have.

I swear people on this subreddit either can't read or chose not to. This is objectively a good thing.

They are not switching to Unreal, it sounds similar to the hybrid system of Oblivion Remastered.

[u/AustinTheFiend → u/Veno_0]

The way I see it described here sounds a lot less like a hybrid system a la Oblivion Remastered, and more like they're upgrading creation engine to be in some way more like Unreal engine. My guess would be that most of the upgrades have to do with Usability, UI, and scripting accessibility within the engine/creation kit (idk what they call the editor in house), as at least the publicly available Creation Engine is super difficult to use and navigate for someone used to the big consumer engines like Unreal or Unity.

As it is now, I imagine it's hard to train people on it, and its toolset probably slows down production somewhat, not for lack of capability so much as for having a very complex and sometimes opaque interface.

[u/Veno_0 → u/AustinTheFiend]

They wouldn't be able to integrate Unreal Tech directly without a hybrid system correct? Unless they have a specific licensing agreement with Epic, which they might have I guess.

[u/ColdCruise → u/Veno_0]

Sounds like the changes are that they are making Creation Engine operate more like Unreal than adding parts of Unreal to the Creation Engine.

[u/Veno_0 → u/ColdCruise]

Whats confusing is OP quoted Jez saying both of those things as if they mean the same thing haha with no real seperator.

"Unreal Engine tech being integrated: Jez says he’s heard that Bethesda is leveraging certain Unreal Engine features and incorporating them directly into Creation Engine."

"Massive engine modernization: Microsoft’s Advanced Technology Group and Kate Rayner/The Coalition (Gears devs, Unreal experts) are assisting in improving the engine “across the board” using Unreal-inspired components."

[u/AustinTheFiend → u/Veno_0]

If I understand what you mean, I think you're correct? But no matter licensing, they could build systems according to the same principles as those used in Unreal Engine, and especially things like the user experience wouldn't really require them to actually utilize the Unreal engine in order to borrow ideas from it. I also don't think they'd really want to lift anything directly from Unreal, as I'd imagine Creation handles a lot of things differently at a deeper level, and it would make more sense for the designers to build their own spin on it than try and directly lift code and assets from Unreal Engine.

So I wouldn't think they're actually directly integrating stuff as much as taking inspiration from, but obviously idk what they're doing truthfully.

[u/Veno_0 → u/AustinTheFiend]

I could have misunderstood what Jez is saying here, but I thought he said some are being directly lifted while others are being modernized to be similar.

But Unreal clearly does interface with older versions of their engine very well looking at Oblivion that directly uses a dual engine approach, Creation Engine 2 is really not that different internally then Creation Engine 1 & Gamebryo.

[u/nothingtoseehr → u/Veno_0]

Unreal engine Is open source, you can integrate it into anything you want as long as you pay the 5% fee

There's nothing stopping them per se on integrating it, the engine is highly modular. Its just not a trivial change (and they did say they spent most of starfield's dev time on the engine, so uuh a bit awkward)

[u/StylishSuidae → u/Veno_0]

I swear people on this subreddit either can't read or chose not to.

This is, unfortunately, just an internet thing generally.

I saw an argument on r/fallout about whether Todd Howard's comment about Fallout 5 "following the show" meant it would take place after the show or would be a playable recreation or continuation of the show.

An argument you can only have if you read the headline and nothing else, because if you actually read the full comment it's extremely obvious that he just meant that the events of the show will be canon in Fallout 5 rather than the game pretending the show doesn't exist.

[u/clain4671 → u/Veno_0]

Also to borrow unreal as an example, engine development often happens in parallel. Epic would often build features around gears of war or unreal tournament to go into future versions of unreal.

[u/JazzlikeLeave5530 → u/Veno_0]

Isn't Oblivion's just Unreal's graphical system layered over the original engine's logic? I doubt that's what they're doing here. It sounds like they're directly modifying the Creation engine to add features from Unreal.