"The whole modding community ... sustains the success of their titles": Bethesda considered using Unreal Engine 5 for Xbox's Starfield, but stuck with Creation Engine to be mod friendly

For its 2023 space exploration Xbox RPG Starfield, Fallout and The Elder Scrolls developer Bethesda created an upgraded version of the Creation Engine used for Skyrim and Fallout 4 simply called the Creation Engine 2. This updated variant of the studio's proprietary engine vastly improved visual fidelity and optimization, among many other things.

According to former Bethesda senior artist Heather Cerlan — now CEO and head of NEARstudios, the developer making the upcoming multiplayer sandbox RPG Hawthorn — though, the studio had seriously considered making the swap from Creation Engine over to Unreal Engine 5 (UE5) in the midst of Starfield's development.

"There was a lot of pressure internally to push to Unreal [Engine 5], especially when Nanite and Lumen and all these amazing features were coming out," she told Reece Reilly of KIWI TALKZ in a recent episode. "People were like, 'Why don't we just use Unreal?'"

Nanite makes importing extremely high-quality assets into UE5 very easy, while Lumen offers advanced lighting effects and rendering that go a long way in helping to achieve cutting-edge visuals. Both are very desirable features of UE5, which first launched in Early Access in Spring 2021 — two years ahead of Starfield's release.

That would have left Bethesda with a sizable amount of time to transition their existing work on Starfield over to UE5, though doing so likely wouldn't have been easy. Still, the potential was there to reap major benefits from the switch...yet in the end, the developers ultimately chose to stick with Creation Engine 2.

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Why? Cerlan says that the decision was largely motivated by the desire to keep Starfield as mod friendly as possible for Bethesda's community.

"The real reason that Bethesda holds onto the Creation Engine is because of all the modding capabilities," she said. "The whole modding community that's built around those tools and those systems, it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense for Bethesda to switch over to any other engine, because they've already built up a whole community that sustains the success of their titles."

Indeed, the modding scene in Bethesda's games has thrived for many years, with countless talented modders having worked with the Creation Engine for upwards of 20 years now. It's not surprising that the developers had no wish to disrupt their creative process with an entirely new engine to learn.

It does seem like there would be upsides to an UE5 switch, of course, but it's important to note that Bethesda is continuing to upgrade and refine the Creation Engine. Recently, studio director Todd Howard confirmed The Elder Scrolls 6 is using a new version called Creation Engine 3 that sports major improvements across the board.

He also said Creation Engine 3 will power projects "beyond" the long-awaited The Elder Scrolls sequel, which likely means Fallout 5 will use it as well. Bad news if you were hoping future Bethesda games would push for maximum graphical quality, perhaps, but good news if you want the studio's titles to be as moddable as the ones that came before it.

Are you glad that Bethesda chose to stick with the Creation Engine in the end, or would you have preferred it to have moved over to Unreal Engine 5? I'm curious to hear your thoughts, so share them in the comments and vote in our poll below.

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