Why Does Bethesda Not Use Unreal Engine?

I'm sure you've seen all the videos where it's Skyrim but in the Unreal Engine and you've asked yourself "if it's so good why doesn't Bethesda use it??"

[micholitzia]

Why can’t you mod a game created with ue 5?

[springheeljak]

Am I the only one who likes the radiant AI in Oblivion? I liked that people had random conversations instead of the same one over and over when you entered an area

[stopsliding]

I want elder scrolls 6 to have more advanced version of radiant ai

[RenSkywalker]

I love that this question really amounts to "why didn't Bethesda use Unreal Engine from 2022 for a game they started making in 2006"

[marigi-]

Creation Engine is criminally underrated. Apart from modding & quest creation, the creation engine also handles a lot of interwoven systems very well. It manages the state of it's large open world pretty well considering player & AI input permanently affects the said state. The only engine that comes close to replicating this in the AAA gaming space is Rockstar's engine for GTA & RDR.

[HenrikoMagnifico]

Well modding in Unreal is definitely possible. I think the biggest reason they don't do it is because A. It takes a long time to adjust their workflow to suit Unreal instead of Creation Engine and B. They would need to pay licensing fees to Epic Games, which they probably want to avoid in any way possible.

[kryppo]

Modding the creation engine is usually easy to mod and its one of the main reasons people buy bethesda rpgs

[masterofthecontinuum]

Unreal engine doesn't make world items spaz out when you pick up another item near them. This makes The Bethesda engine ideal for immersing clumsy people into the game world.

[jamesallen]

The Witcher 3’s engine was pretty fantastic as well, for the sake of how seamless and near glitchless the giant map and landscape was itself. It only loaded in what you were facing, which saved so much on rendering and whatnot. Even some games on Unreal still don’t look that good

[maiqtheliar]

The ease of modding is the biggest strength of the creation engine. Even a person like myself with no programing experience can learn to do basic things in it that would not be possible for any other engine that I am aware of. It has been this way since Morrowind with very little change in that regard. I don't have to know how to program to add an item to an NPC or even add a whole other NPC. Which really opens modding to people that would never otherwise even try to mod a game. It also allows those that do know how to program and script things and other programming stuff I don't even know about work their magic on a 10 year old game and make it do things that the Bethesda probably never thought to do with it. Mods are a major reason why Bethesda games have a longevity to them rarely found in other games of this type. Modders have kept Skyrim, Oblivion, Morrowind and the Fallout series (Yes I'm including New Vegas it uses the engine and mods are a huge part of it to). A lot of people that complain about the engine do not realize how much the modding community would lose if they switched. Thank you for putting into words something I have thought for a long time.

[user_hellothere]

Creation engine is super easy to use and convenient for anyone who tries. I've tried using other engines, and they're either not as good, way too complicated, or require actual programming still that I do not have

[milansvancara]

As someone from the game industry, I can tell you, that most of this is really not the case. It's 10%revenue sharing, 10% ''don't fix what's not totally broken (even if it almost is)'' approach and 80% changing pipelines and making their staff learning new engine

[Zalazaar]

It's actually alot more simple. Money and experience. They got tons of experience with their own engine and they're not looking to pay royalties to Epic.

[themurmeli]

I've done and published mods for Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3 / NV, Skyrim, Fallout 4, Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, Divinity Original Sin 2, Neverwinter Nights, Neverwinter Nights 2, Dragon Age Origins, Dragon Age Inquisition etc.

And I can tell you that all the games I've tried modding, Unreal Engine games are among the hardest to mod, and I am someone with actual programming (JSX, Python, C++, C# etc.), 3D modeling (3Ds Max) and texturing experience.

The issue is that when someone comes to modding scene, and they want to try it out, and eventually improve and become REALLY good at it, the initial threshold can not be too high, or it will kill all interest.

The threshold of using Creation Kit is very low (I started out when I was 14yo with zero programming knowledge), the threshold of Using Unreal engine... you basically have to be an IT engineering student or programmer hobbyist with burning passion for deciphering someone else's code without designer notes.

[DaFreeze]

People seem to think that Unreal Engine automatically makes your games look amazing. A good artist working on Bethesda's engine will make a far more beautiful world than an amateur on Unreal. It seems obvious to say, but people continue to give way too much credit to the engine, which is ultimately only a tool for creating the game.

Also, I think you missed out on one of the biggest points of why Bethesda doesn't use Unreal which is that they would have to license the software and hence pay out loads of money to Unreal over time. If I remember correctly, I believe after a certain amount Unreal gets a percentage of the profits from a game's sales. Bethesda's games are so huge, and such massive hits, that I doubt they would ever consider giving away a cut of their profits when they have the manpower and resources to create their own engine.

[thomasgriffin]

Radiant AI is the only way to do Bethesda NPC’s they feel like real people in Oblivion. The lack of that in Skyrim was one of the first things I noticed when playing Skyrim where the dialogue was repetitive and stale

[Ahglock]

I'm not sure how well unreal would handle things like being able to go into a house and pick up, throw etc all the plates, the potions being actual items you can pick up and are not just background images things that teleport into your inventory etc.

[BeesechurgerProductions]

One thing that drives me insane is when people try to say that Bethesda's engine is the same across all their games. Because that's like saying Unreal 5 is the same as Unreal 2, or IdTech 5 is the same as IdTech 1, or Windows 10 is the same as Windows 3.1. Intentional feature compatibility and legacy functionality support doesn't mean its "The same product." You wouldn't call a PS3 the same console as a PS1 just because they both play PS1 games. The Creation engine now has about as much in common with its Morrowind version as these other examples all do.

[ImASasukeFan]

actually this is kind of what i figured, how tf are people supposed to mod unreal vs when we all so used to creation kit

[Validifyed]

A huge benefit of Unreal Engine is that its Open Source. If the engine has issues, you can fork it and have your engine team fix and extend the engine as you see fit.
Probably the biggest reason, is the time and cost of hundreds switching employees - many who have worked at BGS for over a decade - learning a completely new system, and implementing a huge back catalogue of tools and modules to the new engine instead of incrementally tweaking them for the next game.