E3 2019 Predictions & Wishes

I don't think Starfield is based on the old engine.

thrawn82 wrote:

I don't think Starfield is based on the old engine.

Push Square's News Article

After all the nonsense Todd Howard spouted about the improvements of the engine from Fallout 4 to 76 (better rendering, 16x the detail etc) I've no trust in Bethesda to progress this ancient tech which actively effects gameplay with its clunky controls, stiff animation, terrible hit detection, atrocious A.I & terrible collision system.

I hope I'm proven wrong & they've tore up a lot of the parts of the engine that are so dated (that were even dated back when Fallout 4 released in 2015) & show a huge step forward but I've no expectation at all.

Oh. Well. There's goes any excitement i had for either of those games. I guess The Outer Worlds is just completely taking up that mantle now.

Spikeout wrote:
thrawn82 wrote:

I don't think Starfield is based on the old engine.

Push Square's News Article

Last-gen titles such as Fallout 3 and the original version of Skyrim ran badly on the PlayStation 3, and Bethesda's now infamous for its buggy, glitch-ridden games.

Not to wade too far into this debate, but Fallout 3 and Skyrim ran poorly on the PS3 because of that platform's bizarre (and tiny) memory structure. And it took much more than that to give Bethesda their reputation.

As a counter-point, Shamus Young did a good job explaining why the engine isn't necessarily the problem. He then added a bit more on his personal blog, but the primary point is that the engine isn't necessarily the problem so much as the quality assurance.

Building or buying a new engine that does all the things Bethesda needs it to do for their games is a pretty big task. However, when you consider how long it has been since Skyrim... that's enough time to build a brand new engine. So while you don't necessarily need a new engine – I believe Titanfall 2 and Apex Legends are still based off of Quake 3's engine, after all, just heavily modified and updated over time – you at least need better quality assurance, and that's where Bethesda seems to struggle.

That said, I feel like Fallout 76 was released in 2018 out of desperation to get something out the door rather than even Bethesda believing the game to be completed. As bad as Bethesda built games tend to be, Fallout 76 takes the entire cake shop. With DOOM Eternal and RAGE 2 in 2019, though, they have a lot less pressure to put something out.

Titanfall 2 and Apex Legends are built using Valve's Source engine, which is really amusing to me.

Another counter-point is that BioWare is a recent example of an RPG developer switching engines, and the risks thereof. It's well documented at this point that Dragon Age: Inquisition and Mass Effect Andromeda's development suffered from issues around moving to the Frostbite engine. The basic tools for building systems and content weren't there.

Bethesda has an extremely robust set of tools for quickly making content. Their games are massive, and part of what enables that is the fact they can throw together a dungeon and quest in relatively short order. This is also why they can support modding so thoroughly. It's baked in. The modding tools are the same editor they use themselves, for the most part. They know those tools really well, and they're comfortable with the experiences those tools let them create. The sales for their games show they're not making some kind of fatal mistake. Like the link to Shamus Young above says, their issue is quality assurance. Until Fallout 76, they were making strong strides in that department. Who knows where the breakdown with FO76 occurred, but the fact that multiple studios worked on it, rather than just Bethesda Softworks in Maryland, is a likely candidate for why.

An engine isn't some magic wand, it's just a collection of systems and tools that enable different kinds of problem solving.

Beanman beat me to it...

It's also worth pointing out that it seems like many of Fallout 76's issues have been server-side problems (disconnects, etc.) and balance. Those aren't engine issues.

beanman101283 wrote:

Titanfall 2 and Apex Legends are built using Valve's Source engine, which is really amusing to me.

Reading that Wikipage, looks like there's a lot of weird info going around precisely about what all that means. If I wanted to be pedantic about it I'm still technically right, given that the Source engine has its roots in the Quake engine, but it's all been so heavily modified that it likely doesn't resemble that old tech. Nevertheless, it's still a perfect example of building off of and modifying an old engine instead of starting a new one from scratch.

Nothing more to comment on from that, other than how easy it is to get confused with the misinformation going on out there it is (and how easy it is to spread it!). And yes, moving to the Frostbyte engine not only did harm to Bioware, but most of the development time for Visceral's Project Rag-Tag was spent just implementing new functionality into Frostbyte that would allow for third-person shooting (Shamus Young has another article about that somewhere as well).

It's actually had me wondering about how Capcom's RE Engine is built, given they went from a first-person horror in closed-in spaces to a third-person horror in RE2 to a third-person action game with larger environments, larger monsters, and a further distanced camera, and every game looks and performs pretty dang well. No doubt a lot of it is the insane crunch that's just a standard in Japanese business no matter what industry you're in, but between what they're doing with RE Engine and had accomplished with MT Framework, I just wish Capcom would get in on the engine-licensing game.

ccesarano wrote:

And yes, moving to the Frostbyte engine not only did harm to Bioware, but most of the development time for Visceral's Project Rag-Tag was spent just implementing new functionality into Frostbyte that would allow for third-person shooting (Shamus Young has another article about that somewhere as well).

I'm curious about this, because Rag-Tag was in development after Mass Effect Andromeda and concurrently with Anthem, both of which implemented third-person shooting structures and conventions, and all of those products post-date Dragon Age Inquisition, which is third-person. EA aggressively pushes its teams to share Frostbyte tech between projects and studios, so I wonder what Visceral was implementing that took up so much time.

The Quake engines (1, 2, 3, ?) have been open source for a decade now. It would be strange for them to not have influenced a bunch of engines that came after...

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I'm curious about this, because Rag-Tag was in development after Mass Effect Andromeda and concurrently with Anthem, both of which implemented third-person shooting structures and conventions, and all of those products post-date Dragon Age Inquisition, which is third-person. EA aggressively pushes its teams to share Frostbyte tech between projects and studios, so I wonder what Visceral was implementing that took up so much time.

According to Amy Hennig in this USGamer interview:

So I think Visceral was sort of beset with a lot of challenges. Even so, we were making a game; people have said it was an Uncharted Star Wars. That's sort of reductive, but it's useful because people can kind of visualize something in their head. But what that meant is we obviously had to take the Frostbite Engine, because there was the internal initiative to make sure that everybody was on the same technology, but it was an engine that was made to do first-person shooters not third-person traversal cinematic games. So building all of that third-person platforming and climbing and cover taking and all that stuff into an engine that wasn't made to do that. We did a lot of foundational work that I think the teams are still benefiting from because it's a shared engine, but it's tough when you spend a lot of time doing foundational stuff but then don't get to go ta-da! (laughs) You know, here's the game.

I imagine different types of tech were being exchanged around. It's possible Bioware Montreal and Visceral were sharing 3rd Person tech and other similar things, but the manner in which the environment was being interacted with was different. Can't know for sure unless someone goes in with more detail, but I also wouldn't be surprised if multiple studios were doing the same work in parallel, or took the bare bones and then heavily modified it for their specific purpose.

Heck, word on the street is that the Star Wars project that got canceled is because they couldn't make the tech work with the large-scale vision in mind. That's unverified, though.

Ahh, okay. There's a significant difference between third-person shooter and third-person traversal cinematic game. I can see where they'd have to build in a lot of features that wouldn't have been present in Frostbyte already.

Absolutely! The level of interactivity and malleable nature of the environment coupled with the dramatic increase in unique animation and quality is orders of magnitude more complex. Think of the difference between even the first God of War and Doom 2016. An incomplete list is here: swinging (rope, bar), climbing, swinging and climbing, grappling (objects, beings), throwing (lobbing, hurling), grappling and throwing, wall running vs. wall scaling vs. hanging, swimming (over and under), diving, gliding, driving and riding.

And all of that also creates more work in level design because you have to build the components that use all those actions and then incorporate them into the levels. (and then tune/balance them)

Taking how well it runs & bugs completely out of the equation my complaints with the engine are that it feels ancient, even forgetting graphics, the way characters move in the world, how they react so poorly to melee hits & from gunfire, how if you need to get past an NPC in a tight corridor it can be a nightmare as they just stand there like a barrier, how you see enemies react with terrain (especially uneven), the feel of the gunplay vs even early PS3/360 games.

Other old engines like the Titanfall games using Source I don't have a problem with because they play great & look very good, were as with Bethesda its a different story.

I wouldn't be bothered if Bethesda were using the Creation engine but making strides forward with all the stuff mentioned but they seem stuck in their own bubble. When Starfield is released in a post Cyberpunk world if they continue the same trend its going to look & feel as dated as Fallout 76 did in 2018.

Spikeout wrote:

Taking how well it runs & bugs completely out of the equation my complaints with the engine are that it feels ancient, even forgetting graphics, the way characters move in the world, how they react so poorly to melee hits & from gunfire, how if you need to get past an NPC in a tight corridor it can be a nightmare as they just stand there like a barrier, how you see enemies react with terrain (especially uneven), the feel of the gunplay vs even early PS3/360 games.

Other old engines like the Titanfall games using Source I don't have a problem with because they play great & look very good, were as with Bethesda its a different story.

I wouldn't be bothered if Bethesda were using the Creation engine but making strides forward with all the stuff mentioned but they seem stuck in their own bubble. When Starfield is released in a post Cyberpunk world if they continue the same trend its going to look & feel as dated as Fallout 76 did in 2018.

Personally i think it's a sign of laziness mixed with some hubris in regards to their engine. They refuse to pull in and take advantage of other groups who have taken the same engine and made vastly superior improvements that work. From ESO to mod makers have shown that with the right amount of effort the engine can perform and look good. Bethesda lists those advances, but refuse to put the work in to make it work like it does for others.

They've been on this ride for so long thinking that they could get away with doing the bare minimum thinking it would work again. They were wrong.

I mean, some of us have been holding Bethesda accountable for these sorts of things since Oblivion released, but the community kept coming back with defense after defense after defense regarding the game's scale, that you could mod it, and that the bugs were funny. I'm actually kind of stunned that it took until Fallout 76 for people to realize the emperor has no clothes, and my best guess is only because you couldn't go ahead and mod the clothes on yourself.

I granted Bethesda their share of wiggle room due to the scale and the creative design that they put forth. The ability to immerse oneself in either a high fantasy setting, or a post apocalyptic setting, and set off in any direction, either following quests to story arcs, or creating ones own adventure, as a hunter gatherer, with character development amongst abilities and skills. It was enough. The workable traversal. The functional combat. The limited animations. They were an acceptable shortcoming for everything else on offer. That currency expired after Oblivion to Skyrim, and Fallout 3 to Fallout 4, though. Scale lost its worth. Competitors stepped up with creative design. Without an overhaul in traversal, combat, animation, and collision detection, they're time is potentially spent. Even with a new sci fi lick of paint.

Then again, if they step up the writing, there's a sizable audience that prefer what takes place as oppose to how. Both please. If one or the other, I would scrap story for gameplay in my interactive medium.

*types frantically*

A Vampire Bloodlines sequel! I'm totally calling it! That's my prediction.

*Whew nobody saw that one.*

RnRClown wrote:

I granted Bethesda their share of wiggle room due to the scale and the creative design that they put forth. The ability to immerse oneself in either a high fantasy setting, or a post apocalyptic setting, and set off in any direction, either following quests to story arcs, or creating ones own adventure, as a hunter gatherer, with character development amongst abilities and skills. It was enough. The workable traversal. The functional combat. The limited animations. They were an acceptable shortcoming for everything else on offer. That currency expired after Oblivion to Skyrim, and Fallout 3 to Fallout 4, though. Scale lost its worth. Competitors stepped up with creative design. Without an overhaul in traversal, combat, animation, and collision detection, they're time is potentially spent. Even with a new sci fi lick of paint.

Then again, if they step up the writing, there's a sizable audience that prefer what takes place as oppose to how. Both please. If one or the other, I would scrap story for gameplay in my interactive medium.

I feel like experiences in the past couple years have made it a lot harder for Bethesda to just get by. Things like Horizon Zero Dawn that executed so beautifully stand in comparison to skyrim and fallout now.

thrawn82 wrote:
RnRClown wrote:

I granted Bethesda their share of wiggle room due to the scale and the creative design that they put forth. The ability to immerse oneself in either a high fantasy setting, or a post apocalyptic setting, and set off in any direction, either following quests to story arcs, or creating ones own adventure, as a hunter gatherer, with character development amongst abilities and skills. It was enough. The workable traversal. The functional combat. The limited animations. They were an acceptable shortcoming for everything else on offer. That currency expired after Oblivion to Skyrim, and Fallout 3 to Fallout 4, though. Scale lost its worth. Competitors stepped up with creative design. Without an overhaul in traversal, combat, animation, and collision detection, they're time is potentially spent. Even with a new sci fi lick of paint.

Then again, if they step up the writing, there's a sizable audience that prefer what takes place as oppose to how. Both please. If one or the other, I would scrap story for gameplay in my interactive medium.

I feel like experiences in the past couple years have made it a lot harder for Bethesda to just get by. Things like Horizon Zero Dawn that executed so beautifully stand in comparison to skyrim and fallout now.

Every iteration they seem to pick one or two big things to improve. Morrowind was huge jump in graphical fidelity and 3d characters. Oblivion let you see the whole world at once, including forests. Skyrim drastically improved character art direction and animation. But even in the areas where they chose to improve, they're never the best at those features at the time.

My hope for the next Elder Scrolls is they drop that pre-launch BS that Oblivion and Skyrim had about "Radiant AI" or whatever, and that they don't streamline things any more. Oh and get Michael Kirkbride back, cause he's got the soul.

I wouldn't ever think to compare Horizon Zero Dawn and Skyrim/Fallout. They both open worlds, but Horizon Zero Dawn is a much more directed and limited experience. Second cousin to Assassin's Creed, not Skyrim.

All I really want from an Elder Scrolls game is combat that doesn't suck. It'll never happen.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I wouldn't ever think to compare Horizon Zero Dawn and Skyrim/Fallout. They both open worlds, but Horizon Zero Dawn is a much more directed and limited experience. Second cousin to Assassin's Creed, not Skyrim.

All I really want from an Elder Scrolls game is combat that doesn't suck. It'll never happen.

This! Trying to go back to Skyrim after a game like AC:Odyssey is frustrating. I hope Bethesda realizes that ARPG combat has progressed beyond either floaty barely above marionettes level combat or sneaky archer.

I am not sure that's a fair comparison - Skyrim is 9 years old by now, and will not compare favorably to a game from this year, and AC:O , as the latest Ubisoft iteration is VERY good at what it does.

Skyrim still excells in interesting worldbuilding, and is a lot more fun to explore than AC:O's world, but the systems in AC:O is far superior in almost every way.

TheGameguru wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

I wouldn't ever think to compare Horizon Zero Dawn and Skyrim/Fallout. They both open worlds, but Horizon Zero Dawn is a much more directed and limited experience. Second cousin to Assassin's Creed, not Skyrim.

All I really want from an Elder Scrolls game is combat that doesn't suck. It'll never happen.

This! Trying to go back to Skyrim after a game like AC:Odyssey is frustrating. I hope Bethesda realizes that ARPG combat has progressed beyond either floaty barely above marionettes level combat or sneaky archer.

For me hearing about the changes they made to combat in the last two AC games has completely killed what little interest I had in that series (the yearly releases were what killed most of my interest). Not being able to one hit stealth kill people because they are a higher level than you just isn't what I am looking for from that series. I loved the combat in AC2. When everything came together perfectly it was basically like a scene from John Wick only with swords instead of guns.

You one-hit kill 99% of the enemies in AC: Origins. AC: Odyssey not as much but they added a skill that will one-hit kill nearly everyone.

Ubisoft's E3 presentation is Monday, June 10th, 1pm PT/4pm ET.

Vector wrote:

You one-hit kill 99% of the enemies in AC: Origins. AC: Odyssey not as much but they added a skill that will one-hit kill nearly everyone.

Yeah there is also a weapon buff that increases your damage by 100% effectively assassinating everything in the game with one shot

Nintendo's E3 website is up. No specific times, but I doubt they'll be shaking things up too much. Their press conference will be on the 11th, and if I recall right they start 12pm ET/9am PT. The Direct is basically how they open their E3, which starts as soon as doors of the show open, and then they spend the next three days streaming Treehouse.

They're really pushing their Saturday multiplayer championships, though. June 8th they'll be streaming the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate World Championship 2019 3v3 and the Splatoon 2 World Championship 2019.

Microsoft E3 Press Conference set for June 9th at 1pm PT/4pm ET, landing right on me birfday. On June 10th they'll run "Inside Xbox: Live at E3" with announcements, game demos, interviews, etc.

Curious to see what they'll be showing. My prediction is we'll get our first look at the next Xbox with a 2020 release date, but don't know how many details. Halo: Infinity will not be releasing in 2019.

...did Gears 5 release yet? That was looking good, right? That would be 2019's big Holiday release for Microsoft, right?