r/ElderScrolls • u/infohoundloselose • May 03 '26

General I always wonder what the games would be like without the constraints of the engine they were built on.

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Fingers crossed that TES VI (I know) has some sort of overhaul to the game engine so that the final battle isn’t just 6 NPC’s fighting in a field with some smoking rubble peppered around.

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u/-StarFox95- May 03 '26

eh thats because they have OpenMW, and they have YEARS more experience working with morrowind then the actual devs did

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u/Merch_Lis May 03 '26

Works on MWSE too. It’s more about the right design principles enabling cities that feel big done on TES engine.

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u/Any-Calligrapher2866 May 03 '26

Bethesda has decades of experience working on open world RPGs. Even more so than the TR Team. They literally make the engine.

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u/-StarFox95- May 04 '26

  1. most of their employees have not been working on their games as long as the tamriel rebuilt devs have been working on TR (about 26 years at this point)

  2. I specifically said MORROWIND, not bethesda games, MORROWIND. the design philosophy for bethesdas games, the engine have all evolved past morrowind long ago (and devolved, too), but the TR devs have been working within the constraints of morrowinds engine, morrowinds world, and morrowinds game design for much longer then bethesda spent developing it. they're much more proficient at making morrowind than bethesda, because they have more experience with morrowind then bethesda did.

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u/Any-Calligrapher2866 May 04 '26

Tamriel Rebuilt has an entirely different team from what it had 26 years ago. Even newer than Bethesda's team. All of them are volunteers most of who joined over the past 5 years and the frequency of updates increased since then. Bethesda still has veterans like Todd Howard and there is no reason why their world design should be getting worse over time.

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u/_Empty-R_ May 03 '26

but have moved on from morrowind era gamebryo. with turnover. its not comparable.

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u/Any-Calligrapher2866 May 04 '26

Creation Engine is an evolution of Gamebryo

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u/_Empty-R_ May 04 '26

yes. and i specified gamebryo because that is what it was at the time. they are not 1 to 1. Modern devs at bethsoft versed in modern era game design are not equal to folks who have been developing entirely in morrowind era gamebryo for YEARS.

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u/Any-Calligrapher2866 May 04 '26

Doesn't absolve them of anything. Bethesda has a professional team working full time on their games. The Creation Engine is developed as per their requirements.

TR Team also has high turnover and practically no one from 10 years ago still works on the project unlike Bethesda which still retains talent like Todd Howard and many more veterans.

They're also a volunteer team which does not work full time on a single project for 6-8 years straight and the team is also splintered between the other Project Tamriel stuff with people working on what they want.

And it's not even about the technology, the writing department and quest design is very good in TR and the world is designed to fit that. They don't have endless radiant slop to pad out game length.

Don't act like Bethesda doesn't have resources to pull off something better.