“What you have to realize is that if you were to switch engines, and I’ll say this for any game anywhere, is that it is a massive effort. You are talking about dozens of people spent doing nothing but making an engine work,” explained Nesmith in an interview with Press Box PR when asked about misconceptions about the Creation Engine.

“You are talking about putting your developers into a situation where they can’t play the game. They may not even be able to work on making the game for long stretches because the engine is not there or up to snuff yet.”

Nesmith continued, noting that Bethesda has already made several modifications to the Creation Engine since it was first developed, with one key example being the multiplayer component for Fallout 76.

“That’s an enormous thing. We ran into it with Fallout 76. The engine had to be changed dramatically to do multiplayer. It made things extremely difficult for the team,” he said.

“Also, the Creation Engine has been tweaked to serve Bethesda’s purposes for so many years, decades really, that at this point, it’s probably a wiser bet to keep working with it. The benefits that you get from switching to Unreal Engine are probably not going to materialize until two titles down the road.”

Considering all the work that has gone into it, even Nesmith would be wary of switching out of the Creation Engine. Rather than making the jump to Unreal Engine, he suggests adding any specific features that developers might need into the toolkit they are already using.

“I would fall on the side of keeping the Creation Engine, keep working on it. If there’s something you see that is only possible in Unreal, put it into the Creation Engine. That would be a place where, if it’s anything vs everything, you say, let’s do that. Let’s do that anything. If Unreal does it and Creation doesn’t, and we feel we need to do it, do it,” he said.

Interestingly, project lead on Fallout 4 overhaul mod Fallout: London, Dean Carter, has expressed his beliefs that Bethesda should move on from the Creation Engine in favour of something like Unreal Engine 5 for its future projects.

“I’m really worried that they’re gonna keep going with the Creation Engine,” said Carter when asked about what new features could show up in Fallout 5. “I understand that it is proprietary. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of pluses to it. I’m not just someone that’s going to sit there and lie and say it’s a terrible engine. It could be better, yes, but it’s not a bad engine; I do think it started to show its age. It needs to be overhauled somewhat.”

For more of Nesmith’s thoughts, check out what he thinks about Starfield and a potential remake of Morrowind.

On a recent podcast with Rand al Thor 19, Windows Central’s Jez Corden reported hearing of the team “leveraging aspects of Unreal Engine and incorporating those into the Creation Engine.” It reportedly has improved the latter “across the board” while offering various “technological improvements.” Interestingly, The Coalition, specifically its technical director, Kate Raynor, and her team, have allegedly been helping in this regard.

That’s not all – this technical overhaul is allegedly a “test bed” for future titles, like The Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5. It’s worth noting that this apparently isn’t Bethesda shifting from Creation to Unreal but rather “boosting” the former with similar tech.

Of course, Corden advises taking all this with a grain of salt, but if true, it would make sense. The Creation Engine has long been criticized for the myriad of bugs and underwhelming visual fidelity (at least compared to more contemporary games). However, its strengths made it well-suited for what Bethesda wanted with Fallout 4 and Starfield, especially in base-building.

Time will tell just how significant this overhaul is in terms of gameplay and tech, so stay tuned for updates.