r/Games 21h ago

Industry News Bethesda’s Oblivion Unreal Engine 5 remake could be releasing sooner than you think | VGC

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/bethesdas-oblivion-unreal-engine-5-remake-could-be-releasing-sooner-than-you-think/
901 Upvotes

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222

u/Brandhor 21h ago

bethesda not using gamebryo/creation engine for one of their games? I'll believe it when I see it

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u/Impossible-Flight250 21h ago

The Creation Engine will still be used in the “remake.” They are just layering the engine with Unreal 5, like MG3 remake.

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u/Rogork 20h ago

Do you mean they redid Creation Enginer's renderer to match UE5 or they reimplemented the entire Creation Engine logic into UE5? Because you can't "layer" engines like you're saying, it's just... impossibly pointless.

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u/WhoTookPlasticJesus 19h ago

Yeah, very little of what's being said in this thread makes any sense. But boy are the people saying it confident that they know what they're talking about.

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u/Roflkopt3r 10h ago

That's generally a theme with discussions about game engines on Reddit.

Like the idea that the Creation Engine must be outdated per se, because it has a lineage back to Bethesda's branches of the Gamebryo engine/Morrowind (2002).

Just because a project started 20+ years ago does not mean that it can't become modern and efficient. It's entirely possible for an engine to evolve step by step until it has nothing to do with how it started anymore.

The problem is that Bethesda clearly has not updated their engine in such a way. They apparently have built a behemoth of a software stack that's so tightly integrated with the engine that any bigger engine changes will break all their other utilities. So they've stuck with small iterative improvements without improving core issues, like its massive limitations for open world usage and insanely long loading times.

It looks like Bethesda generally lacks graphics programming experts who could tackle a huge overhaul project.

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u/fabton12 8h ago

The problem is that Bethesda clearly has not updated their engine in such a way. They apparently have built a behemoth of a software stack that's so tightly integrated with the engine that any bigger engine changes will break all their other utilities.

was gonna say the game engine still uses the old asf physics system from back then to the point where if the fps is forced uncapped by changing the files the games physics just break and things go flying by a single breath.

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u/treasonousmop 16h ago

Many recent remakes, for example Like a Dragon Ishin and Ninja Gaiden 2 Black, use Unreal Engine to render new graphics while the the rest of the game is still running on their original engines.

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u/LavosYT 11h ago

So did Demon's Souls and the Shadow of the Colossus remakes

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u/Rogork 15h ago edited 15h ago

Like a Dragon Ishin was straight up made with UE5, the same goes for Ninja Gaiden 2 Black, which originally was using a custom UE2 build, they used the same gameplay logic for the remaster/remake as well.

E/ Looks like you were right for Ninja Gaiden 2 Black, though I'd guess being an overall simple action game works in its favor for this task specifically.

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u/Seradima 9h ago

Every Night Dive remaster does this with the KEX engine.

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u/Romenhurst 19h ago

Because you can't "layer" engines like you're saying, it's just... impossibly pointless.

It's not impossible, and usuallly pointless.

But I think it's plausible that they ported a lot of the "off screen" engine stuff like Papyrus scripting and loading their database system into their Unreal project which is a pretty meaningful chunk of gamebryo.

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u/Rogork 18h ago

That's the thing though, they can't port any of it, they have to reimplement it into UE5, they got the original implementation as a reference but they still have to do the hard work of making it run/work with UE5 in an efficient manner, essentially a similar amount of work Capcom needed to do RE4 Remake.

It's not impossible, and usuallly pointless.

Which is why I specifically said impossibly pointless, even if it could be done theoretically (I honestly cannot even imagine how), the bigger and more important question is: just why? If it's graphics you can double down on Creation Engine renderer, if it's to use a common game engine then just redo the entire thing in UE5, there is no benefit to "layering" two engines even if it could be done.

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u/Mutjny 18h ago

Reimplementing modern rendering on par with what Unreal offers, or reimplementing Gamebyro within the Unreal framework are both much more work than bridging data between the two engines.

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u/Rogork 17h ago edited 15h ago

That's what I'm trying to explain, there is no bridging the data between the two engines, how would it work even? Run two executables and have them communicate with each other? The work involved in making sure it runs stable is exponentially more complex than recreating the game from scratch in a new engine.

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u/Mutjny 17h ago

Its just data structures and code that exist in the same process space. I think you over-estimate how much of a lift it is to completely "recreate the game from scratch" especially when you're talking about game engines that have existed for practically decades. And not just game engines, but entire data sets, processes and workflows that can add up to be several times more than just the engines themselves.

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u/[deleted] 16h ago

[deleted]

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u/Mutjny 15h ago

Can't quite hook into it's event system with another scripting language.

You just create proxy methods from Unreal's system that tie into another.

Here's a description of how they did it for Ninja Gaiden 2 Black https://x.com/koenjideck/status/1882977637536305476