After Oblivion Remastered‘s overwhelmingly positive welcome, the pressure is on for Bethesda to keep Elder Scrolls relevant, mainly with the elusive Elder Scrolls 6. An insight from one Bethesda developer, however, has revealed the studio could be having a bit of a conundrum, as keeping The Elder Scrolls 6 up to speed with the current tech could also spell ruin for its modding capabilities.
The suggestion came from former Bethesda developer Dan Nanni. Nanni mainly worked on Fallout 76 and Starfield. During an interview with Videogamer, Nanni talked about possible solutions to Bethesda RPGs’ biggest open world problem– the accursed frequent loading screen. Such an issue has plagued Starfield and has led to one of its most glaring demerits; thus, Nanni’s most obvious solution is moving The Elder Scrolls 6 to the new and shiny Unreal Engine 5.
Apparently, that would eliminate some of Bethesda RPGs’ reliance on loading screens– assuming The Elder Scrolls 6 would be built within that engine. It’s worth noting that Oblivion Remastered also uses Unreal Engine 5 to a certain extent, though its developers mostly utilized Unreal like a new coat of paint rather than the core building block.
This solution, however, is still problematic, according to Nanni. Bethesda’s old engine, which it has been reiterating up to Starfield, provided the games’ biggest strength: moddability.
“If you wanna throw away your engine and restart, you have to go through the whole entirety of restarting. Unreal doesn’t give you everything out of the box, you have to build it.
If you went Unreal’s golden path, then yes, you have a dedicated team at Unreal who’s supporting you. But when you’re making a very specific game in a very specific way, with the systems that were built in a way that people are familiar with, it means you have to make changes fundamentally, it means you’re no longer on the golden path.
You have a mod community and knows how to use your engine, that has built things for decades on the system that you are launching with. You have to ask yourself, is it worth losing all of that knowledge? What do you gain from it? And you can make arguments for and you can make arguments against. And there is no right answer. There is an answer. You just have to make a choice,” says Dan Nanni in a podcast with Videogamer
The way Nanni frames it, the very thing that gives Bethesda RPGs their notorious jank also provides their community with the peerless modding capabilities. Hence, there’s a huge risk that rebuilding that old rickety wheel so it can spin better could also make it too plain.
The Elder Scrolls 6 Devs Might Need to Choose
Sadly for Bethesda, the clock is ticking for The Elder Scrolls 6, and they will eventually have to make the choice (or maybe they already have). Will they risk another Starfield fiasco by sticking with the old Creation Engine or “innovate” with Unreal Engine 5 and risk moddability? Despite Starfield‘s moddability, that didn’t exactly help the game attain the same relevance as Skyrim or even Fallout 4.
It might be a different story for The Elder Scrolls franchise, but playing Oblivion Remastered and going back to Cyrodiil once more, I can honestly say that I did not miss those loading screens. At this point in gaming, loading screens every other minute are a weakness for open-world games.
Some of the oldest Bethesda fans have chimed in on the matter, because if Dan Nanni’s insights are anything to go by, The Elder Scrolls 6 can’t have the best of both worlds when it comes to modern tech and modding.
“Losing modding would be a death sentence. Bethesda isn’t making games good enough to survive on their own without modding, let’s be honest here,” according to Watsyurdeal
“I’ve been hearing that Bethesda should get rid of CE (Creation Engine) for 20 years lol,” jokes Rarglar
“Afaik the Gothic remake is in UE5 and they’re also offering modding support so it’s not impossible,” hopes ConfinedCrow
