hey, I like Skyrim...
You are not thinking with “business sense” and the consequences of it. Why would Providence spend more money to license another engine when they own Bethesda whom owns GameBryo as an “in-house” tool? Suits don’t care about developers, only the bottom line. When Suits control the budget, what they say is law.
Secondly, Providence still funding Bethesda while they still use GameBryo demonstrates incompetence. Son, let me enlighten you to facts about Bethesda. They do not develop or license game engines well and they do not learn from their mistakes.
Part A: They are still using GameBryo, in the year 2012.
Now you might be saying: “But Skyrim uses the Creation engine!”
*pats you on the head* Aaawww that’s cute. Open up the Skyrim executable in notepad, search for GameBryo, shit bricks. Congratulations you discovered that Creation is GameBryo!
Renaming the engine was a PR move because GameBryo gained infamy due to the buggyness of Fallout 3, even greater buggyness of Fallout: New Vegas and
bankrupting the parent company that originally developed it! Part B: They are still using GameBryo
poorly, in the year 2012.
OH the examples, the examples of how the engine burned Bethesda over and over again. I will show you my favorite:
Ladies and gents, it quite insane to develop an open world game when your engine struggles to handle 10+ NPCs at a time or render far distances. God help you if they have an AI more complex that move from point A to B and have to render far distances. This is no more of a tragic example than what Freeside was supposed to be.
Restored: Gamblers will now constantly stream into Freeside on their way to the Strip and its casinos (some will also stop off at the Atomic Wrangler) as they were always meant to. They are of course easy picking for thugs or even the player, so some have hired bodyguards to protect them.
Depending on the in game time of day there usually are 5+ npcs moving from one gate to the other, only the guards have combat AI. Just going near them drops your frame rate noticeably, running with the will cause a CTD because…
Freeside is now one coherent world space. NPCs can now go everywhere in the city with obvious dramatic improvements to gameplay/immersion.
No gated, small loading zones mean far distances have to be loaded. I am not just talking about rendering, level geometry alone can cause the engine to choke and die. If you have the sprint mod
do not spring across open freeside because that would be overkill for the engine. CTD before you even get halfway.
Part C: ME1’s ENGINE DID BETTER
How many NPCs with combat AI were on screen at a time?
How many particle effects were going on then?
How far was the render distance?
The worst version of Bioware’s game engine could do more, faster than the engine that Bethesda licensed and later developed themselves for years. First let that sink in a bit, second knowing this why would you want them to develop a Mass Effect game?