Todd Howard says Starfield features ‘our largest engine overhaul since Oblivion’

Bethesda Game Studios’ Starfield will feature its “largest engine overhaul since Oblivion,” it’s said.

That’s according to game director Todd Howard, who revealed in a blog post detailing Bethesda’s $7.5bn sale to Xbox that the sci-fi RPG would feature “all new technologies” that will eventually also power The Elder Scrolls VI.

“With each new console cycle, we evolved together,” Howard said of Xbox. “From bringing mods to consoles with Fallout 4, now over a billion downloads, to the latest technologies fueling Xbox Series X/S.

“These new systems are optimized for the vast worlds we love to create, with generational leaps not just in graphics, but CPU and data streaming as well. It’s led to our largest engine overhaul since Oblivion, with all new technologies powering our first new IP in 25 years, Starfield, as well as The Elder Scrolls VI.”

Bethesda’s Creation Engine has been used in its games since 2011’s Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. It was then modified for subsequent titles including Fallout 4 and Fallout 76.

Starfield was announced in June 2018 with a teaser trailer, following which Howard said it was a game he’s wanted to make “for a very, very long time.”

Nothing has been seen of the game since, and at last year’s E3 show the game’s director asked fans to be “very patient” in regards to the next unveiling of Starfield.

“I will say this. I like when you really see the game to when it’s out [to be] as short as possible. As short as people will let me,” he said.

Howard was speaking in an interview with IGN in June 2019, in which he said Starfield broke Bethesda’s development cycle of working on Elder Scrolls and Fallout.

“We had done so many things. We were going, ‘Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Elder Scrolls, Fallout’ and you have this Starfield game in your head and your sort of say, ‘when?’ It can be never – you could say never – but we’re creatives and we have to make this game, and this is the time.

“And so The Elder Scrolls 6 is going to have to wait a little bit. Plus again, The Elder Scrolls Online is doing so well.”