Is Creation Engine 2 holding Starfield development back, causing the delay

Starfield is arguably Bethesda Game Studio's most anticipated project.

Its release date was set for November 11 this year, the same release date as Skyrim, to build on the apex of its relative success thus far. Unfortunately, as significant a factor as 11.11.22 was as a date for potentially bigger sales, it did not come to pass.

Over a week ago, Microsoft-Bethesda officially announced that Starfield, along with Redfall, an Arkane Studios shooter to be published by Bethesda Softworks, will not be coming out until early 2023.

There have been little to no glimpses of Starfield gameplay revealed thus far. This would have been a bad omen for an AAA game, considering the November release date that was in place earlier.

The fan community pinned it mostly on Bethesda's affinity to reveal gameplay only a few months before release - a strategy that worked perfectly on Fallout 4.

This delay, however, brings a lot of nuance to Bethesda's possible reasons as to why they did not reveal gameplay earlier. As the press announcement officially notes, the developers are not satisfied with the current level of polish the game has in the beta.

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Leaker, who predicted Starfield might not meet the release date, also found fault with the engine

Bethesda games, on account of being riddled with bugs at launch, have led to the sobriquet of 'Bugthesda' in the gaming community. Even after three separate re-releases, Skyrim continues to have bugs that must be addressed by standardized community-made patches.

This trend arguably started with Morrowind, for which they specifically made the in-house Gamebryo engine. Gamebryo and its spiritual successor, Creation Engine, have been the basis of Bethesda's games, including all of the studio's Fallout titles.

Even after undergoing a number of overhauls and upgrades in terms of visuals and capacity, the Creation Engine often shows its age - especially with Fallout 76, which pushes even the newer 64-bit iteration to its limits.

Thus, during the announcement of Starfield, it was a subject of concern for fans when Bethesda revealed that they were using the new Creation Engine 2 for the game.

This cynicism has dampened greatly over the years. Even though there have been no gameplay showcases, the visual capabilities of Creation Engine 2 are visible from the announcement trailer and glimpses of in-game footage in dev diaries.

Although not as impressive as Unreal Engine 5, Creation Engine 2 is the first Bethesda homebrew platform that can support high-fidelity photogrammetry textures.

A post on the ResetEra forum from an alleged ex-Bethesda developer working on the game that made the rounds a few weeks ago, however, expressed its reservations about the engine.

The now-deleted post was from user Hevy008, confirmed by Jason Schrier to be a credible insider source. The post lauds Starfield for its graphical improvements over its development cycle. However, it also calls the engine 'a piece of crap.'

The same post's other complaints are also directly or indirectly connected to the engine, or at least its developmental impediments. Flight, an essential part of Starfield's exploration, has also become a community meme through its presumed centrality to the experience and lacks an adequate level of polish.

Bethesda games have never featured vehicles up to this point. Like many other things that Creation Engine 2 allegedly allows the studio to incorporate, driving is also a completely new feature for the developers.

From the lack of satisfaction that the board of directors at Microsoft-Bethesda seems to have with the new closed beta, it seems that the same inadequacy also extends to other aspects of the game.

The delay, therefore, is not so much from the engine's lack of capacity as it is from the sheer amount of new features and content that the developers have to organize.

Starfield, no doubt, will be bigger than most Bethesda games thus far, perhaps even Skyrim. To debug such a huge game and iron out the kinks of a completely new engine, the delay is a necessary evil for Starfield.