Xbox's Halo team announced in October it would be swapping from its in-house engine to Unreal Engine 5 - allowing the series to grow "more quickly and organically" than before. With this in mind, former Bethesda artist Nate Purkeypile (Skyrim, Fallout) believes Bethesda should maybe consider following a similar pathway.
Speaking to Reece Reilly of Kiwi Talkz recently, he mentioned how games "end up being better" on UE5 but admitted he doesn't think Bethesda would actually make a shift like that:
"Having made open world games with both engines, to me it's like absolutely no question that I think things would end up being better... I would be shocked if that did happen because I don't know, people also have trouble changing their minds sometimes, where they made a decision at some point and it did make sense at the time...but I think it's important to re-evaluate tech.”
He further mentioned how a lot of time during development on projects like Starfield (which he left part way through development) was allocated to getting things like rendering and animation systems up to certain standards on the in-house engine, which takes away from other aspects of development and generally makes the whole process a lot harder:
“A lot of what was done on Starfield was trying to get all these rendering systems and animation systems sort of up to snuff and it makes it really hard to even actually make the game."
Purkeypile also acknowledged how developers are already swapping their own in-house engines for Unreal Engine 5 - like CD Projekt Red and its upcoming Witcher game.
As for the benefits of this type of shift, he drew similar comparisons to Halo Studios about how UE5 is a broad tool base with a "big knowledge base that people can pull from", and projects are much easier to hire for and have people ramp up. It's also easier to "stay relevant and not always be trying to play catch up".
Nate Purkeypile recently released his "heavy metal horror game indie game" known as The Axis Unseen which has been built on Unreal Engine 5.