The Elder Scrolls Online on Unreal Engine 5.

Carlos93

What would the game be like if this engine was used?

markulrich1966

it is not the engine alone, but you had to recreate all textures in higher resolution.
Check videos of Ashes of Creation, it is alpha-beta stage.
It does not look as good as I thought, using UE5.
Compared to that ESO looks pretty good for a 10 year old engine, at least on new gen consoles.

Guess this is a general MMO issue, open world + managing hundrets of players in one instance requires to lower the grafics performance compared to solo player titles.

OtarTheMad

There are also some YouTube videos people did using unreal engine 5 to redo some things in Skyrim.

jtm1018

That would be awesome.
All the bugs in 4k ultra setting, hdr and vrr.
Freaking awesome.

Northwold

Unreal has a lot of features to do with multiplayer so the interesting stuff might be to do with how it enables multiplayer on the backend / how it affects the types of gameplay on offer, rather than graphics. That said, I've no idea whether UE5 has any advantages in terms of actual server load etc over ESO's existing engine. Currently the only proven real world application of it at scale is Fortnite which, obviously, is a very, very different kind of multiplayer game.


For questing, etc, CD Projekt Red have just moved to Unreal and it sounds like they and Epic are going to be building a whole set of new tools (presumably CDPR only) to adapt the engine to quest based open world games, so the engine may not be perfect for a game like ESO on that side of things yet.

irswat

Would love uhd textures and real foliage

Maitsukas

Very detailed, but also very performance heavy on lower-end machines.

Janni

It would be the exact same game. Most of what makes ESO is not the engine but the specific art, mechanics, and logic that drives it, just like any game. The only real difference would be that the devs would have to update from the familar code base they are intimately familiar with to to an all new one designed to work with unreal which means it would have even more bugs and glitches.

Atrael7

Carlos93 wrote: »

What would the game be like if this engine was used?

It would be a fast-paced first person multiplayer arena shooter with game modes like Capture the Flag, Deathmatch and Last Man Standing, built to be heavily competitive and requiring split-second twitch reaction speeds where you play as a wizard tossing fireballs and chain lightning at your opponents while levitating and using scrolls of Icarian Flight to get away from sticky situations. In short, it would crash and burn as an Elder Scrolls game.

./s

Margha_Ralmoren

Janni wrote: »

The only real difference would be that the devs would have to update from the familar code base they are intimately familiar with to to an all new one designed to work with unreal which means it would have even more bugs and glitches.

Epic wouldn't let developers completely in the dark. ZoS would have access to the Unreal Dev Network at least if they have questions. Since ZoS is a big company they may be able to hire a few Epic devs as consultants for a few days, a bit like when Quantic Dream had Sony programmers help them optimise their games for the Playstation. They would have to hire a few devs and progs who have already worked with Unreal, though.
The real nightmare would be to revamp and re-implement all of the assets in the game. Take one "small" task in this ocean of work: the facial animations. If they want to remake the characters in higher polys they might need a new facial rig, which mean re-generate the lipsync animations of the bajillion dialogue files. Even doing in in bulk with facefx it would take days. And then they'd have to plug all of them in UE5

N3CR01

markulrich1966 wrote: »

it is not the engine alone, but you had to recreate all textures in higher resolution.
Check videos of Ashes of Creation, it is alpha-beta stage.
It does not look as good as I thought, using UE5.

I've seen a few vids of that game.
Looks gorgeous, much better than ESO.

AzuraFan

It would be a game I probably wouldn't play. For some reason, some games using the Unreal engine make me feel nauseous when I play them. Doesn't happen with any other engine.

Stamicka

There is a reason that many MMOs are built with custom made engines. Don't let the beauty of Unreal 5 demo's warp your perception. Unreal 5 is not a magic tool. Yes, it could be used to make visually stunning games, but it would actually be a poor choice for something like ESO.

Say what you want about ESO, but Cyrodiil back in it's prime was pretty impressive. I remember keep fights with 100 people in the area all casting skills, siege being fired, walls being destroyed, it was chaotic. There was a lot going on and even the old generation consoles (PS4 and Xbox One) could allow you to play in the area relatively smoothly. This is likely mostly possible because the ESO devs made the engine with this type of thing in mind. They would not get the same results if they used Unreal or any other pre-existing engines.

ESO is also incredibly fast paced. You can do a light attack, skill, roll dodge all in one GCD if you wanted to. Of course performance has degraded over time, but there is currently no other game on the market that allows you to do what ESO does in terms of combat on such a large scale. The current engine already allows for some impressive features, I think people just take it for granted.

Unreal is good for certain types of games. It would allow you to make a visually stunning first person shooter for example. However, with a unique combat system like ESO has paired with the fact that ESO is an MMO, Unreal would be a horrible choice and the game would get worse.

Tannus15

There are literally multiple MMO's in development, including ashes of creation, which are using Unreal 5.

There are many reasons why it's not feasible to update ESO to unreal 5, but it's not because the engine would unsuitable.

Janni

Margha_Ralmoren wrote: »

Janni wrote: »

The only real difference would be that the devs would have to update from the familar code base they are intimately familiar with to to an all new one designed to work with unreal which means it would have even more bugs and glitches.

Epic wouldn't let developers completely in the dark. ZoS would have access to the Unreal Dev Network at least if they have questions. Since ZoS is a big company they may be able to hire a few Epic devs as consultants for a few days, a bit like when Quantic Dream had Sony programmers help them optimise their games for the Playstation. They would have to hire a few devs and progs who have already worked with Unreal, though.
The real nightmare would be to revamp and re-implement all of the assets in the game. Take one "small" task in this ocean of work: the facial animations. If they want to remake the characters in higher polys they might need a new facial rig, which mean re-generate the lipsync animations of the bajillion dialogue files. Even doing in in bulk with facefx it would take days. And then they'd have to plug all of them in UE5

That is a vast underestimation of what it would take to port an existing code-base to make it compatible with another engine. It's not simply a matter of asking some devs a few questions and sitting down to re-write a few things here and there. And as I said they would be moving from something everyone working at zos is currently intimately familiar with to something else completely. Even if the devs have experience with Unreal 5 they would still not have the specific experience of working on ESO in that context.

I agree that the artwork would also be a nightmare to manage. But who said anything about updating or upgrading artwork? You'd keep it the same. If they want updated artwork there is absolutely no reason to change the whole engine to do that. You just update... the artwork!

wolfie1.0.

Carlos93 wrote: »

What would the game be like if this engine was used?

Probably around 3 TB in size and not playable on anything other than a rtx 5090.

Stamicka

Tannus15 wrote: »

There are literally multiple MMO's in development, including ashes of creation, which are using Unreal 5.

There are many reasons why it's not feasible to update ESO to unreal 5, but it's not because the engine would unsuitable.

That game is being developed by someone who has never developed an MMO before. Who knows if it will even release. They also have different goals than ESO has. Not a good comparison.