Creation Engine

The Creation Engine is an engine created by Bethesda Softworks based on the Gamebryo engine. It has been utilized for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Fallout 4, and Fallout 76.

Background
Bethesda worked with technology company Nvidia to implement volumetric lighting through a technique that makes use of hardware tessellation. Bethesda Game Studios Austin was tasked with modifying the Creation Engine to support multiplayer content in preparation for the development of Fallout 76.

In addition to the network changes to the engine used in Fallout 4, the Fallout 76 implementation of the engine was described at the game's E3 reveal as having "all new rendering, lighting, and landscape technology". The improvements allow for a 16× increase in detail and the ability to view unique weather systems occurring at a distance.

Bethesda revealed in June 2021 that they were working on a new iteration of the engine called the Creation Engine 2, and that it would power upcoming games Starfield and The Elder Scrolls VI.

Features

 * Havok Physics is a flexible animation tool that allows the developers to blend animations. This means that animations such as walking and running can be blended together seamlessly to make the animations look much more realistic. This important addition enabled Bethesda to improve character animations in their games.
 * An upgraded version of Radiant AI allows non-player characters (NPCs) to dynamically react and interact with the world around them. The player can observe an NPC eat breakfast, go to work, go to the pub, and then go to sleep. The improved AI allows NPCs to react to the player's actions and they can become friendly or hostile to the player.
 * Radiant Story allows for NPCs to dynamically create new quests for the player in unexplored places.

Creation Kit
The Creation Kit is the official editor used to modify or create content for Skyrim as well as Fallout 4. The Creation Kit was released April 2016.

Behind the scenes
During the development of Fallout: New Vegas, project director Joshua Sawyer at Obsidian Entertainment was aware of Bethesda's experimentation with the Creation Engine, but they did not have the time to work with it for New Vegas.

Gallery

 * From Bethesda.net blog Graphics Technology of Fallout 4