They appear to be much improved. At the end of the day, animations, graphics, and technical things mean nothing next to the gameplay. Gameplay is all that matters to me (and to everyone eventually - you'll learn the difference as you get older).

Actually they did initially say exactly that. I believe the quote was something like “We can now confirm that the TES V: Skyrim engine is all-new. And it looks fantastic." And this quote “It’s a new graphics/gameplay engine built internally. We’ll have more details down the road.”

You can't tell anything about the scene graph... but hey at least if they built a new renderer, an updated physics engine, new animation engine, and an entirely new gameplay engine, it's going in the right direction.

As I get older? I'm turning 23 this August. By no means am I a seasoned veteran by age standards, but I've still been playing games for well over half my life. That's a decade and a half of gaming. Age, if anything, is much to the contrary. As a person growing up playing Pac Man and being absolutely awestruck by it, I would assume he/she would learn to appreciate game play and story more than graphical prowess due to being used to the limitations of the past. This is simply not the case anymore. Oblivion did so well with the press due to its graphical capabilities. By no means did it ever get an award for best game mechanics or animation. So, I would almost go as far to say that age works against this philosophy. As I get older, and I am used to beautifully rendered game worlds, I expect a certain standard now, and I find it much more economical to rid ourselves of holding on to tradition and familiarity in favor of technological advancement.



What Bethesda means by "new" is not the same as we think. Todd has never specifically said that they rebuilt it from scratch. To my knowledge, they took the old engine and renderer, refined it, retooled it, and with all the changes and developments they saw happening, they renamed it "The Creation Engine". I would be willing to bet that a lot of the Gamebryo code is still present in the fundamental areas that count. Otherwise, the press, as well as myself, wouldn't be seeing the similarities and flaws that we are, and commenting on them.

The press has had mainly great things to say about the graphics and animations, minus an instance or two, and the game is 6 months out. That bodes well for me.

Am I the only one who doesn't give a [censored] if the animations are slightly clunky?

I played Morrowind and Oblivion because of the open world and the gameplay not because of the ultra-realistic fighting sequences which they never claimed (and have not with Skyrim) to offer. That what makes Morrowind and Oblivion still bearable to play, enjoy and love. Besides the graphics and a least the simple third-person animations have definately improved and will offer a outstandingly beautiful world to immerse yourselves in.

In response to the questions asked in the last paragraph:

Yes you are massively over anolysing. You make a slightly valid but mostly hysterical and over-reactive point. ..plauged with mediocrity'? what? are you mental? The Elder Scrolls series has never boasted about its animation and no-one choses not to play the series because of slightly clunky animations... the whole point of the game is that the story, side missions and immersive world are the main attractions: its an RPG, not a fighting game and Bethesda's only ever tried to make the fighting and animations fun and bearable to look at, not the best gaming animations out there.

You can't really claim that TES' animations should be 'ahead of the game'? What 'game'? Bethesda is the only developer and ES the only game that offers such a large, expansive open world and it would be wrong to compare the animations to any other game as the size of the content limits what the developers can do with the animations and it is not their main objective when creating a new game.

Look.... I'm not trying to be too invective here. I kind of agree that the animations are slightly off (although the extent at which you anolysed it is ridiculous). Looking at the animations in that much detail is only going to ruin the game for you. I can tell already that you are bound to be disappointed come release. No matter what the animations are like Skyrim will offer the most immersive and enjoyable world to date and you should take solace in that...

Yeah, absolutely. I agree. 99% of it was positive. But the main areas of criticism had to do with exactly what I'm saying. Why is it such a big deal if I bring it up for debate? If Todd Howard said "we need to work on our animations because they don't look as good as they should", everyone would rejoice and agree. But because I am a die hard fan trying to bring up healthy criticism, I get attacked for making "incredible" claims and "not being able to see properly", among other things. This is simply uncalled for. But yes, I do hope that the dev team at Beth can address many of these things before launch. We'll see.



And you know this, or are you assuming this?

Regardless of what your beliefs are on what people should and shouldn't enjoy about a game... again.. Bethesda is a massive team. Yes, their games are much larger than most in terms of content. That's why they have dedicated teams appointed to ironing out specific features. After all this time, not once have I been impressed by their game mechanics or the feel of their games while playing them, and this poses a problem. They get away with using their story as a backbone. Fantastic. More games should have great stories. But at the same token, they are also disguising their poorly designed game logistics with content instead of fine tuning everything for a healthy balance in mind. See what I'm getting at?

And I'm going to enjoy Skyrim immensely. I've said this 100 times now. I'm not hating on your favourite developer for the sake of being the odd one out. I'm being anolytical, and comparing it to the standard that has been available for half a decade now. They should at least be developing underlying mechanics that can compete. And instead, we let their AAA titles get away with pulling a veil over our eyes because we all enjoyed the story so much, even though our characters and NPCs were mindless, awkwardly flailing constructs of putty? Come on... see what I mean? I just expect more than this, and it is NOT the be all, end all.. it is just something I've noticed and I'm having a go with.

Thanks for the interpretation. but what are you basing your knowledge about the new engine on? Haha, j/k. I don't want to send you off on a google search finding Todd quotes about the "new engine".

You mean Creation Engine. The Kit is just an interface tool for world building and writing plugin/master files.


I'm not betting anything. Sure it's believable and quite possible. But it isn't a fact. You got source? no? well then. I also believe it'll be confusing because all the references to the nif format and it's naming conventions will still be in place. I doubt they rewrote those blocks. I mean their reasoning for keeping to the nif format is, It works, and our modders know it well. Which implies they want to retain the data setup. :shrug: beyond that specifically, I thinks it's speculation.

I personally really hope that the gamebryo method of playing animations and the limitations of it's animation engine are sorted. There were weird things with character scale and animation speed, I didn't really understand how it worked. and then there is bit of diagonalness going on. :shrug: we'll see.


Actually he did say something like that. Last summer, And I did rejoice.

Todd Howard: "There's always stuff to improve. If I had to take a step back, I think our worlds are very good, I think we're on the cutting edge as far as that goes. When it comes to the characters and the animation, I think there are other people who do it much, much better. That's something we've put a lot of time into - not just technology but people and talent, and how long we spend doing individual elements.

How other characters behave and look on the screen is the next thing people need to do better. There are people doing it really well, but by and large the environments look good and it's just getting people to behave in those environments better."

Hopefully they can address the "many" things? The ONLY animation that was pointed out to be "iffy" us the melee combat in a couple of the dozen or so previews.

I'm not worried.

IGN - "It's clear Bethesda's spent time working on the animations with its new Creation engine, as the sword swings and mace slams of combat have a more natural look."

Rock, Paper, Shotgun - "....and even your character’s hands are wonderfully animated – a far cry from the forever-clenched fists of so many games."

Eurogamer - "Bethesda's games have sometimes been criticised for their awkward character models and arthritic animation, but that should be moot once Skyrim resets your expectations. Switching to third-person (you can play the game in first or third), it's immediately clear that the protagonist's movements hold their own against any other third-person adventure. All the NPCs do likewise. Argument over, hopefully."

CVG - "We come across a bloke hauling massive logs in a lumber-yard, for example, which makes for a more impressive showcase of graphics and animation compared to typical AI townsfolk in other games who often do little more than wonder round waiting to be interacted with."

G4 - "Howard switches to third-person to not only show off his character but more importantly to show off the game’s new Havok-based character animation system, which is instantly affecting as you see the character’s arm and neck muscles pulse realistically as he strolls with a rugged sense of purpose. The improvements made to the character movements and animations aren’t just cosmetic either."

Yeah, I meant to edit that once I saw it. Engine and Kit are separate tools, I know haha. My mistake.

And great Todd quote by the way. I vaguely remember him saying that, actually. It was exciting. But, again, what I'm seeing from Skyrim, although it's much better than Oblivion, it still looks incredibly similar to it, and it's worrying me.

And you're right.. the Creation Engine's capabilities at this point are mostly speculation. But for me, a "new" engine is the new Unreal Engine, or id Tech 5. The Creation Engine still looks awfully similar to Gamebryo, apart from graphical improvements. I need to be reassured for certain that the mechanics and underbelly of Gamebryo's animation toolset is gone, and even then I would still wonder why the similarities are present.



Yes, I've read all of those. But you have to realize, with all this in mind, anything Bethesda could have done to improve the animations over Oblivion or Morrowind would have been received this way. It's progress. And although it's getting there, the criticism I saw talking about the combat feeling awkward and hit detection being off, as well as animation practices still needing work, also help in this case. That's why this is debate.

I'm 29 and that will never make me stop caring about that stuff, because they add an extra layer of artistic freedom, immersion/atmosphere, opens up gameplay possibilities, etc. That stuff will always be important no matter how old I get. Please don't act like age makes people see the light as if to see those things as unimportant. That comes down to individual preference, not maturity.

However, I've read the original post, and although I like Helion Tide, I can't see any of the problems he is referring to as being below the current standard. The animations aren't perfect in that they're held back maybe by current tech, but they're far better and more life like than any of the past Elder Scrolls games, and they do stand up to current games that are out, at least in the console department. The dragon animation at the end does not look oddly stiff to me at all in the way he described. The sword fights look good to me, I don't see any of the strangely exaggerated contortions he speaks of, and the stealth kill in the tavern looks equivalent to other current games. I just don't see any major problems with it that I haven't seen in even the best animated games that are currently out. I agree that there are improvements to made in gaming in general including this game, but nothing SPECIFIC or major problem animations in this game as far as I can tell. I am artistic, however not an animator, but still... nothing sticks out to me as overly odd in the trailer as far as the animations went.

Skyrimmer to the rescue! Thanks!

'And you know this?'

Nooo... I'm being optimistic. It's fun, try it...

'They get away with using their story as a backbone'
Yes the animations are a little bit bad, but not so much that it needs a massive, costly and time consuming overhaul (IMO, yours obviously differs). I don't see it as though the story is 'pulling a veil' over the (ever-so-slightly) bad animations, it's just that the story and the context is the main focus of the game. You don't critise Call of Duty for having an unrealistic single player and poor RPG elements because that's not the focus of the game (that is a bit of a bad example - excuse me).

The underlying mechanics can compete - with games with a similar focus of story and game world. (Mass Effect - clunky animations. I don't know of any more games that are of a similar style to ES, even Mass Effect has a different focus)

I'm not looking for the best animations out there, I just want them to be bearable (which in my opinion they are), and I obviously differ from you in that respect.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.

Morrowind and Oblivion's animations were sub-par for their time. Thinking anything else is deluded, as games years older than Oblivion and Morrowind had significantly better animations. Not so much morrowind, but hundreds of games before Oblivion had better animations. Oblivion's animations were WELL below average when it came out. Heads need to roll in Beth's animation department. They have consistently been the absolute weakest part of Bethesda's creative team. In every single Bethesda game I have played (everything starting with Morrowind) the animations have been the absolute weakest part of the game's art assets. People need to be replaced. The team they have now is not up to par with the rest of the industry or even the rest of Bethesda. You don't run a business by keeping people you like but do sub-par work around.

EDIT: "Bearable" or "Not glaringly horrible" are unacceptable. Bethesda is a big company with a LOT of money. They can afford better animators.

This. So much this.

It's nice to see someone not attacking me or slandering me for being some delusional naysayer trying to ruin everyone's day.

Sorry for being a bit of a perfectionist. But with 100+ people working on a AAA title, I would expect a higher standard.

Melee combat will make up 50% or more of the combat experience. This is not a small issue.

And now I finally realize how you almost have 5000 posts on this forum in 4 months time. All your posts here so far have been arrogant, useless, single line sentences trying to make yourself seem more credible based on biased opinion and negativity towards criticism. You have not helped this debate veer in any direction what so ever, other than to increase your post count and slander my anolysis without a healthy rebuttal that didn't involve shallow sarcasm beyond a single sentence.

Higher standard than what? what I've seen in the trailer? looks aight to me. I am reserving judgement till later.

Sorry you feel that way and thanks for attacking me. I respect your opinion, you obviously don't respect mine. I just don't agree with the "problems" you've pointed out. So who's the shallow one?

The problem lies with expecting next-gen animation for a current-gen game. The only game I can think of with next-gen animation is Battlefield 3, and that's still far from perfect.

Bethesda's animators have never been of a particularly high standard. They create multi-million dollar products, and have an absolutely massive team. They can afford to pay industry-leading animators and programmers to ensure their game play doesn't stand on a crutch after its been received and people start criticizing it for what it was, after the fact.

Looking "alright" is unacceptable if people are going to be paying $60 for it across all platforms, possibly making hardware upgrades if they're on a PC and want to play it smoothly, etc.

@LukeSkyrimmer.. the problem is NOT with expecting "next-gen" anything. Everything right now is "current" -- not once was I expecting Bethesda to pump out an engine as sophisticated as id Tech or the new Unreal engine with all its DX11 awesomeness. There are already loads of games out there .. yes, CURRENT GEN .. blowing Oblivion and Skyrim away in terms of believable, high quality animations and underlying mechanics.

and @Dragonborn1 .. sorry, but I'm just stating what I'm seeing. All off your input so far towards me has been short, arrogant, and just rude. I didn't mean for it to come off as an "attack".

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time came out years before Oblivion. It was on the PS2. Not the Xbox 360 or PS3. Those weren't even . That game had better animation than Oblivion by a LOT, and so did Shadow of The Colossus. If you want a current gen example, see Mirror's Edge, any of the Assassin's Creed games, or even the Prince of Persia game from 2008. Actually, you know what? Pick out any AAA game on the market. Most of them have better animations. We're not expecting "next-gen animation." We're expecting animation good enough to be called last-gen.

The animation can more than be considered good enough for last gen.

I think you seriously need to have a look at some video of birds in flight. Your observations are clouded by what you expect to see rather then basing them on actual real world mechanics which the animation is clearly based on.

Todd said they had since hired talent and improved tech. all this talk of hiring new animators seems moot as apparently they already fulfilled that for Skyrim.

aight. :disguise:

No, it can't. Go play the other two games from the Sands of Time Trilogy. Or any of the Jak and Daxter games. TONS of AAA Playstation 2 / Xbox 1 games have better animations than Oblivion, and possibly Skyrim. Games had better animations than Oblivion since before the Xbox360 was even a thing you could buy.