No. Give me any evidence at all there is even a single game that is bad *because* it had good graphics. There are games that are bad, and there are games with good graphics - that those two intersect is correlation, not causation.

Graphics are good. I like them. However, they are not the best ones, but that's normal. This is a sandbox game, veeery big. To take and example of a game with better graohics... The Witcher 2. Yes, its graphics are great (and the game will bve as well for sure), but it's more linear, with smaller open spaces and all of that.

Skyrim has good graphics, which is saying a lot, considering how big is it. The same could be said about Oblivion for its times (I have seen people saying that they were breathtaking for the moment... which in my opinion is far from be true, if you look at Assassins Creed, for example), and about Morrowind.

Please tell me you're joking man..
Morrowind has better graphics than the current call of duty game.

Are you actually serious?! Maybe the overhaul version but not the original! Look at a comparison...

This is going to sound like we're in the House of Commons, except you've taken the gloves off

:biggrin:



Then go ahead and by all means do. Your opinion is extremely important to me.
Let's put it this way, just for the sake of argument:

Game quality = (Graphics quality) x (Gameplay quality).

This of course is an oversimplification. But it's not hard to accept this model, the compounding of the two variables in such a way. Unless you're prepared to defend that graphics quality is inversely proportional to gameplay quality, then yes, the better the graphics the better the game. That's what the equation states.
Great graphics don't necessarily translate to great game quality, even a good one for that matter. That's what the equation implies too. But it does state the better the graphics the better the game.
Sorry pal.

For those with a quick trigger and a revolver loaded with examples of games with great graphics and poor gameplay, usually FPS, let me ask you this. What's expected, gameplay wise, from a FPS?

Gameplay and graphics interact. But their quality is not inversely proportional. To accept this would be accepting that the highly specialized personnel of today's game teams use their time and expertise either on graphics or gameplay development. Are you sure about that? We are men of simple needs. Let us have great graphics and great gameplay.

And were you calling me stupid back there?
You do know trolling is not permitted here, don't you?

:biggrin:

The impression I have been getting is that the improvements in Skyrim can't be conveyed via screenshots. Lighting, dynamic snow, trees with varying abouts of sway and driection of sway. The list goes on; my point is that Skyrim will most likely will look fantastic and will be another step forwards for the series.

Can't wait.

Also, they already fixed my gripe with MW and OB, draw distance. Fantastic vistas abound now!

Are you serious?

http://web-vassets.ea.com/Assets/Richmedia/Image/Screenshots/BF3_StagingArea_GDC.jpg?cb=1300316624

Speaking of graphics, Am I the only one who really like the graphic style of serious sam 3?

http://media.pcgamer.com/files/2011/02/Serious-Sam-3-bloated-rocket-monster.jpg

http://media.pcgamer.com/files/2011/02/Serious-Sam-3-ugly-Cyclops.jpg

http://media.pcgamer.com/files/2011/02/Serious-Sam-3-ruined-apartments.jpg

Crysis. If they spent more time on gameplay and less on graphics, it might have been better than average, or even remembered as memorable *for the right reasons*

Jesus!
These look amazing!

Realistic lighting + High fantasy great art directied Monsters!

Jesus!

Amazing!

I said evidence, not opinions. Personally, I really liked Crysis, and objectively it certainly tried to do more than other FPS'. It was, at least, not a linear manshoot.

However, you've clearly missed my point. Would Crysis have been a better game if it had looked worse? Would putting graphics programmers on the gameplay design team be a good idea under any circumstance?

A dev has stated that hair is a tricky thing to do, when you're doing as much stuff as you can on screen at once at any given time in an Elder Scrolls game. I take it that hair isn't the only thing that can bog performance as well. Hair is a graphical feature. No matter what you say it's an opinion as well. I'll take the devs word. Thanks.

All you have said is true. However, I cannot see how that answers to his question, which is quite simple: will Skyrim be better with incredible-badass graphics or with... let's sat... Dagerfall's ones?

Graphics count. Not as much as gameplay and story, for me, but they do count.

That... has very little to do with anything? And certainly has no bearing on the discussion, either.

And no, "Do you have any evidence to back that up?" is not an opinion, it is a request. You're making claims - that a game with worse graphics would be a better game - and that requires evidence.
For example: If BGS did some awesome looking hair, would that make the game worse? No, it'd make it *run* worse. The game itself would be unchanged, albeit with prettier hair, because the people making fancy hair are not the ones in charge of game design. Having to make trade-offs for performance is absolutely not the same as graphics making a game worse.

The Witcher 2 doesn't look that visually impressive. It uses a few nice tricks that Skyrim doesn't use that catch the eye (like the hair physics) but that's because you have only one character so it can be much more fleshed out, against the multitude of custom created characters Skyrim has. On top of that, the textures are higher res but we've only seen the low-res 360 textures so here's to hoping the PC ones will be considerably higher resolution.

In terms of scenes and detail in those, Skyrim wins by a landslide. It has so much more detail put into every scene and the view distance is at least 10 times higher. All in all I'm way more impressed by what we've seen so far from Skyrim than from the Witcher 2.

Now what I'm impressed by most this year in the visual department is this demo trailer of the Unreal 3 Engine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSXyztq_0uM

That demo - which is of course uncomparable to Skyrim in any way - just looks incredible and better than anything I've seen, including the CryEngine though only marginally. And of course it's all dramatic camera angles and not actualy gameplay, but just seeing what they can get out of current day engines for PC is impressive to say the least.

Ok so if graphical features can make a game perform worse then yes, gameplay suffers. Thank you.

I'd appreciate a link to the post in question, a quick search hasn't turned anything up. In any case, you're telling me that you legitimately think that having pretty hair would actually make the gameplay worse?

edit: Okay, now I'm fairly sure you're doing this on purpose.

Making trade-offs for performance is *not* equatable to graphics vs gameplay. At all.
Let's pretend I have a magical infinity box that has all the resources in the universe and can run anything: Does that hair make the game worse?

Because we are not arguing about one particular feature, here, we are arguing about whether better graphics *inherently* cause gameplay to suffer.

There's more to how a game looks than just the graphics quality. I don't think Skyrim is among the greatest-looking games on the market when it comes to effects \ texture quality \ model quality, but it might still look stunning just by design. If the environments are detailed, varied, and atmospheric, and the weapons, armour, and creatures are well-designed, it could still look absolutely breathtaking.

It's in one of the hair threads from a few weeks back. A dev definitely said it. I'm on my phone so digging up that thread isn't feasible right now. If you don't believe it then so be it. I read it and that confirmed it for me, so you can argue against it all you want.

But it doesn't have to make the game worse at all... stuff like that can be optmised and all of that, it's just finding a solution! Seriously, I think that the point you are defending - that a game with worse graphics is better - is insane!

they are nice, no where near the best though.

No. Performance of the game suffers. The general aspects of gameplay don't suffer at all. That's like saying adding on OGE to Oblivion makes the core aspects of gameplay worse whenever the core aspects are retained.

Okay. Link please anyway. I have no doubt there's a teapot around Jupiter, but I'd like you to provide proof.

Maybe i got it wrong but the example you just gave happens entirely on the graphics domain. More deatiled graphics bog performance down, so no decent looking hair in order to have more important graphic stuff happening. It seems to me no gameplay is involved.
Also you're talking about performance, not development. In your opinion, how does a graphic designer and a graphics programmer taking the time to implement decent looking hair affect gameplay feature development? It will certainly take away time from other graphical stuff though.

Read my edit. I don't care if you believe it or not.I know what I read and others have seen it because there were lots of people in there discussing it.