It doesn't look photorealistic (or anything close), to me, and I have seen better graphics in games, but I still think the graphics of Skyrim are very good and I'm pleased with them.

Yes Cryengine 3 is a complete failure.. it was like running Crysis vanilla on medium settings.

Cryengine 2 is still and prolly will be the best looking engine there is. comparison of photo-game http://www.incrysis.com/incgallery/374.jpg

Sounds "open" as in "Fable open"

The graphics are very impressive (mostly because of the draw distance and detail), but they aren't the best to ever be produced. Battlefield 3 and The Witcher 2 alone are more graphically impressive than Skyrim. I suppose Crysis and Crysis 2 are as well, although I do not own either of those games. Mass Effect 3 will also be up there graphically, as the last in the trilogy looks the most polished and crisp yet. It's not because BGS slacked off in comparison to other developers either, but because DICE and CD Projekt Red, in particular, strived to make the most quality PC experience humanly possible. BGS is a multi-platform developer, so as a result systems (in particular graphics) will be compromised so that all can enjoy the same experience. It's not that big of a deal, as graphics are more for eye candy than anything else, but they definitely make the experience more pleasant and longer-lasting.

Art direction is also pivotal for the overall presentation of graphics. Skyrim is definitely in the running of current games, but it's not the best to ever be produced.

Yeah, "Come see our huge open world and explore any and all of our corridors in any order you wish."

My oblivion looks better lol. With obgev2 giving godrays, ssao, colour mood and DOF along with qarls3 and tree replacers anyway. The texture quality in the screenshots looks cartoonish and unrealistic, the only improvment over my oblivion is the shadows, and the pre release oblivion had those too so they will likely be removed if history has taught me anything.

Your not very good at history are you? They aren't working with a pre-release Xbox dev kit this time. Oblivion was constructed based on an estimate that MS would release a console that matched the current PC hardware. They didn't. Oblivion had to be scaled back in more ways than one because of this. They are relaxed as hell this time around because it's all smooth sailing. Everything you've seen WILL be in the game, count on it.

Does 5+ years experience with current hardware mean nothing?

I'm not sure where this whole witcher 2 has better graphics stuff is coming from. Yeah it looks good but they have released tons of screen shots for it and LONG video of in depth game play footage where you get to look at an animated area for a long time look at the textures, lighting, surroundings ect. Skyrim has a dozen or so screens an a short trailer with some real brief looks at various areas never really letting you concentrate much on an area. There is no video of a character walking around in the woods looking up at the sun, the shadows, the water and everything else. So anyone who says witcher 2 looks better is just stating an opinion and a somewhat unfair one since 15 times the amount of game play footage has been shown to even compare. I was not blown away impressed with it, will skyrim be better? not certain but I like the art direction much better. So far though even though it should footage the skyrim trailer was more of a teaser 2 to build excitement.

As far as actual TES graphics I installed oblivion again after 2 years and it looked pretty dated you get outside and it really hits you. However I went and got all of the graphic mods and now it looks as good or better than a lot of new games. That is part of why I might upgrade my machine for Skyim I'm sure I can handle the game pretty well when it ships but can I handle it with the ridiculous graphic mods people put out because to me that is a large part of the fun. Watching the game actual get better in graphics 2-3 years down the line and keep up with or surpass other newer games.

That's why i don't mind "the parity of systems" because Bethedsa is already thinking of us first by designing the entire engine around the modularity needed to achieve plug and play asset replacements(upgrades). Technically you could upgrade nearly every asset that ships with the game to higher resolution/quality.

I dont understand the downplay of the graphics. Weather its being to used to playing ob packed with graphics mods or ppl trying so hard not to be fanbois, but its a cold hard fact that skyrims vanilla graphics are way way better than obs vanilla graphics.

Im not gonna lie graphics are a huge part of the game for me (and for most of you too), why else would we put the best parts into our pcs that we can afford? You could just look at the min specs and go with that, theres no need to fib to us were all in this forum for the same thing. Just because there are other games with better graphics does not mean that these are just ok.

With that being said, graphics alone will not win this goty. ( and any othergame for that matter)

Or....

"OMG have you played, Another Realm(Random game name I made up)? The graphics are so outdated they look like freaking Skyrim, total trash polygon count!"

lol

BECAUSE crysis 1 doesn't look better, have larger scale, better physics than crysis 2 or anything...lawl.

Also Osama bin laden is dead so i think the mods should let me post this

AMERICA F@CK YEAH!

Also the "the parity of systems" idea, well why, why hold a game graphics/physics to the lowest common denominator.

Um because you would chop your audience into thirds if you dont

No you wouldn't, BF3 is putting a good effort into the PC version with dx10.1/11 only, but there still will be a console version of the game they are simply not giving themselves limitations with what they can do.

Also no matter what happens as long as bethesda takes the "it will look about the same on all platforms" approach SKYRIM WILL NOT look better than the Witcher 2, since the witcher 2 is a PC exclusive built around mid/high range pc's. BUT after the mod tools are released THAT MAY CHANGE DEPENDING on how far modders can tweak the game (ie if bethesda throws in DX11 shaders but don't implement the effects ingame) BUT ONE MUST REMEMBER the witcher 2 will also have a full SDK release.

It's weird that people say that older games look bad. I still play all my old games and think they look great... With a lot of the games it adds an ambiance that is just missing now. It's fun to see how far we've progressed but graphics definitely don't stop me from playing a good game. However.. I do think eye candy has created a bunch of crap games.. People get caught up in "look at the shiny."

Basically now it's come down to how the graphics are artistically or aesthetically created.. Some people may see things they don't find appealing and then claim that the game has bad graphics when really all they are complaining about is the art of the game world.
I always wonder how far we will actually be able to go with game graphics. If it gets to a point where you truly can't tell a game from reality are you still playing a game?

To your last question yes; think star trek holo decks you still know whats going on.

Also i think this thread is based over technical aspects of graphical rendering. So it's not a gameplay argument but a pure graphical discussion.

I think I see your point but as far as I know the aproach that dice is taking with bf3 is not the norm and while it excites me (have plans to put my pc into beast mode) im still pretty sceptical about how it will be received and weather it really will be that much better.

On the PC i predict extremely high sales, and on the consoles relatively high sales probably a bit more than BC2.

The graphics are good, but not the most amazing. I'm not really bothered by the water, because people will make awesome water mods.

We all know why the graphics isn't as good as it could be.

They are stuck using the same old hardware that they used for Oblivion, hence a lot of limitations.
Even though there are other console games that look "better" they are also less in scope and doesn't have all the other stuff.

I am a PC player but the game will still look good, it's not bad actually, just not as good as it could've been.

Hopefully PC will get good high-res textures that will mask some of the low graphical detail. I hate blurry console textures.
Otherwise we might get some nice textures by modders and that usually helps a lot.

Qarl , I hope you're still in the mood to make a new texture pack with some nice displacement mapping and such. :bowdown:

Judging by the quality of the character models and textures I'd venture that is what we can expect across the board for PC and if that is the case then it will be a challenge for the community to top their character models and textures.

They're not perfect, but I'm not looking for perfect. What I'm looking for is graphics that require the same (or less) graphical power as Oblivion, but simply with better art. Art is really what makes something look good, after all.

Skyrim's graphics are a huge improvement over Oblivion's. (Since the trailer was shot on 360 I'm sure it'll look a bit better on PC)
Sure games like Red Dead have great graphics but you also have to consider red dead redemption's game world is hardly 1/2 of the size of Cyrodiil.
I play on 360 and honestly in my opinion Oblivion still has great graphics (considering it was released in early 2006),and Skyrim looks fantastic too.