I said no. It looks very good and I'm not going to complain about it, but I wasn't blown away or anything.

Whoa, what games are you playing? Not even big budget hollywood films can get faces right. Stiff animations? Compared to Oblivion, the animations are smooth as silk. Even Crysis 2 has stiff animations so it's a pretty unfair claim.

Yea I agree. Also, have we even seen enough PC's to even classify them as "stiff" or" uncanny"?

It lacks the Good enought answear.

This way it has been done it seems it only good or only bad.

There a lot of people who don t care so much of graphics.

It looks Good graphically, not spectacular.

Spectacular is BF3 or Crysis1/2.

Looks amazing in my opinion!

i cant believe so many people dont believe skyrim is amazing for the kind of game it is and how far along it is ;~;

For me it looks wonderful.

But some people are just hard to please. Hell I'd be pleased with Oblivion or FO3/NV graphics. Mmmhmm icing on the cake.

Considering the massive amount of detail put into this world and that it all can run with all kinds of things going on at once, this game looks amazing!

The new NPC's, the overall environment, and especially the character animations look way better than Oblivion. I have a feeling things will look much more polished this time around.

I have to say yes.
It may not be the best, but I think it looks better then some other games that overdo it with graphics and make it all look fake.

The thing about TES games, when compared to other modern games, is that if their graphics are just as good as other games today, then it's actually exponentially better. The reason is, other games have good graphics because they strictly limit the views/perspectives you as the player can have, and limit what you can see. In TES games, they have to account for the player being able to see anything in the game from any angle. You could stare at a fork, then an apple, then look out across a mountain, then go climb that mountain.

So really, Skyrim graphics are waaay better than any game out there today, because in Skyrim, they have to make an entire world with that level of graphics.

Meh, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Gawciha3jI
Gameplay starts around 3 minutes in. Anyway, THAT looks spectacular, and should look even better come a week or two when they release the Dx11 patch. It also looks pretty damned good on consoles, a lot better than Skyrim. So... Skyrim's once again going to be behind the times on looking pretty. As long as is it's fun that's fine, if they would just release some gameplay stuff other than 15 second cuts from a trailer or vague promises to a bunch of magazines...

Just Cause 2, Crysis, GTAIV, Red Dead Redemption, so on disagree with you. There are very pretty open world games out there.

Skyrim is graphically superior too GTAIV.

It's really too early to make that call, but the trailer doesn't show that. http://www.f-rouz.de/data/gta4-maxviewdistance.png looks http://extreme.pcgameshardware.de/attachments/49003d1228418169-pcgh-de-gta-4-pc-grafikeinstellungen-im-vergleich-plus-systemanforderungen-gtaiv-2008-12-04-19-58-23-07.jpg. In any case, there are many other graphically superior open world games.

And, of course, mods make it http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2502059/Misc/GTAIV.jpg.

I think it looks spectacular, I don't see why people need to compare it to other games to decide if it's spectacular or not. For me spectacular doesn't necessarily mean "very innovative graphics wise", it is spectacular because it features spectacular places with spectacular things happening, the value is in the setting itself not in the execution.

I'd agree but this is a graphics thread.

The animations (particularly enemy animations in response to hits) are the most impressive. Graphically? It looks like a slightly improved Oblivion. While the models are crisper, the lighting is still over saturated.

I wish they had tried to diverge more from that, and gone for a darker, grittier world. Maybe they don't want to look too much like Gothic and Dragon Age, but right now they are straddling between those titles and more stylized, fairy tale fantasy like Fable.

Of course it looks like a slightly improved Oblivion. It's the same world, I think it should have elements of Oblivion and Morrowind in it. And each title that comes out in the series should continue this trend but should be an improvement over the previous one. Gears of War 3 is an improvement over 1 and 2, but I still enjoy playing the first one and still think it looks pretty darn good. Same with Morrowind, I can still pop that game back on and while the graphics are now sub-par, they are still very scenic and nice to look at. Gothic has steadily improved from 1 through 3. I played the Arcania demo on 360 and wasn't too impressed. Seemed to have a very poor framerate. I'd say Gothic 3 was on par with Oblivion, graphically. Fable is a totally different art style...more cartoony to me. As for Dragon Age, I loved the series, but graphically, I'd put them somewhere between Morrowind and Oblivion, and Origins came out like 4 or 5 years after Oblivion or something. Dragon Age: Origins is a great example of how a great story can make up for sub-par and bland graphics.

All this taken aside, this is a thread about the quality of graphics in Skyrim. So here's my take on it. Leaving out PC hardware as well as PC mods and downloadable texture packs, until we see some new console hardware come out, game devs are unfortunately going to be limited in the level of graphics in their games. I'm sorry to say this PC users and I feel you are justified in your disappointment (bearing in mind that I am a console gamer), but VG companies are going to develop simultaneously on multiple platforms to increase revenue, so until new console hardware comes out I feel that gamesas has created a visually stunning game based on the old hardware they've had to work with and the myriad other things they have going on in their game.

A yes/no poll on a subject like this is pretty much pointless, the world is not black and white

It looks pretty good but i wouldn't say spectacular. Games with graphics around the level of Crysis 2 look spectacular. Skyrim "just" looks good.

Open world games like Skyrim don't really need to be all about the graphics. I think the graphics only need to be good enough to where it doesn't break the sense of immersion.
When a game makes you say "Wow, that doesn't look good" is when you need to worry about graphics.
Don't expect Skyrim to compete with Crysis, because it doesn't want to.

Good? Yes. Spectacular? No. Anxious to see more though.