It is beautiful, and weren't the trailer shot with the Xbox360? Thats amazing right there.

I suppose I should preface this by saying that I'm a console player, but by assessment, the Elder Scrolls games are huge. They're the most open world of open world games I've ever played. There MUST be numerous statistics to keep track of because of the RPG aspect of it, not to mention the immense freedom involved. Basically, it's massive, more so than any other game. So, Crisis level visuals may not be realistic. I don't know. However, Skyrim is the best looking game of it's type as far as I can tell. I'm not including Red Dead Redemption or games like it necessarily in this assessment. I'm considering pretty much just Bethesda RPG's, and next to those massive games, Skyrim is so very much prettier than any other game like it that I'm familiar with, so I'm more than happy with it. If it looks better than what I've seen so far, it's just icing on the cake. And this is coming from someone that was not happy with Oblivion's visuals when it was released (despite them being revolutionary at the time given the genre) and especially the Fallout's because they weren't much of an improvement. The awful animations, bland textures, and in Oblivion in paritcularly, the horrid pop-in visuals really held those games back for me. So again, after all that, I'm more than happy with Skyrim's visuals and everything else they seem to be fixing.

Okay, I know you said no "ifs", "Ands", or "Buts", but!


Skyrim doesn't look jaw-droppingly gorgeous (At least so far), it looks great, but, for example Crysis 2, blows it out of the water.

However, I think perspective is incredibly important, Crysis 1 and Crysis 2 are little more than TechDemos of Crytek's engine, they show all sparkle time happy hour, with maybe some semi-entertaining gunplay involved, but little else in the way of depth or non-superficial world design. Something as seemingly benign as placing an item in a certain spot, and being able to come back hours, or even days later, to find that item where you put it, is something so few games ever even try to do, much less do and still look pleasant, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.


So Skyrim looks great, but that it can look great and still (Probably, it is an assumption, but the circumstances of the game is evidence) do all the things a TES game has to do is simply a technological marvel.

... That's bassically what I was trying to say. Completely agree, obviously.

Pretty much how I feel. This isn't the kind of game that really has spectacular graphics.

It looks incredible to me. When I showed it to my cousin he was stunned. My nephew did notice the water, but that's one minor detail in tons of stunning footage.

I think it looks great,and I know the infamous waterfall will amazing too!

No, it doesn't look spectacular. It looks exactly the same as Oblivion with dynamic shadows and fog. Nehrim even looks better than the landscape in Skyrim video. I just played Oblivion today without any mods and a lot of places I could see had almost the exact graphics as in the trailer. Witcher 2 looks spectacular, Skyrim doesn't and won't. It will look like modded Oblivion.

Nothing compared to the looks of Oblivion when that one was released, lol. Now that was spectacular at that time.

Graphicswise? It's alright. Stylewise? It's between quite good and freaking awesome. About halfway.

its looks great, so does Gothic 3 and quake 4

it just has good graphics :shrug:

isn't that good enough!!

as long as it runs on my PC I will be the happiest camper around

I think it looks freaking spectacular! :ahhh: The mist in combination with the mountains is like nothing I've ever seen.

I think it looks great.

But for me, graphics takes a back seat. Normal Oblivion graphics on the 360 is still fine for me even now, because the world is so massive. Could they be better? Well, sure. Graphics will continue to move forward as techniques and technology gets better. But solid graphics is all that's really needed for me when we're talkinga bout a world of Oblivion or Skyrim's size. Its the fact that you can look to the horrizon, seeing the mountains and valleys beyond and know you can go there that's the cool part.

The fact that Skyrim is simply an improvement over Oblivion, with people who look like people no less, means I'm a happy camper.

This is absolutely false. I'm not trying to attack you or anything, I just think it's obvious that Skyrim looks far superior to Oblivion. Textures are far superior to Oblivion's quite bland textures, draw distance seems to be pushed out MUCH further, geometry is better, artistic design is better, lighting is better, spell effects are better if the flames under the player's feet are any indication. Everything as far as we can tell from the trailer is much better from a technical standpoint. Now whether or not that's good enough for you, me, or anyone else is another matter, because the debate I gather is whether or not it's possible to do more and if what's there, as far as we can tell, is good enough. But it's definitely better looking than Oblivion. I would think that anyone who is being reasonable would at least agree with that much. I understand if you want more, but to say it looks exactly like Oblivion or a modded Oblivion I feel is completely dishonest. Am I honestly wrong here?

Agreed 100% with this statement. I think for what it's trying to achieve it's amazing. I'm not ab expert but I would imagine that they're somewhat restricted with the vast size and depth of the game.

Do we want a normal size skyrim with these graphics (which are stil fantastic)

Or do we want a couple of towns size game with crysis graphics?

The witcher 2...pffft didn't look to spectacular to me at all.

Looks good, but no, it doesn't look "spectacular". Doesn't have to either.

I think it looks pretty graphically spectacular. I don't mean like "aewsome shaderz bro" or "high polys pwn", I mean the art direction and the whole way the world is set up looks pretty spectacular to me. The new fog system is great, the cities that look like they're actually built into the environment are awesome, and I think over all the game just looks great.

Thing is a lot of games have really cool distant mountains which make their scenes look even better, but the best thing about Skyrim is I can look at one of those really cool mountains and I can hike to it, and then up it.

No. The "new engine" looks exactly like Gamebryo, and the animations and textures look the same. I'm disappointed on the graphical side of Skyrim

Spectacular? No.
But I don't think there are any xbox 360 games these days that would qualify for "spectacular", so I'll wait for PC footage.

And what exactly does Gamebryo look like?

It looks like ones and zeros. I'm not surprised the new engine looks the same.

i dont know about spectacular, but the graphics are looking very good considering the trailer was shot in early stages and on xbox360. But to me graphics is not everything so i am quite happy with the way they are shaping up

Yeah you'd think they would try to move on to twos and threes, but no they just have to keep it like lame Gamebryo.

That's why I said it looks like modded Oblivion. Geometry, artistic design, animations, view distance, textures can be modded. Looking exactly the same as Oblivion I obviously meant enginewise. It's pretty stupid to say tell me that Skyrim doesn't look like Oblivion because the geometry and artistic design is better. anologic is to say that Oblivion's clothes mod doesn't have Oblivion's graphics because the clothes design is better.
I don't want more, I'm just saying the graphics aren't actually a huge improvement from Oblivion. Improvement is that they now put more effort to animations and models, have few improved effects like dynamic shadows, some shaders and physx, but overall it still looks the same. There is not much to debate wether it's possible or not to do more, because it's made to run on xbox360, which is a piece of junk. And since Elder Scrolls has already a huge fanbase and appeals to casual players, it's of course smarter to create a game less demanding.

Sorry but I have to say IF
IF you say things like " that bit of water is terrible, it looks so flat", and " oh no, that's +1 anti-aliasing", then Skyrim does not look good, but
IF you are like me, an old gamer who has seen graphics evolve for 30 odd years, still thinks Ocarina of Time looks good enough, and still watches sunsets in Oblivion, then Skyrim does indeed look amazing.