As a ISF certified tech, I pro calibrate all my displays, the game is quite dark if your Monitor/TV is calibrated properly.
Facts show that most peple have there Displays way to bright/poorly calibrated.
And if your display isn't calibrated properly turning down the brightness will usually look bad because of luma/chroma crush.

Also torches don't work for dual sword buolds, or two handed weapon builds.

I'm happy with the light level, just like I was in Oblivion and Fallout 3. Dark enough that light sources (like Candlelight spell) are useful to search the shadowy corners, but bright enough that you 1) get Dramatic Lighting!?, and 2) can actually see all the fancy architecture & design they made.


I've looked at the sample pics for some of those "dark dungeons / dark nights" mods, and I've never understood why anyone would want that. But, hey - at least it's a mod, so it's not forced on me. :tongue:

Well, I suppose the reason people like darkness is because it's just a bit silly to be able to see at all times even underground or on a moonless, overcast night, without any sort of light source. There should be no light without light sources in the game. I'm not even sure how anybody could argue otherwise.

Seeing as how most caves are bandit caves populated with humans it makes sense there a little brighters. I think HDR shadows would help more than anything other than just turning the brightness knob down.

I loved in Morrowwind how you had to use torches in the sewers of Vivec. It was scary as hell, i remember hearing this moaning through the sound of running water, which got louder as i slowly creped further in. All of a sudden a hideous creature i have never seen before starts charging at me, eyes wide open, a corprus stalker. As it came into the light of my torch i could finally see what it was, and i literally screamed. If dungeons were dark and scary, dungeon crawls would become a hell of alot more entertaining.

People need to mix elements in Amensia the Dark Descent into dungeons. They look beautiful, but I don't feel any excitement in doing them. The puzzles are really lame or simplistic, and theirs no story or secrets in almost all of them (Not including quest ones.) And the scary or adventurous feeling you get from sounds, music (Excluding awesome battle-music.), or epicness simply runs dry after your first 10 dungeons.

I for one am willing to spend countless hours modifying light values for each dungeon like done in Oblivion mods... More tediously boring than difficult but until CK comes out who knows what they changed for lighting and if it might be more similar to Real Lights mod. (probably not)

Further to my initial post, I should think that more difference between light & dark areas in dungeons would make them look better - imagine realising, through a "reveal", that there's a large lake in the dungeon that you couldn't see before. It might be revealed by the reflection of a camp fire that's on a bridge or something. As it is, I can see everything in the cave as soon as it's onscreen. More dark please

Because it's a game. And gameplay trumps "realism" every single time. Pitch darkness with tiny circles of light might be good gameplay for a horror game. But for a general adventuring game? There's no need for that kind of atmosphere - being able to actually see what's going on, where you are, and what the Nifty Dungeon looks like are far more important than some trivial "but in real life it would be Dark?!" concerns.


IMHO, of course.


edit: and I say this from the standpoint of having explored (in real life) totally unlit WW2 bunkers with a small candle for illumination. (silly 80's Boy Scout initiation hazing thing :tongue:) Yeah, it was dark. Pointlessly, irrationally, non-functionally dark. I would never want to waste my time playing a game suffering through crap like that, unless it had some real purpose. (it was very effective in the first Silent Hill demo I tried.)

This made me lol, yeah I've been wondering this aswell.

But yeah I would like to see darker dungeons. As it is now torches, light spells and nighteye serves no real use. There are few ones that are a bit dark, but most of them are too bright imho. Pretty sure there will be a mod for this as there was one for Oblivion.

Gee, I'd like things to look darker.

Gee, I'd like things to look brighter.

Oh, hey there, brightness slider!

I just get annoyed by the "light adjusting" effect that's supposed to imitate a person's vision from going to a dark room to the brightly lit outside and vice versa. It's the one effect I'd happily do without, period.

Yes, dungeons are too bright. Especially the fog type areas. I was hacking my way through some Falmer, and I could barely see where I was going because the entire screen was just a brilliantly cyan haze. And yes I quite frequently have my immersion broken by light sources that are implausibly lit/burning/active when there would sensibly be nobody around in thousands of years to tend to them.



Just cast a "Night Eye" spell.

Oh. RIght. :facepalm:

I actually like that. Yeah, it's annoying and a hindrance, but frankly, if I were fighting a dragon at night and the thing flashed a gout of flame in my night-adjusted eyes, I'd be useless for ten minutes or more. Just be thankful it takes about a second for your "eyes" in the game to adjust back to the night, rather than the half an hour it takes in real life. Now, what would be really nice would be if there were some sort of flash spell you could use to screw up your enemies' night vision. Close your eyes, flash theirs, then sneak. Make it easier to get away if you're overwhelmed, or move around and sneak-stab one of them.

You can as a Khajiit or as a vampire.

I miss Night Eye, though, was my favorite spell to use in Oblivion, especially the vampire ability version of it that combined with Detect Life for a pretty good range.



True. I just get annoyed with it when it adjusts for every single damn lit candle I pass by close enough.

This bothered me too. I installed this mod to make the game darker: http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=822
Seems good.

In most games I have to turn the brightness up. In Skyrim I had to turn it down. Remeber how after the release people started all those threads asking "Where are the torches? I can't find any torches in Skyrim!"? Well, the problem is: you can find torches, but there's no place where you need to use them, everything is so damn bright.

It seems like there's a lot of ambient light with no source, which was also common in Fallout 3, New Vegas and probably Oblivion. I'd really like to see none of that and simply have to rely on candles, torches and wall sconces that can bit lit or unlit by the player. Basically I want real light.