So I just got my first taste of the game finally, and I'm enjoying it and everything but I can't believe it's the same game in all the media I've seen. We were told all the pre release screens and footage was for the 360 but the characters in my game look nothing like it. The player character faces don't look anywhere near as nice and detailed as they did in those famous screen shots, and the tavern wench in one of the very first screens to be released (the one that looks like a super model), well I've just met her and she looks NOTHING like that. Everything else looks nice but the character models look like they're from a game that's several years old.

Also there's more AA than I thought there would be.

I play on a 1080p monitor, I don't see how I could possibly have it set up wrong (there's just not that many options on a 360 setup) but is it me? Have I done something wrong? Or is everyone's like that?

Many thanks.

When you play with a 360 controller on the PC, you get the exact same button prompts that you would if you were on xbox, so my bet is that the "xbox" footage was really PC footage with an xbox controller.

Those graphics are what you are going to get. If you want it to look like the trailers (and better), get the PC version.

I never assume what I see prior to game release is what I will see. I think the xbox on 1080p tv looks fine, but I am not that picky. Some people are, some aren't. I'm to old to gripe about those things.

Don't take it too hard, the PC version doesn't look much better. Even on Ultra the game is littered with low-rez, 2D, horrible broken shadows and absurdly obvious light gradiation.

I play on the XBOX 360 and I have a regular TV (no LCD/ no HD) and it looks awesome to me.

Screenshots are staged to take full advantage of the lighting/etc.

In-game, the movement causes things to look a lot less flattering.

Ok, as long as it isn't just me that's fine. It's not that it bothers me exactly, I was just surprised, and I didn't understand why my game looked so different.

Thanks for the replies.

It might be too specific a point to make, but maybe not: one thing I have noticed is that character faces tend to look much better in candelight/firelight than they do outside under a cloudy sky or under moonlight.

When I make a new character the first thing I do is run from Ralof (or Hadvar) to the torch on the wall in the adjacent room. I have my character face that torch then move the camera around so I am looking at the character's face. That's a good indication of how good (or bad) your character can look. When you go back out into the main room (which seems to have strange lighting) your character's face looks almost like playdoh, in comparison. Ditto the rest of the game. Look at a face indoors, especially when firelight is upon it, and it looks awesome. Look at your character under cloudy conditions or under moon light and it's not as great. To a certain extent that is somewhat realistic.

Think of the seconds of your life that you wasted making that reply, that utterly pointless, irrelevant and unhelpful reply. Even if it only took ten seconds that ten seconds of your life that you're not going to get back.

They add up you know.

I have it on the 360 using a 720 HD monitor. The game looks fantastic. Then again I dont give two cents about graphics. Its about the gameplay. Now days everyone seems they only care about graphics which is sad.

That, my friend, was what is professionally called in the gaming industry a "bullshot".

It happens with every Beth game. Check the footage from e3 2005, Oblivion was nothing like that either.

Beth makes it a habit of promising the world and then deleting content from their game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZbpTiVu10Q



There you go.

Screenshots for publication are often taken at a much, MUCH higher resolution than the game actually runs at. Multiple screenshots are also taken at once. The resulting image, once merged and downsampled back to a regular resolution, looks absolutely gorgeous but doesn't use any out-of-game assets or afteraffects to achieve its quality. Thus the beautiful screenshot can honestly be said to be "in game." Just be aware that "in game" in these cases doesn't actually mean "your game will look like this." Similar to how all the movies Valve puts out for TF2 or DOTA2 are "powered by the Source engine," but that engine is being run on a supercomputer and is not doing its output in real time.

What his all means is that screenshots can only be used to judge art style, not graphics quality. A full gameplay video of at least a couple minutes in length (Not a trailer mind you! The short snippets in these are subject to the same techniques as screenshots) played at the highest resolution possible is your best means of determining graphics quality. Mind you graphics quality is far less important than art style, but it still plays a role in effectively conveying that art style so it's still worth trying to suss out.

Looks incredible on my XBOX, but maybe that's just me.

I tend not to jam my face against a boulder to stare at the textures though, so I might be a little uninformed on this matter.

When did they EVER say that those screenshots were all taken on the xbox? IIRC, a Beth rep said that it was a combination of the three.

Looks just fine to me on my Xbox.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtRlgUX4PIk&feature=related

that is a bit naughty, i know the exact screenshot ya talkin bout ,the fit blonde bird, i allmost got a boner over that pic.

That was funny. When that gate hit that guy... :biggrin:

I should point out that I'm talking about the character models. The terrain, architecture and whatnot looks great.