Still, some more extensive ones mixed throughout would be pretty neat.

Eh..? There has been cutscenes in every single TES game to date lol.

You can see pretty far, but in the same way as in OB. The smaller things disappear in that screenshot and the green ground looks flat, no creatures as far as the eye can see (apart from the dragon). I'm a little worried, in OB a wolf could easily spawn just 20 meters in from of me and when I took a step back it disappeared, annoying. We should be able to see further :/

@ Shinovakhiin: Sure, bweginning and the end, none in the middle. You think that this would be part of the opening scene? Really?

On the issue of "cutscenes," I've always thought of a cutscene as something that "cuts away" from the action. Even the Wikipedia link posted above says: "A cutscene is a sequence in a video game over which the player has no or only limited control, breaking up the gameplay and used to advance the plot..." (italics added). Under the "History" section it talks about "the first game to feature an intermission between gameplay..." With an intro video, the game hasn't really started yet, so there is no gameplay to break up, nothing to cut away from, and no intermission.

It's all semantics, of course, but being a language nerd the use of "cutscene" to describe a video that plays outside of the normal flow of gameplay strikes me as odd. Call it a cinematic--a nice, general term that could apply to any video in a game that is not actually part of the gameplay. Or, you know, screw it... call it a cutscene if you must. It doesn't bother me that much.

There was a cutscene when Oblivion began .

You're right. Real mountains that feel that large have hundreds to thousands of trees on them that look very small from a distance where you can see the whole mountain. I'd take a picture right now if it wasn't night.

I mean look at how many trees there are at the base of http://www.erikhenne.com/images/The%20Eiger%20grindelwald%20switzerland%20blue%20sky%20hike%20hiking%20alps%20mountain%20giant%20with%20glaciers.jpg. And that's not even a 14er.

But we can't expect lifesize mountains, even in Skyrim. That would have to be a ridiculously large game world, like 200-400 square miles at least.

I agree, there must be some visual tricks that artists can do with the view distance/object size ratio otherwise the world space is way too small (same size as Oblivion) to have really massive mountains, especially now that cities may use space in the real map as well.

That screenshot is definitely rendered ingame, it may not be a gameplay screenshot. Much like almost all of the trailer was rendered ingame, but is not gameplay.

May be true. Either way we are only looking at a tiny fragment of Skyrim, and judging by the tree size compared to the mountain size even this fragment seems large.

Look at the size of the smallest tree and compare it to the highest cliff in the picture. Ridiculous difference. Perspective defenitely plays its part in the picture but I think this is actually a decent chunk of landscape here.

A cut scene is when a scene is interupted. Oblivion had an introduction scene and a conclution scene. No in the middle time for a break in the action cut scenes. And even then, they don't show us those scenes, they go in game all the time.