Not willing to be pessimistic, but with each non cartoonish game that is realesed or will be released this year, Skyrim play video look each time more outdated.
(compare to Arma 3 that will be realeased this year for example.) and before people start go Betty, AA3 will be sandbox.

Usually i could t care less but since for me gameplay wen t seven under, the only thing that could still moderately tie me to the game is gfx.

From what I could interperet, I'd have to say, what are you doing with an open sandbox rpg game series world if you don't like gameplay? :confused:


Gameplay > Graphics. Easily, imo.

Agreed...

aesthetics > graphics to me.

a game might have worse graphics than another but still look better due to the art style.

Arma 3 is coming out in the summer of 2012.

This too. This is why Morrowind can still look amazing compared to the more modern games.

I'm playing morrowind right now, and though it looks new/cool to me, it isn't amazing compared modern games. It's really chuncky and ugly. However when looked at for what it is, an old ass game, it has lots of charm and a great art style. I'm also playing with tons of graphics mods, and they help the game a lot, while still keeping that vanilla look, but not enough to be amazing compared to a modern game.

@op, Skyrim isn't dated, look at morrowind for dated, but it's not cutting edge. Comparing it to other games isn't fair, because until they are both out we don't know what truly separates them. Like saying a game coming out a year or more from now looks better isn't fair. It's going to be a good looking, sometimes great looking, game. Definetly not dated.

I should have explained better, gameplay for me in skyrim like games is the RPG element, the rest is ever the same....

And in the character development department skyrim is dead burried for me.

And when i mean GFX i mena the quality of the GFX, this mean STYLE & IMPLEMENTATION.

I really don t find Morrowind GFX awesome anymore, not even when realeased, but the gameplay and settings are.

Ok Arma 3 will be realeased 6 month after. But there are years of diference beetween of both gfx. Problem is, it probably will look weak when released (skyrim), outdated is a bit overboard maybe.

You mustn't have Morrowind modded well

With MGE, retextures and new meshes, it really can compare. The "clunkiness" of the combat, however, is a personal preference, to be honest.


Anyhoo, that's a different topic, the point is we're talking about the artistic style making up for the lack of modern visuals. GO check out a Telvanni town. Tel Vos is the best, imo.

Agreed with this agreed

Meh ...

Year 1. It looks good on the PS3.
Year 2. It looks good on the PC.
Year 3-5. It looks fantastic with more and more advanced graphic mods.

No worries.

(The modders will take care of the graphic style aswell, to some extent.)

HEH I surely have morrowind well modded, i have 300+ mods installed (MGE being one of them), of those 150 actually are considered by the game, which is by the way the maximun the game can handle AFAIK.
It looks almost as good as OB.

BTW my avatar is from my Morrowind modded

I still think Skyrim's graphics are fine the way they are.. at least of what we've seen

Yeah Skyrim already looks outdated compared to Battlefield 3, Crysis 1 & 2 and Rage. Even Witcher 2 as well.
I have a feeling it will still be a really good game as a whole, because there are so many other factors that matter as well, but if I should only focus on the graphics part, I'm kind of disappointed with the results. I mean, the graphics are OK/decent, but it never achieves that "WOW!" feeling that other new games these days give you, at least not in my opinion.

I saw some modded Morrowind screenshot not long ago that seriously wasn't far away from Skyrim's graphics. That alone says pretty much I think.

As long as Skyrim is a fleshed out believable game instead of a nice looking, empty husk I'd be fine with the former then the latter. Graphics are great sure makes it a bit more believable, but you can't be truly immersed without great game play, great storytelling and amazing interactivity in a seemingly real world, something that Bethesda has done well over the years, it doesn't take great graphics to make a great game.

Bethesda aren't graphics leaders any more - there's no point, now they've got all that competition.

Which might just make it a little better.

Who [censored] cares.

The game looks better than Oblivion in graphical quality, and the world looks far more grand and interesting. Assuming the gameplay is great then the current graphics will more than suffice.

Well about fleshed world it was never much Bethesd strong point, but i give them the fact technology was limited compared to today.
Thats a point that remain to be seen.
Seemingly real world is one of the total Oblivion failure, so don t have high expectation in this department also.

No it doesn t take great grafics to make a great game but as i said, the game will probably be terrifyingly weak in RPG department, which is the core of the game.
Gonna be some monsterlike Diablo melt with Fallout offspring.

Don t expect a hard game capable of giving you many challenges also, its all molded around the level you get in.
So if you explore too much you ll end up in a low level game. Which as a rebound restrict your freedom of movement if you want some future challenge.

I reaaaalllyyyy hope many thing are not core codded so modders can give a sense of decency to this game.

No offense, but what did you expect? Did you think the game would look worse than Oblivion?

It's more relevant we compare with how graphics are today, not 5 years ago. That's much closer to what we should expect.

I haven't seen anywhere enough of the gameplay to make my mind up whether to compare the game to anything else or not - I am however convinced I'll get more than my money's worth of entertainment from Skyrim and am likely to be still playing with it 5 years after release - there's not many other games i can think of that have that much longevity for me - apart from other TES games and maybe Civ.

If you don't like the look of the game from the minimal amount of screenshots and teaser trailer go get something else

Graphics serve aesthetics. Graphics for Graphics sake creates high-quality, but ugly games, like The Witcher 2. I think Skyrim Looks better than just about every game so far, just because of it's unified and cohesive aesthetic.

As long as BGS can deliver their concept of image with their graphic technology, I don't care what the polycount is, and nobody else should either. Every person that scoffs at Skyrim's graphics makes future games that much worse. Why? Because when you're spending time on graphics without a properly realized aesthetic design, you create a bland world.

And years from now Skyrim modded will look better than a lot of current games.

@OP Skyrim is oozing with style and great looking art. Best game I've ever seen.

I might get both types. I'd rather invest thousands of hours into a good gameplay sandbox, however an awesome graphics sandbox may be fun sometimes. Really, I like TES for gameplay alone, and nice graphics are a pretty awesome bonus that comes with that.

Graphics are ultimately meaningless IMO.

I'd still play Skyrim if its graphics were comparable to Minecraft. You have to remember, TES games have A LOT more going on on-screen than almost any other game I can think of. No, it made not be the most action filled, thats not what I mean, I mean in terms of number of objects on screen. When you walk into a store in any other game, the floor may be littered with debris, shelves covered in books, desks with writing utincils, but ultimately theses are nothing more than 3d wallpaper, in TES each of these objects is acting an reacting in terms of its environment. Its stress on the brain power of any system just to remember "this sword has gravity pulling on it, but since its on a shelf it isn't falling anymore".

Remember when "physics engines" use to be amazing? They might not be anymore, but over pure graphics they actually add something to gameplay and they still tax your system a lot because there always getting more complicated, calculating more factors. If you look at some of the early news on Skyrim you'll notice that one of the reasons they created an in-house engine is to fix the buggyness of the Oblivion/fallout engine.

You know what blew me away more than any graphical achievement in Oblivion (and remember, Oblivion was a launch title, so at the time everything was amazing)? The fact that in the first dungeon you rolled logs down a hill and GRAVITY killed your enemies. No, thats small beans today, true, but all I'm saying is I'd rather place computing power into aspects that add something to gameplay rather than just "graphics" in the general sense of the term.

MIND you, I'm not saying graphics have no place in games, things like picking your arrows back up would be pointlessly hard with old school graphics, unless you just make the arrows realisticaly fat, so having sharp visuals can add amazing levels of precision, depth and detail to a game world. But graphics for the sake of graphics? No. And thats my gripe, not about Skyrim alone but in the game industry in general. I certainly don't feel graphics need to go backwards, they should continue forwards, but more emphasis (speaking of something like next-gen consoles) should be put into processing power, especially since we're STILL transitioning into the full HD phase in society.

The irony is, you never see a Graphic's snob who's an artist. There's a reason for that. They're just so focused on the superficial aspects of the rendering process, rather than the image it creates.



Um.. No.. At least not so much. Graphical technology can better serve the image the artists wants to create. I don't think it's very logical to assume the artists for Morrowind wanted their characters to look blocky and stiff. It's a balancing act, you want as much graphical horsepower as you need, nothing more. Overdesigning is as ugly as underdesigning. Look at Michael Bay's Transformers. They're the poster-child for 'Overdesigned" and hideous as a result of it. Well, maybe it looks better from a raised truck, I wouldn't know.

We want our games to look better, but the problem is, when you praise "Graphics" instead of "Aesthetics" that doesn't happen. This is what happened to games like Castlevania and Mega Man. In the rush to 3d Graphics, the actual aesthetic that made the game so appealing was lost. You ever wonder why Symphony of the Night looks better than just about every other Castlevania game released up until now?