One thing that's bothered me about Oblivion (and Fallout 3 (and Fallout New Vegas)). Is that the game boasts high polygon counts, but at the detriment of the number of characters, objects, the size of locations, and LOD setting, that can be on screen at once.

The DA:O engine proved that rather low polygon counts can still be used to generate good looking graphics.

I would like it if the TES V engine would take the less is more approach.

I remember watching a vidoc about Oblivion, and I though it was kinda stupid how the developers were happy with how many characters (and monsters) they could have on screen at once in the battle outside Bruma... it was pathetic... that is no battle.

Imagine if, in TES V, you could be in the middle of a battle with hundreds or thousands of combatants...

Using polygon counts, texturing, lighting, and shading in efficient (and non extravagant manners) would allow the TES V engine to support many more characters on screen at once. This would allow a larger, more grand environments, more objects, higher LOD's, and bigger battles.

It would also keep the engine running on current generation consoles in a decent manner, and allow aging comps to keep up.

Actually, let's be honest...the engine makes the game. The engine dictates what content, lore, and art direction the game will take and is constructed usually from the ground up to support those claims. Take Amnesia the dark decent, they probably new what they wanted and went right for it from the get go. Though, that's to say that I actually agree with what your saying.

not going to lie DA:O looked horrible and besides the, decent visuals are essential in todays market that is the truth since oblivions release the understanding of how to build games for next gen home consoles has improved vastly this is to be expected, near launch titles like Oblivion usually are poorly optimized for the console crowd, and the console crowd dictates what can and cannot go into a game, if oblivion was a PC only game than yes they could have pushed the limits and the battle of Bruma would have been significantly better. Thats the fact of life Good visuals are a must in todays market, and consoles dictate the level to which multi-platform games can go to,

I think the problem is the version of Gamebryo that Bethesda use is old technology. And doesnt handel high poly counts very well because it is missing alot of technology game engines have these days such as only rendering visable polys and Mega Textures. Oblivion and Fallout3 dont even use distant LOD models for characters and items.

Its sort of like modding oblivion, Sure its easy to mod it and you can make Oblivion look and play much better with the awsome mods that are out there, but it makes Oblivion very unstable, and the more mods you add (to it to bring the quality of the game up to par with last years games) are very heavy on your system and will make the game crash alot.

So the Gamebryo engine is sorta the same, they add more to it and more to it to try and bring it up to par with current games till we get to the point where the game wont work any more. Many people cant even start FO:NV because the game is so unstable and filled with bugs that it wont even run. Not because they have a low spec system, but because the game refuses to start without crashing.

When you can get beautiful Open Ended games like GTA IV and STALKER COP running perfectly on your computer but FO3 refuses to even start, you need a new game engine. And I will be very disapointed if Bethesda use that engine again.

The problem is not, and has never been, explicitly in the engine. Any engine can be upgraded and optimized to use new techniques and perform way better. Fact of the matter is, is that they hardly improved on the engine since Oblivion. So for the next installment of The Elder Scrolls, they had to make a decision to either revamp the current engine or move on to a new one. The only ones who can really decide what's better is Bethesda. They probably anolyzed it thoroughly - much more than any of us has - and came to a conclusion which was better. This is a complex cost benefit anolyses that goes into a lot of aspects of what the engine can do, what they want it to do and how much it'll cost to upgrade it or buy a new engine. If I read Todd Howards interviews correctly, they decided to overhaul the Gamebryo engine after they did Fallout 3 and are working with that overhauled engine for the next game (which we can only assume is The Elder Scrolls V).

However, Bethesda has a poor history when it comes to optimizing game engines. I loved all Bethesda games since Morrowind to bits, but it was always obvious that the performance was poor in relation to the quality. Oblivion looked awesome for it's time but it had performance issues on consoles and PCs as well.

As for the original post, I surely hope they don't go the way of Dragon Age Origins. I never really felt that their engine delivered. It was rather clunky and never really looked awe-inspiring. I think, apart from performance issues, they used the Gamebryo engine effectively for Oblivion, despite it's mentioned shortcomings. The Elder Scrolls never has been about massive action-oriented battles but is a game with a strong emphasis on exploration, depth, and content. As long as they start building on that again for the next installment, I don't think I care if it has massive battles and NPC counts or not.

So I basically expect great looking environments for The Elder Scrolls V with limited characters on screen at any single time, which is just fine by me. But I'm afraid I'll have to throw in a good 1000 euros to get a decent high end rig to play it in all it's glory. Just like I did for Oblivion and Morrowind.

Did you play DA:O on console or PC? Because it looked damn good on the PC.

Good visuals are NOT a must... and really have never been part of The Elder Scrolls experience. Morrowind was ugly. Oblivion was really ugly. Fallout improved a little bit.

I'm saying that I'd take efficient (not necessarily bleeding edge) graphics over games that look bad at high settings, but who can play on high because the engine is so inefficient so you have to play on low and low looks worse than the last generation of games.

DA:O
[img]http://gamernode.com/upload/manager//News%20Images/dragon_age_origins_profilelarge1254530090.jpg[/img]
[img]http://www.zgeek.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=37161&cid=18[/img]
[img]http://gamingdead.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Dragon_Age_Origins_DLC.jpg[/img]

ive played it on both but my first impression was no doubted soured by how bad it look on consoles regardless it looks no ware near as good as mass-effect 2,and they are very similar games technically

Graphics are important to me as I've done quite a bit of 2D/3D work myself. I can pretty much 'see' the polycount of things when I walk around most games. I expect higher polycounts, dynamic lighting, LOD, effects, 'and' better AI/script performance out of an updated engine. The tech is there and I just hope Beth deploys it. Gimme something to work with and I'll return to modding. :toughninja:

Well, if they're working with tesselation, that looks like a promising way to get some high polygon counts.

Might just be me, but Dragon Age looked like it was built with the KotOR 1 engine.

I have no idea what any of the options mean here dood next time use words someone with low brain capacity can understand I don't want to think for a year on something somebodey wrote. I can think complex but I like simple understandable stuff that I can't get confused over.

The cost of useless graphics for a better game experience, shame it won't happen.

Explain 'useless graphics' please?

Either way it won't be a problem for todays graphics cards. Today's graphics cards are more than enough to chew up and spit out anything Todd and his fellows gonna do with Gamebryo.
I can play Fallout 3 or Oblivion at 2560x1600 resolution with maximum settings and 32x antialising forced and still get constant over 60 FPS...

So this thread is pointless, unless Bethesda moves on a newer engine.

Not only was Dragon Age Origins released more than 3 1/2 years after Oblivion, but it's engine has to deal with much less than Oblivion's did. Oblivion has to handle a gigantic, stemless outside world, while DA only has to deal with dozens of much, much smaller locations that aren't connected by anything more than a line on a map. So I'd say comparing the two is rather pointless as not only does DA not have to deal with the kinds of huge environments that Oblivion did, but DA is also a much much newer game.

The point of my post was to point out that by specifically designing for a lower polygon count a game can still look quite good while allowing much more detail and many more characters on screen at once.

Sorry, but Dragon Age does not look that good, or at the very least consistent. TESV can easily look better than that while using less polygons. If I had to cut down, the first thing I would eliminate is beveling, which would probably cut a solid 1/3 of most buildings. More efficiently optimized collision is also a must.

Looking at http://gamernode.com/upload/manager//News%20Images/dragon_age_origins_profilelarge1254530090.jpg:
Obviously low-poly wheel, with obviously low resolution texture, looks like something from WoW. However, the fence right next to it has smooth ropes, each of which probably uses as much (if not more) polies than the wheel. The texture on the wood posts is also significantly higher. When placed next to each other, it looks like they combined the assets of two different generation games. Having more detailed characters only makes this more obvious, as the level of modeling on the characters sticks out in the lower quality background (especially the arms. Who the hell modeled those tube-y things? proper anatomy plox). The other screenshots suffer from the same problem, with some parts being current gen and others looking like they came out of 2000. Constancy is key.

A lot of people now days seem to think that gaming is a tradeoff between good graphics and good story. This is false. Two completely different departments handle them, and while it is possible to prioritize one (or outright neglect one), it doesn't mean that they are an either/or issue. You can have pretty, efficient graphics and an engaging story.

Oblivion looked quite good for its time. Nature did at least, I'd like to see more variety/ realism in people though. I discovered TES:O several years after its release and it still looked quite good. I'm sure w/e our Beth decides to do will be more than sufficient.

I think I've seen a polygon count slider/drop box in some games graphic options menu. Not sure why there would have to be a set count, higher quality computers will run the game at higher quality while lower comps will run at lower quality.

If only PC was the mainstream again. We wouldn't have to worry about these silly questions. We'd have both and more.

I got an old piece of junk PC and DA:O blew my mind graphically. I paused during combat all the time to zoom in and watch the characters. Of course, it blew my mind with the story and dialogue too.

The real tradeoff is not between graphics and storyline, or between graphics and gameplay, but between graphics and diversity.

It's no big deal with today's tools to make a few hundred blocky, simple shapes, and create a huge world out of them (DF did it way back). It's also not that big a deal anymore to make three or four beautiful, high-poly objects (many modders have produced spectacular looking additons to the games, but usually only a handful of items at most from one modder, with notable exceptions). Putting hundreds, or thousands, of high-poly items into a game world, as has been done in each of the later TES games, requires massive amounts of time, and therefore money. The cutting back on armor sets, weapon types and variations, and building interior tiles to a minimum is a direct result of the sheer cost of making all of the meshes and textures required.

Personally, I'd be happy with a "modest" upgrade in graphics (not all that difficult, given Bethesda's increased budget and improved graphics tools since OB), with some of the diversity from the old games put back into the next game. The graphics will never get "worse", given the forces which drive the industry, but I just hope that they don't chew up as much of a percentage of the budget as in OB.

One game popped into my head as I was reading this thread: Just Cause 2. I don't know what kind of voodoo magic they did with that game but its graphics look like they're from 2012 even on my mid-range computer.

OP doest know what hes talking about because he's just raging and isn't able to even make an unbiased poll.

PC is coming back.... well, not really, but developers are more often not resorting to crappy third party ports of console games! Yea!!!!!........... *cry*

If the graphics are as good as Fallout 3, but with way more content and things to do, see, etc. I would be quite happy

We could have both, unfortunately consoles can't handle too much. Well... PS3 could, but 360 users would go mad if they knew TESV wasn't going to be released on their console.

If only Bethesda created PC exclusives......... :sadvaultboy: