Some of skyrim looks beautiful. I said that. Because i bet some idiots will put "OMG SKYRIM LOKS SUPEWB YOU NO NO WHAT YOU SP3ak!!" Then the other half of the [censored] will tell me "COMPARED TO PACMAN THIS GAME IS MAJESTIC AND PACKMAN IS ALL I NEED"

I use capitals in my predicted-to-be-quotes because i want to highlight how i don't want those posts. Yes skyrim can look amazing and yes it looks better than morrowind but i still have the remaining gripe of...

- textures are often [censored].
You can see it on every crate, every piece of furniture, every rock and stone in the ground. The kinds of textures we'd see on an original xbox game. The bump maps being bad in the places that they are.

- Many things look blocky


Yes people make graphics mods- but those things are usualy unoptimised or change the look of something to make it look different rather than just improved.



Look at modern warfare 3 for instance (Don't look at it for long though) The game looks like the other recent cod games graphically.. but you never think the textures are bad unlike the others. The textures are lazily made and arent ultra high resolution but they still look good! Why? they use detail textures!! They basically slap an overlay onto things to make them look high res. They make the threads composing the garments of the marines actualy visible. They add wear to the guns. Halo uses this with metals amd it looks stunning. (i picked these games because it is noticable and you all probably played them) In halo 3,odst and reach you can stand on top of a wraith and see ultra detailed scratches and covenant paterns... but the wraith's texture is only 512. (edit: all these games are on the consoles- it's not a console problem)

Why couldn't skyrim do this? Why didnt bethesda get cunning with materials and make detail textures? Why cant i see the pores of leather and undead flesh , the sandy texture of rocks, The fibres of wood and fur and hair? Bethesda could have done that without making a performance hit and without too much effort.

Then there are some textures which just wouldn't be saved by a detail texture.. fix those the old fashioned way?


Models just are blocky.

some models just should have had more pollys. Not much can be done with a lot of them though

A Dx11 patch?(crytek did this, so can bethesda) Dx11 would do a lot to skyrim. If stones could pop out of their textures, roof shingles and the scales in your mail could be 3d, trees could have individual leaves and had many polygons in the wood whilst waves could actualy rise in height then skyrim would look AMAZING!!

Designed around Xbox, 6 year old hardware.

Consoles are where the money is, Bethesda is a business.

Bring on the Xbox 720 and the PS4

Or buy it on PC. :whisper:

Edit: Didn't notice the OP mentioning DX11. That implies he has it on PC. But seriously, if more people bought it on PC rather than consoles, this wouldn't be the case.

Yeah, it's only because this was a PC game that was made for the same console generation as Oblivion was. We just have to wait for Elderscrolls 6 in 2016. By then, lets hope PS4 is out.

Graphics is actually a strength to TES and the least of my worries. There are other things that are in much more need of tweaking.

Until some modder retextures the entire game its what we have. If you look at it many games talking about graphics are pretty weak. Skyrim to an extent suffers the same issue as rage, although not nearly as bad, in that the various long range visuals look very good, but the up close textures need to be improved upon. As stated because of consoles, PC graphics are limited, skryim still uses DX9 as its primary tool. While the textures up close on some things are bad, to be honest comparing it to a fully modded oblivion its still on par with that game five years later.

I think it looks great. I will add some mods which have enhanced textures for certain things. I dont like a total texture overhaul because most of the time that lags my system.

Modz

:D

graphics arent only textures. the wide view has been massively improved since oblivion, you can see buildings across the whole map and i havent met a single popup yet. im fine with sacrificing some texture quality for that

Eh. The cycle will just repeat. The only thing the 720 and PS4 may bring to the table would be a standard in graphics. Then five years later when consoles start to age (again) PC's will reign supreme once more with it's constantly updated hardware and software.

The only thing that breaks this chain is when a developer looks at PC first and consoles later (looking at you BF3). Then and only then do you see results.

For now you might wana try some visual mods, if you want i can give you a list. (they are not anything special but still the improve the game)

http://www.vgchartz.com/article/88459/skyrim-sales-exceed-34-million-units-in-two-days/

Microsoft doesn't allow games to require a HD, because they sold the "arcade" version with no HD. Because of this, they can't include hi-res textures to cover their whole open world in and fit it all, including story, AI, recorded audio, etc. on a 6-9 gig disc. They just don't have the room. The next machine, I HOPE will come standard with a large HD and then we'll be able to get multiple discs and/or blu-ray... though MS going that route seems unlikely, unfortunately.

Yeah, no kidding. I'm on PS3 and when I first started walking around outside I was like, gross, really? I expected a much better look at this point in time.

"Demons Souls" looks great no matter what environment you're in. COD games look great (too bad you're just running through the scenery without time to take it all in!). GTA IV looked great, and look at all the stuff they had to cram into the scenery!

I don't think Bethesda utilizes color very well, for one thing. They seem to like to paint in broad strokes. Sure, the look of interiors is a bit nicer, as are caves, etc., but other than that it seems like you get a few basic colors with some pale, washed out variation here and there (I bet they loved making FO3, haha).

And I've seen better tree renderings on PS2 games.

I mean, really, look at various screen shots sometimes and it looks even more primitive when things aren't moving.

(I don't know how people can say PC gaming is dead when games generally end up looking better on them, not to mention all the mods, etc.)

Those numbers don't include digital sales. Skyrim is the top selling + most played game on Steam right now. Even more than CoD.

This is sadly correct. Until Microsoft decides to release a new Xbox we will continue to see games "suffer" in the graphical department.
Just wait for the modders to start making graphical revamps.

"I want better graphics but I don't want to use mods".

Yeah well enjoy your miserable life. When you want to come around enjoy this:
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=131

Sorry OP, the troll posts are inbound.

There are mods like:

No more blocky faces
No Dirty Bodies
Detailed_Faces-2
Detailed Lips
vivid eyes
Antiallias_and_sharpen_effect
Realistic Smoke and Embers
Realistic water textures
Realistic_Rain_Ripples
Nicer_Snowflakes
Skyrim_Sunglare

You just need to look for them i am using all of them and my skyrim experience is much prettier.

i would never upgrade my computer just to play 1 or 2 games that really maximize the hardware like Bf3,Crysis2.
there are other more fun gadgets to spend cash on

but thats just me.

That's a problem though. Should someone realy have to download all this stuff to make a game look decent?

No, but be glad that we can. The only reason I've actually bought any Bethesda game after I bought Oblivion was because of the modding capabilty.

You can download all of them in less than 3 min, the installing is even easier just put all of them into the texture folder and done.
Like i said if you want the game to look good download those.

YEAH! And why don't they animate every hair on your character's head, too, and have them grow at a realistic rate! And why aren't there flies? And why can't you see the veins in the wings of dragonflies, or pick specific blades of grass? And animate every fiber of fuzz on a peach?
A: If you want that much realism, live.
B: That level of optical verisimilitude is more like some extremely advanced v.r. than a video game, and the amount of data and the processing required for it, would be far beyond the capabilities of a home pc or console.
I think Bethesda has made a laudable effort at achieving a balance between beauty and realism- it's called art. An artist who is trying to create the illusion of realism does not paint every hair and blade of grass- he creates an illusion that gives you a sens of that totality.
I agree that there are rough textures and other graphical issues here and there, but first off, give them credit- the game looks beautiful. Secondly, you ask for too much. A video game will never do what you are seeking- the effects and dynamics in play to make that work visually are much more complicated than you think. No amount of patching can make it happen.

Were you high when you posted?


tech wise i asked for things VERY feasible on todays consoles (except the dx11, which requires a dx11 graphics card) I even gave a few examples of console games with decent textures

I have it for PS3, and I find most textures fairly good, although the occasional distant grass texture looks repeating and awful. But that's a minor hiccup in what you're getting in the game if you ask me. I honestly think the graphics are more than tolerable.

There's quite a few mods that make the game look better. This is NOT one of them. It's a horrible, horrible shader that makes all colors look terrible. People who think this really increases graphics have no idea what they're talking about and no idea what actually good graphical quality means.

The main issue with Skyrim's graphics, as the OP rightly points out, les in the textures. The cause problem is the available space on a 360 disk. Other games you mentioned don't have as much resources (textures, sounds, models) as Skyrim and therefor it allows greater quality in each of them. We'll have to wait for the next console generation for the real face melting graphics, sadly. The PC version will get it's tweaks over the coming months and I'm sure it'll look twice as good as it does right now, but console users will just have to accept the low res textures and enjoy the (awesome, imo) game as it is.