I know, and that does look great! That picture impresses me!
But, then I look at things like this: http://img821.imageshack.us/img821/5833/dragonborn.png, http://cdnstatic.gamesas.com/akqacms/files/tes/screenshots/RuinedFort.jpg, http://cdnstatic.gamesas.com/akqacms/files/tes/screenshots/LakeWaterfall_wLegal.jpg, http://cdnstatic.gamesas.com/akqacms/files/tes/screenshots/TrollFireSword_wLegal.jpg
... and my "impression" tones down a lot.

I wouldn't mind they copy the hair animation from Witcher.

While I won't repeat the "graphics don't matter line" (since, honestly, they do at least a bit).....


....you do realize that you can have "great" graphics without having to fight to "top the bar" every time. Yeah, there are a small number of games that try to hit graphics milestones (sometimes, to cover up the fact that they don't have anything else good). But constantly fighting to be "the best" is a losing game, really.

It's kind of like the "highest / fastest rollercoaster" war - amusemant parks always spending millions and doing renovations to have "the next big thing"..... and it lasts, at most, a season. Sometimes, your Highest Coaster claim can be beaten within weeks.


Do I expect Skyrim to look great? Yeah, the trailer released already (XBox footage) already clears that bar. Do I expect it to be "the best"? No, and I never did. And I'm glad they aren't blowing too much of their budget and time in that futile race - I'd rather they make the overall game good.


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As an additional thought - a few months before release, they're not going to say "OMG! looks amazing! We must overhaul our graphics!"

The major decisions are already done and gone. No "But I want werewolves" "Fast Travel svcks" "the graphics svck" or any other random rioting on the website is going to effect much at this point.

All of those gameplay frame grabs are from the 1280x720 resolution Xbox version with low res textures.

It will look much better at higher resolution with high res textures.

Not really, no. It would require new methods of texture depth and lighting to make it look much better. What you said, better... sure, but how much better? Not much. Bethesda has even stated several times the "equality" between platforms.

Witcher is a PC game.
Skyrim is a multiplatform game.

PC is this big:
***********************************************************************************************************************************************************************

Multiplatform is this big:
*****

/thread

I see... But also the game is still a work in progress, they still have 5 months and 12 days to work on this game and i doubt that graphics is at the bottom of the list

Well from the screens we have seen so far from in game, definitely skyrim doesn't stand a chance!
In TW2 the forest feels real, in skyrim it is so poor.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/28/87635057.jpg/

if graphics didnt matter there wouldnt be a billion different texture packs for minecraft (the greatest game of all time........ever). <_< that game is unplayable with default textures. graphics in a game are just as important as any other aspect and even more so for a first person game where everything is right up in your face. you can have crappy textures in an isometric game and get away with it alot easier than in a first person game.

Two Worlds 2 was designed for each platform seperately and it really shows. the PC version outshines the others by far with much better lighting and textures. the PS3 looks a bit better than the 360 version but the best part is that they ALL look good. i really wish bethesda had taken that direction and maxed out the performance on each system instead of building around the weakest system first and then tweaking the others a little bit. so far im just happy that they have shadows in the game but im not super impressed by the graphics overall. i do however like the current art direction and i was excited just by seeing pouches on clothes. gotta wonder where people kept all those potions and scrolls in oblivion.

edit: dont forget we are stuck with skyrim for several years at least. if its acceptable now or even "nice" it wont be that way after a couple of years, if even that long.

Bethesda did say they tend to do more graphics later or something, right? I can only sincerely hope that this is true and that they will work more on it.
I'll still really really enjoy the game, sure, but I know I'll have a better experience if the game looks "amazing" (which it doesn't in general atm, in my honest opinion).
I noticed that when I installed my first Morrowind mods which made it an entirely different experience.

This. Therefore, this thread is redundant in which Skyrim will never hav TW2 graphics simply because it's multi-platfom. I play on consoles, thus I'm happy. If I played on PC, I'd be happy simply because I believe CK > Better textures.

Well, I would go on, how "snow is supposed to be bright" but I roll with it this time...

But what's wrong with the fort picture?

No, no and no. And he's talking about graphics.

Nothing's wrong imo, just that it's not really what I would call impressive graphics, compared to the "mountain + sunset" picture of Skyrim. That looks stunning. That one gives me a "WOW", while the other one gives me more of a "Meh...".
Don't know how I can explain it any better (or worse ).

Everything looks, low detail, kinda like when you jumped out of a city in oblivion, everything was flat, you see splotches of that in the fort picture

Morrowind's was "non-linear" in its branch during the Nerevarine and Hortator quest segments. The closest an Elder Scrolls game has been to "true" non-linearity was in http://uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Main_Quest_Walkthrough, but only in the sense that you could start at one of several branches, and ultimately you had to more or less complete everything anyway so it was linear in a sense. There were multiple endings, but you reached the plot resolution through the same final quest regardless of how you'd been playing. A main quest that is genuinely non-linear would have to have multiple means to, well, complete the main quest and personally I don't think it's that necessary. Both Daggerfall and Morrowind's progressions felt perfectly rewarding to me. :read:

Owwww my [censored] eyes

I think it varies a bit depending on who's talking .

My take is that Morrowind and Oblivion were semi-linear, in that you didn't have to complete all quests in a prescribed order. However, each quest had to be completed in a prescribed order, and the quests were essentially independent of each other. It didn't actually change anything in one quest if you took time off to do another.

Dragon Age 2 and was rather more linear because there were a couple of choke-points in the story. You had to complete all the quests in a chapter, because they didn't carry over to the next. Mass Effect 2 was even more linear because it had even fewer side quests than Dragon Age 2, and they tended to be doled out as you progressed through the entirely linear main story.

The Witcher 2 (which I've only just started, so I don't know a lot about it) seems to be almost completely linear. However, it does have the rather hard to pigeonhole feature that the events that occur throughout the linear story are altered by your actions earlier in the story. Other RPGs do have that, but to nothing like the same extent end with nothing like the same sense of events just occurring as they will.

If there are any truly non-linear RPGs, where you can perform quests in any order and the actions you take in one quest will effect events in another (or the other way round, if you do the quests in a different order), then I haven't heard of them. And I suspect that and RPG like that could only be produced by a bunch of brilliant and warped minds .

All games a linier. Fable III isa liner game in that you dont really have a sandbox type world you have on some cities to go around an visit. Oblivion gave you a portion of a continent to play around in same with morrowind and a boat load of random quests without you ever touching the main quest you can easily get 50-100 hours of play. While witcher.. not so much eventualy you have to run the main quest at some point because after around 30 or so hours because theres not really much to do besides visit limited locations.

Very well made points. I'd subscribe to most. But pleae pounder this:
- Betehsda chose to scale down the graphics for respectable profitable reasons. Every platform wll get the same graphical quality, with some minor differences. That decision is in itself open for debate.
- I'm ? bit skeptical about the budget/time constraint, at least in absolute terms. I'd guess Bethesda splits the work in teamswhich work in parallel. It's not like the entire team devotes itself to the visuals first and the sound designer doubles as a graphics programmer.

But i wholeheartdely agree with your last remark. All that is relevant is already decided, or so I would guess.

While on other pictures I tend to see lower resolution textures... but not on the fort one.

Okay, how about we wait for the Witcher 2 to come out on console? Then we can compare more accurately. We have yet to see any Skyrim gameplay or screenshots on the PC (only Xbox 360) and yet we're already comparing screens/gameplay from Xbox to PC high Text/Res. for the Witcher. That's an unfair comparison gentlemen.

Simple as this. Let's wait to see what the console versions of the Witcher look like.

Hey remember when DAO came out on console and how badly it look from the PC? Ahhhh... good times.

Wasn't that because they developed DA:O for the PC first and then ported it to the console (badly) afterwards? So glad that wont be the case with Skyrim...