whatever it is, eso feels childish to me. its so far from looking and feeling raw like elder scrolls games felt.

i realize its an mmo and not skyrim 2, but since morrowind elder scrolls games have depicted fantastical worlds in however strong an attempt they can make at hyper realism.

eso doesnt have even close to that...its the animations, its the bodies, the faces....its just not cool for me. cant dig it.

i love the fresh ideas for classes/weapons/skills/loadouts etc. and i think its a cool game overall, but the graphics just make it inaccessible to me.

does anyone else feel like the graphics were a let down?

agree,mayby were just too old for gaming (32yr old here)

i thought the game looked quite nice. the engine might be more on par with Oblivion than Skyrim, but for an MMO it's got great visuals.

they are crisp and everything, its not a quality issue. there is great lighting and shading and all that, its more about a "feel" sort of. it just seems cartoony i guess.

I liked the look myself. The mountains and rivers turning into waterfalls were awesome. The dungeons and caves were very elder scrollish looking to me...

Yeah I think it looks nice, but maybe "too nice"? Haha it doesn't overly feel like we're in a dark, medi-eval style world I guess, and it definitely won't feel like it once people start running around with their damn monkeys

Having said that I still fancy the artwork, mostly, and at least its not as cartoony as games like WoW etc

Think some of that was done on purpose. They kept it a 32-bit game, likely to lure the many Windows XP users still out there.

Play the Wildstar beta...that'll cure yah

Oh well, I always found the characters to be so ugly in Skyrim, I think they look so nice in ESO.

To each his own, I guess

If you don't buy the game, I wish you fun somewhere else.

Cranked all the way up, it's pretty comparable to stock Skyrim IMHO.

The do use a brighter color palette and more light in general, but I general like the art direction.

Way back when we first started getting images and videos, I thought the game looked rather cartoony, but now I think it has improved. Goes to show ZOS is making sure everyone is happy (in some way ).

The only issue i see is some of the animations.

Sometimes when you see people running around they appear almost 'weightless'.

And i don't mean truly weightless as in floating around.

But if you would compare it to skyrim (i know you can't keep comparing them but i just did) when you jump down from somewhere you really feel as if you character bends his knees due to the forces that are at play.

When you run around, you hear your armor clank pretty load and you have head bobbing .

I think character animation should make it less like you are running effortlessly.

It's hard to describe really.

From the screenshots that I have seen it is one of the better looking MMO's graphically. Screenshots looked pretty solid for an MMO. I have been impressed with the Beta screenshots. I look forward to seeing more released.

If you are comparing to visuals to skyrim, then yes I'd agree but it is an MMO. (I have to continual remind myself of this fact too, it's just to easy to draw comparisons to skyrim even if they are not warranted) It's more MMO of Oblivion if anything, better of course, but that's how I'd explain it to someone if I had too.

The only ES game that felt "raw" was Skyrim and maybe Morrowind, Oblivion was definitely the same style as ESO though.

But this isn't Skyrim..nor Morrowind..it's ESO..so it's fine in its own merit to me.

The color pallets are, imo, more akin to Oblivion than Skyrim. Skyrim was a winter-grasped country with a perpetual gloom over it (minus the few areas that really stood out as beautiful). All of Tamriel isn't like that though, and the bright colors and contrasts of other nations depict that. Though Cyrodill isn't nearly as colorful in ESO as it was on Oblivion, it too is really a sight to see, IMO. I love the graphics, both in quality and art style.

Personally, I think the graphics in ESO blow (un-modded) Skyrim out of the water. I am able to run ESO easily on ultra settings and I'm constantly stopping to look at the scenery. Vanilla Skyrim is very bleak and bland. So maybe it is too realistic for you. The world during the middle ages (to compare world history with TES lore) is depicted as bleak and bland in movies to create moods. But the world was full of color and pagentry. Hell, Mother Nature still ruled the planet.

Err, I don't know what you're doing wrong, but ESO in no way shape or form "blows Skyrim out of the water", at all, in any capacity.

I don't think anyone can actually even contest that Skryim has inferior graphics to ESO..That's just a given..it's an MMO, it has no where near the level of micro detail that Skyrim has, and it never will, just due to server limitations..

For me the game look fantastic and most of the animations are really cool. Like uppercut with the greatsword give me an oreogasm everytime.

It's not a given, it's an opinion. My Skyrim has over 120 mods and looks awesome. It also makes un-modded Skyrim unplayable. The detail, color palette and lighting in ESO are much better than Vanilla Skyrim.

My version of Skyrim has a Death Star in the night sky.

Lol I stopped reading at "No mods makes Skyrim unplayable", what a laugh. THAT is a personal opinion. My 700 hours of Xbox 360 Skyrim says otherwise. Definitely the most beautiful game in my library, PC games included, with zero mods. In no way shape or form is unmodded Skyrim bad looking; it still beats most games put out today in terms of micro/macro detailed environments. Some closeboxed FPS shooters beat it yeah, but they aren't in a game world about 16 square miles either, it's all indoor or EXTREMELY small map sizes compared to ES games.

You need to fire up unmodded Skyrim. My husband fired it up on his computer, and ESO on mine.

Vanilla Skyrim graphics are already awful and dated compared to ESO.

Maybe you're looking through those rose colored glasses. I know I was. I was shocked at how bad Skyrim looked compared to ESO.

Sorry, but I'm playing Skyrim literally right now on my 55 inch LED TV on an Xbox 360, and it looks 10x better than ESO did this weekend on the Beta. It's so bright, it's so crisply detailed, I dunno, maybe you need to invest in a new monitor? GPU? But Skyrim is still a fantastic looking game, sorry. It is in no way "dated" at all.

Sorry, I just don't agree. My system and monitor are great by the way.

I've never liked Skyrim. The game svcked, the graphics svcked, and the story svcked.