In OB, the only way you could view your character was either in 3rd person view or your inventory...I'm sure we all know this. But I'd like some other possibilties to be able to view your character out of inventory and in 1st person view.

Do you guys think mirrors would make sense in a game like this?

I know it has been mentioned on here that it would be cool to see your reflection off the water as well. Cause' in OB, you were literally a floating invisible camera in 1st person view and could not see yourself in the water (or at all) and I think it'd be great for Skyrim.

Since video game technology has somewhat advanced over the last few years, I see this very possible. Although my next idea does not seem very likely, it may not happen for this generation but maybe for the next....wouldn't it be cool to see your reflection in a shiny sword while wielding it?

Just some thoughts people. Discuss.

I would love to see mirrors in the game. I dont think Ive seen one game ever pull them off.
Though reflection in the weapons may be a problem for the more Narcissistic characters.

I've seen plenty of games pull off mirrors and reflections. Most recently coming to mind, Red Dead Redemption, the Sims 2, the Sims 3, I believe one of the Fables had mirrors in some homes, many racing games have functioning mirrors, and so on.

I even remember (for some reason) the old SWAT series of games, released some 10 years ago, had mirrors with in-game reflections.

Portal technically had mirrors as well.

Ive seen them. but they're always grainy it seems. Maybe thats just me.

Yeah, mirrors were the big hype about a decade ago, kinda like Bloom and HDR of today I guess. Lots of games back then used it, like the first Unreal, the first Hitman and so on.

I was always surprised by the quality, actually. Especially in racing games, the mirrors often not only pick up a basic reflection, but reflect the world, the light and shadows, ect. Over G Fighters was great with reflecting the entire environment, as well, and the Sims series seems crystal clear. Maybe its a graphics setting you've used in the past that blurs things up.

I remember some place in the first Halo-game where you could mirror yourself in some rock or wall. It was a little blurred, but a nice little asset. That game is ten years old, so it should be easy enough to implement. Idk... :shrug:

Really, I can't think of any reasons that perfect mirrors shouldn't be easily possible these days. It's not anything special, at all.

Fallout New Vegas

There was also a Mirror in Batman Arkham Asylum, it was part of a Clue from the Riddler where you saw yourself

The Source engine can and does pull mirrors off quite nicely. I don't know if it is possible to do with Skyrim's engine. :shrug:

The only problem with mirrors is, it's a resource hog. The act of reflection in a video game is no easy feat. That requires a lot of programming.
I'd rather them make Skyrim an amazing game without having to work on mirrors/realistic reflection.

Fortunantly, Skyrim isn't entirely using Oblivions engine

I agree with this. I would rather just press tab or B and bring up the menu and look at my character there.

According to a few people in here, its not nearly as difficult to implement in a game as you say - it'll be interesting to see what the end result is.

I meant Skyrim. Still not used to Skyrim being the new TES game :facepalm:

The question is, how important are mirrors in a game world like Skyrim? Only the richest in the country would probably buy a mirror for the purpose of looking at themselves, so mostly, seeing your reflection would be limited to water and metal surfaces (and glass windows, but even those should be rare).

I'm certainly not opposing the general idea, but there's a lot of basic and very important things that need to be included first.

Off the top of my head, games with fully-functioning mirrors:

Super Mario 64 (N64) (!!!)
Unreal/Unreal Tournament (1998)
Banjo Tooie (N64)
Deus Ex
The Sims 2
The Sims 3
Doom 3
Mass Effect 2
Red Dead Redemption

I'm sure there are tons of others.

It just depends how they do the reflections - for example, water in current games basically uses a very low-res image of the world above it and manipulates it do undulate - because of the ripples, you can't really tell it's an extremely low-res representation. For Skyrim, I think that proper mirrors would be fine in interior spaces. They wouldn't be too much of a resource hog in there.

snip

Plenty of games pulled off mirrors. And it's not really a resource hog. If you're talking about mirrors that you can carry around and use to look behind ya - that has already been done in Modern Warfare 1 and in the latter games of the franchise. Some scopes had a very nice looking wide-angle mirror effect. Hell I've even seen good reflections on some nice shiny weapons like the revolvers in Call of Juarez. So it's not that hard at all.

Now whether those things are able to reflect npcs and characters as well I don't know. I mean I never really looked at the scope's glass when somebody's moving behind me to see if it reflected him. But really I don't think it's hard or heavy at all.

how about reflections on ice and crystals? would be cool to see in the dungeons located on the coldest regions of skyrim.

Mmmm Ice crystals. Yeah, reflections of this sort http://images4.fanpop.com/image/polls/531000/531382_1283458724540_full.jpg would be an eye candy yes. I don't see it happening yet though.

Or 2 mirrors reflecting each other into infinity. That is easy by the way. We can see that if there's a reason for such 2 mirrors to be put in the game.

i was imagining the caves to be akin to these:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/__WBCPvXeYFk/SsJjI9GIdCI/AAAAAAAABGY/wKNbsu9lYhs/s400/Toronn+Crystal+Cave.jpg

http://www.designyourway.net/artists/Crystal_Cave_2_by_firedudew.jpg

yeah this and mini-rainbows and all the other stuff