Why can't we have armor designed with as much passion as the LoTR movie armors? They are all great! (almost). Instead, we have wierd stuff like green glass armor that looks absolutely horrible, especially the helmet! Damn HELMETS! GAAAH!

The elvish armour artwork displeases me a lot, it looks too high-fantasy in design, scifi-ish in fact.

You must be joking.

That's PATHETIC! Pure bulk alone does not make an armour mighty! It needs lots of spikes and randomly attatched weapons!

I will settle for no less than this. http://images.wikia.com/avatar/images/0/06/Armor.png

I hate it when you guys try to throw logic out when it has been announced that the devs are going for "Epic Realism". Completely over the top high fantasy gear is out of the question. No giant pauldrons and no giant swords, sorry but unlike WoW, TES is not trying to look like a cartoon.

How can you call something that ridiculous "badass". It's laughable if anything :slap:

Here's some real armor, and I promise it looks great:
http://www.metmuseum.org/special/Warriors_of_the_Himalayas/images/6-lamellar-armor.L.jpg
http://www.artehistoria.jcyl.es/granbat/jpg/BAJ09924.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3215/2897519247_9e9f5eb0e4.jpg

That's the kind of equipment I want to see in skyrim. No copies of course, it has to be made like it's from the elder scrolls world, not taken out of some historical setting, that would be just as stupid. I liked much of the morrowind armor, it was creative and (mostly, as in some pauldrons, daedric and glass) realistic.

The armors designed for LOTR(the films) is amazing, but trying to copy it is not.

I'm pleased. I couldn't stand the armor in Oblivion, green shiny Glass armor? Bah.

I ended up having to increase the armor values on other armors to keep the stats without looking like an anime character.

You guys best leave my glass armor out of this.

I wore it all day err day. It looked great on my battle mage.

I liked it too. Although it totally looked like heavy armour.

I just didn't like the strange green shiny glowy look at all.

It really doesn't bother me much since I can use the CS to wear whatever I like the looks of without sacrificing stats, at least until they let us layer clothing.

They're specifically going for a more low fantasy, realistic approach. I think a lot of the over-the-top effects are going to be gone.

Well, anyway, save a few parts of some armours, the armour in Oblivion looked not too bad, and generally fairly practical (Daedric notwithstanding). That level of design didn't really bother me for the most part.

I wish they'd look to more movies for armor design. For one, movies usually go for realism, if not accuracy. Second, even the most outlandish movie armors have to be worn by human actors, so they have a level of functionality.

If you call giant oversized buckets of awesome laughable then atleast come with something half-deceant yoursef. I mean come on, that thing just looks silly, barely covers the body and is made out of weak material. I NEED MY SILLY OVER-THE-TOP ARMOR, ITS AN ADDICTION......

For me, the Dwemer armour from Morrowind was indeed not very good looking, to say the least. However, I do feel that it gave the Dwemer armour a more unique look rather than the Dwarven Splintmail-ish style Dwarven armour in Oblivion.

I can understand not wanting flaming wings on you'r back and a sword the size of a surf board (no matter how cool that might be) but if we keep doing this low fantasy approach so much then why not get rid of magic, elves and dragons too. The only playable race is now Nord.

This is the TES world we are talking about here. This sort of thing is part of the world.

Yeah, well, I tend to like it, but it is a bit polarising. Sometimes I look at it and think "That's just a bit silly looking" but other times I look at it and think "Ooh, that's pretty awesome" and then some other times I look at it and feel a little sick. I dunno. Depends on my mood. Though I like the glass swords pretty much always.

totally agree, i think every armour that is in both in Oblivion and MW looked way better in MW

the only armour I liked in Oblivion was the town guard and imperial city guard armours.

It's been part of the games. Designs change from game to game, which means it's very fluid and not set in stone. Skills disappear, new things are added, things change. It sounds to me like they're going to right direction, you keep the workable portions but get rid of things that are too unbelievable.

I'd actually be on board with a large reduction in magic and dragons. Elves doesn't make sense unless there's a reason they've been wiped out.

I have my fingers crossed for some nice Chitin* armor.

* Pronounced "KI-TIN" not "CHIT-IN"... rhymes with "eye tin"
Did you know that chitin is a polysacharide (a sugar) similar to cellulose? It's found in the cell walls of fungi, and in the exoskeletons of arthopods. Like cellulose, humans are unable to digest chitin. There's your biology lesson for the day.

I'm sorry but you lost me right there. I was kinda seeing where you're coming from and I tried to look at thing's from the perspective you explained but you just completely lost me.

You don't want a TES game do you?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Chinese_Armor_4.JPG Chinese
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3252/3051079271_32e8d60520.jpg Roman
http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/1277/10721088108411031085108nq8.png Mongolian
http://img275.echo.cx/img275/466/armor2a1at.gif Middle-Eastern
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/Chinese_Armor_10.JPG More Chinese (Chinese armour is awesome)

Here's some pretty cool but also real armours. Just add a few stylistic alterations and minor additions and you have some good fantasy armour.

And here is a diagram of armour evolution in Europe. http://img275.echo.cx/img275/7539/armourarmour28nq.gif

Lol, I know what you mean about the Two Worlds armour. I was playing TW II and I bought a whole set of the Knights armor and when I finally leveled up enough to use it and put it on I couldnt believe how stupid it looked. It was all black and red and it looked like I was wearing football equipment. All the lower level armor before that looked ok. Hopefully the higher level armor gets better.

Agreed! I find basic mail armour so much more aesthetic, as opposed to massive over the top power range type armour. Pleased to hear skyrim will take a relatively realistic approach.

Vikingr is a great mod - some cool armour images:
http://img821.imageshack.us/img821/9580/armours.jpg
http://img265.imageshack.us/img265/1525/armours1.jpg
- would love for Skyrim to have a good variety of mail armour.

I believe the green glass will be making a return. Criticising the glass armor for being neon-green is like criticising Ebony armor for being Black, or Steel armor for being Metallic Grey. It's the confirmed natural color of the material. You can criticize the design all you want, but honestly, I thought Oblivion's glass armor looked pretty nice, except for the helmet.

But it's difficult to get helmets to look right (My favorite Oblivion helmet was the Steel Barbute)

And for those wanting realistic armors... do we really want a return of Oblivion's Chainmail Coif?

I actually enjoyed all of Oblivion's armors except Daedric, Ebony (I prefer larger, fewer plates, but loved the color scheme), Female chainmail (Erg... too much skin), and Elven.

Of course... once you got past Leather in the Light Armors, none of them suited a Thief anymore . That was the real failing. But, they looked good for Skirmisher/scout types. A shame Medium Armor went away :/

I usually prefer fantasy armor over realistic, but I'm not much for the huge shoulder trend either. I like what they've got in Skyrim so far. They've got some realistic armors and some that are more imaginary. And even with the low-fantasy ones, they seem to have a more rugged and low-tech approach than the usual full plate knight armor.

I don't know about that, it's set in Skyrim in a period of extreme strife during the downfall of an Empire. The knowledge required to advance in magic is probably not as readily available, and Dragons being less plentiful than it sounds like doesn't impact the storyline at all, since we've never seen them before. I'd rather have few, more powerful Dragons instead of a horde of weaker ones.

I will say that the setting isn't my favorite, and that my main draw is the gameplay. I'm not advocating getting rid of magic and dragons, but it just doesn't make sense that they'd be as prevalent as some people advocate given the recent events in the timeline.