I have a lot of local friends who love video games and we have all been gaming together since I can remember.
I am the only one that ranks Oblivion as one of the greatest. I played Oblivion for the first time in November, last year.
None of my friends have even considered playing it, they are IMO obsessed with playing games that they feel are mind blowing in terms of graphics.

I on the other hand was of the same opinion until I played Minecraft, thanks to which I gave the hideous Oblivion a try.

After watching the official trailer of Skyrim, each and every one of my friends thinks it's the best game out there in terms of graphics or how the look of game feels, second only to Battlefield3.

I see a lot of people on this forum saying graphics is not so good, rating it 6/10, criticizing various technical aspects of it. And these people are fans of the series.
When it comes to graphics, technicality shouldn't be an issue as long as it looks great to the eye.

Please share what the neutrals you know think about it.

Best looking game I've ever seen.

In my focus(study hall) class at school several people in there love video games but the majority of them say that have tried and hated Oblivion because its "too boring". Its all in their opinion but I don't understand how you could be bored with Oblivion, you can do practically anything you want!

I have tried many games, but Oblivion seems to be the only one that I can keep going back to and it still feels fresh and fun to explore the world. (I haven't even completed the main quest yet after playing for a few years).

It certainly helps that I have installed 150+ mods that greatly improve the game, but underneath it all, there is some kind of essential structure to the world of Oblivion that makes the game fun to play for hundreds or perhaps thousands of hours.

I think most (or at least a good chunk of them) people from the current generation of gamers much prefer action > immersion. Explosions, eye candies, violence, gore, etc.

It seems a lot of gamers these days are too obsessed with the multiplayer aspect in video games. There are many gamers who simply do not give rpg's a chance these days. Oblivion is easily my favorite game of all time, followed by Mass Effect 1 and 2.(Both rpg's).

Your not going to get many, what you define as "neutrals" here, at least they are not going to admit to it. you have to read their posts to see if they've actually ever played an ES game before.

No game since the Original Crysis has "Blown me away" visually. We've just kind of reached that point in technology. I've seen what DX11 is capable of, and quite frankly, it's nowhere near the 'Night and day" comparison a lot of the "Enthusiasts" are claiming it to be. It's noticeable, but nothing like the leaps were were seeing back around the PS1 to PS2 era.


Visually though, Skyrim itself is a huge leap over Oblivion. Most of that comes from the art itself, and the presentation. With the understanding we have of the current-gen tech, making an Ugly game itself is more of an accomplishment than making a good-looking game.

Or you could be awesome, and love both ;P I'm chomping at the bit for Skyrim, but I naturally preordered my copy of Brink to pass the time

The first time I played this game was back in 2009 and I had removed it from my system and mind after I got into the sewer.
The graphics made me sick and the combat was stupid, the game just didn't do a single thing that would hold me down and did everything that would make me leave.
Last year a friend from another city told me how he had got his hands on a game which he had fallen in love with in a couple of days. He was telling me stories of how he was in a city and made friends with a beggar and then the joining the thieves guild stuff, I got very interested and finally gave it a try again. This time I was able to endure it longer because I did not judge a game by how it's graphics were (because of minecraft). After getting inside the imperial city and doing the same things my friend did and having some things in the same part (joining the thieves guild) happen in a somewhat different way, made me realise how great the game was. Later, I started loving the graphics as will, which made playing the 274 hours easier.

Anyway as far as my neutral friends are concerned, they are more on the hate side than on the neutral but still. They are huge fans of Crysis 2, not the game but the graphics, thy think the game as in gaming experience was not that great. If they say they haven't seen a game that looks even close to how Skyrim lloks, that's saying a lot. the clip when the PC is walking through the town with the old lady standing on right is what they say would make Assassins creed eat dust. When the wolf is running at you and you are readying your bow is the best they liked.

Personally I've never understood why people play games based purely on their graphics, even if they know full well before the gameplay and story are terrible. It just... boggles my mind. To each their own though, I suppose.

On topic, the only 'neutral' I've asked is my brother. He really loved Fallout 3 and got more immersed in that game than any other, ever. He won't play Skyrim though and has no interest in it, purely due to it being one of "those sword and magic games", even though he knows its by the same developer and gameplay wise will be very similar.

All of my friends rank the lord of the rings as one of the greatest movies ever made. Were huge fans of the Onimusha and other ninja/samurai gmes in the ps2 era. They love the combat in Assassins creed(sword).
The only reason I could understand why they don't like the look of the combat in Oblivion is because majority of it they saw in 1st person and the 3rd person is very weird.
In skyrim the 3rd person looks awesome as well. The trailers show it as an action game and having a cool looking 3rd person view helps a lot lot of people get attracted I guess.

The person I've shown the screenshots to that hasn't played The Elder Scrolls thinks it looks below average not only for this year but below average for years before.

Except that doing everything you want usually involves going into dungeons etc. that look pretty much the same as the one you were just in before. While there are alot of areas you can explore, you can plainly see that they simply copied aspects from some area and made some minor changes here and there. There's one cloth sack I keep seeing in the same spot in dungeon after dungeon for instance. It just starts to get repetitive after awhile. It's also way too easy to be filthy rich in no time. So you go into a dungeon with a bunch of loot, but you don't need to take any of it since you already have more gold than you know what to do with. And aside from pointless things like owning a house in every city, you have absolutely nothing to spend it on. It just takes all fun out of going looting if you don't even have to bother with that aspect of the game.

A lot of "gamers" (at least ones I've met) seem to have this mentality that certain games make you a "nerd". So it's COOL to play COD/Halo/BF/SPorts games, but anything with Swords, monsters, magic, etc makes you a nerd, and being a nerd is a bad thing to them.

I play a game because of how it plays not how it looks. Not really a ig thing for me.

But yes it looks good, but graphics shouldn't be the primary focus when seeing if a video game is good or not.

I know a lot of people that have seen the trailer. most of them say it looks good. I am the only one excited for Skyrim. A couple people say it looks "[censored] and gay." Those people need to be locked in the deepest dungeon in Skyrim.

They will be locked in the new.....Jail System!

I would say the same If I had only seen the screenshots.
They make me consider whether it's really going to look as awesome as it did in the trailer. Maybe it's because of images being still/moving.
For example, when the guy is walking through town in the trailer and the screenshot. The surrounding, the npcs, the path pavement, etc, feels like some game from 2007(screenshot) shown in new gen graphics(trailer).

Oblivion & Morrowind are the only video games that I play...I love their vast settings, graphics, and open-ended style of play...I might be dating myself, but...I remember when I was so excited to go to my friend's birthday party because he had the game 'Pong'...I don't think you kids can even recall or know how mind blowing it was to receive your first Atari system with games like 'Pac-Man', 'Centipede', 'Pole Position', & 'Battle Tank' and be grateful to play it on your very own used 1970 style black & white T.V. that you received for Christmas...Hell, I remember playing 'Oregon Trail' at school and loving every minute of it...Gaming technology has come so far and so fast in just 30 years that we sometimes take it for granted and berate great games like Oblivion because they might not have the most visually stunning graphics or most violent style of game play...There are some of us on these forums who have seen and witnessed every great video game achievement up to this very point and are very proud and grateful to have played and currently play Oblivion...Be damned careful of how you bandy words like 'hideous' about when describing Oblivion, some out there (myself included), might take umbrage at it...

In my mind, graphics and action are the least important parts of an RPG. The storyline and interesting world are more important.

I might not have been playing for that long, but my 1st game was on NES (Contra), and have had sega, dos, dreamcast, ps1, ps2, pc. So I can consider myself as someone who has played games of almost every type.
But my 1st impression of oblivion will not change even though I did get it a couple of technological cycles later. A lot of people judge a game on 1st impression and not on their history of gaming and it's evolution. I have my friend to thank for arousing the interest in me to give it a second try. If he hadn't I wouldn't be here right now, eagerly awaiting skyrim. would have just been a guy who thinks the game looks good enough and will give it a try when it's released.

I did show some screenshots to my mother. Her video gaming doesn't go past flash games (particularly word games and virtual farming on facebook). So she's hardly a graphics person.

That's not to say she doesn't have an eye for art/visuals, though. She's great a page layouts and does photography. Her comment was that the skies looked over-exposed.

That's it? No other comments/feedback?

A true friend indeed for showing you here...And I am glad that you have risen above that '1st Impression' mentality...I urge you to check out 'Morrowind', 'Bloodmoon', & 'Tribunal'...