With the technology out today, Bethesda could do alot better.

I am definitely looking forward to Skyrim, but graphics-wise it's not a huge leap forward from Oblivion. (edit: if the PC version looks pretty much the same, which seems likely).

The shadows make a massive difference, of course, but all games have good shadows these days.

The more detailed (or at least more defined) textures have the negative side-effect of making it very obvious how flat everything is, the cobbled roads look painted-on.

The waterfalls look like sheets, hope the PC version has some extra effects going on to touch them up a bit.

The animations look a lot better, though... and as they have traditionally been one of Bethesda's 'weak points', I'm impressed. The waterfall animation saves them from being super-ugly. Generally everything looks a lot better in motion... which is definitely preferable to the other way round.

The art direction (which is a lot more important than technology any day of the week) is breathtaking, wonderful, staggering. Much bleaker and more imposing than Oblivion, but with splashes of real warmth and humanity.

Everyone who has something negative to say is just blinded by the radiating awesomeness of the graphics.

If the graphics in the video are from PC, then very disappointing. If it is from Xbox, then it is a decent improvement considering it is the same hardware. Seriously, people who say the graphics are amazing are most likely xbox or ps3 gamers, those who arn't impressed are most likely PC gamers. It's a logical conclusion. Seriously, compared to every game I have played lately (on PC), these graphics are not really impressive...

It's all about the lighting and the shadows as far as I'm concerned - that's the major difference between the two - the town shots are the perfect example of this.

This is very true. My brother and I perceived this right away on the first released screenshots and now seeing it in movment aswell.
It seems Beth went with a more detail "extream bump mapping" on a majority of things that it starts to look really bad.
For example, the comparison of the forest, It seems oblivion's forest are more simple but are more smoother to the eye compared to Skyrim's overdone bumpmapping which creates a feeling of a bad texture artist...
But all aside, this is what PC Modding is for. I will be the first at my local game store to get a copy day 1!

Meh, call me a troll if you want, but I'm not really impressed. But maybe because I'm a PC game that uses graphic mods and I've seen better looking games come out 2 years ago. However, I have to admit the new character models and animations look nice.

You're a PC game?

Anyway have you seen many games of this scale with better graphics?

Every aspect has been improved significantly as far as I can see.
Remember that the environments in Oblivion was top notch when it was released and this is still the same console generation.

One of the first scene with the character running through the snowy forest made my jaw drop. The shadows looked amazing.
If it looks this good now, just wait til' some of the modder has sung their song. I'll probably need to upgrade my somewhat recently bought gaming pc yet again.

Thatlooks great just more realism and detail to imerse me into the game, i cant wait!!!

Wow... That is not true in the least. Those screens he was comparing to were PC Oblivion to the 360 Skyrim and it's still worlds better. I can't believe anyone actually believes that it is just a little better looking than Oblivion....

its still.. so... flat!!! bring the tesselation and dx11 already...

I don't see how much better the vanilla graphics can be without it impeding on development. I'd play with what was shown. All I need now is content, boat loads of content!

Plus, I think this is on console. Todd said the production usually goes from console to PC, so the shown content probably doesn't compare to the max settings on the PC.

Sorry if this has been asked, just to many threads to follow, but
Any source on the trailer being renderd from Xbox360?
I can tell it most likly does but having a source is nice

Once again. read my sig from Gstaff.

its a improvement, yes... but not that much of a improvement...

From morrowind to oblivion, that was a vast improvement!

Well the guy in Skyrim is whearing a mask or facial shield, we really can't tell what face is better, aftre all he is hiding his ugly mug, LOL.

The forest is better in Oblvion, but the rest, Skyrim is better which it should. I am a bit disapointed with the Skyrims forests, Oblivion looks so much better there.

It looks so much like a third person game! I don't know why it does, but I dont like it.

Overall the graphics definitely look better - but the troll looks worse in my opinion.

I don't understand the people claiming Oblivion wasn't good looking for its time. It was not just good looking for its time, it was good looking for some time after it came out too (and it still looks great to me)! It needed some hefty hardware to run well relative to the time it came out.

No, no there hasn't been games in the last 2 years with as good of graphics as this. You know why? This is the console version. Your standards of graphics are set in PC mode and you think it looks terrible but if you had played console games before, you would know that these graphics are insane for the console, so the PC version graphics are going to look insane. Too many people have no perspective because they are either on the console side or the PC side of graphics. You have to see graphics from both and realize how they scale.

[edit]whoops, wrong thread

I'm pretty sure that bit was prerendered. They have a year to improve this, anyway. The towns are looking nice, but the wilderness textures are a bit low res. I wonder how much better it will be when finished.

Awesome post dude, thanks for these screens! I absolutely love everything we've seen so far. My only concern, which I don't really have any reason to be worried about yet because they haven't shown us examples yet, would be how the night sky and sunset will look. I bloody loved walking around in Oblivion looking at the stars, or feeling that yellow-orange glow from the last rays of the sun at the end of a summer's day on me. Amazing!

Dynamic shadows versus lackthereof. BIG Difference.
Theses are, of course, Xbox 360 screens so....