Skyrim's graphics are objectively superior to Oblivion's, as long as we're specifically discussing game graphics rather than art. I don't know enough about the technical stuff to make that call for every aspect of the game's graphics; meshes certainly look to use more tris on average, and new or improved technologies are in use... but texture resolution and fancy shader stuff... I dunno.

Considering that Skyrim runs on the same console generation as Oblivion, it's perhaps the art style (and more specifically, the artistic achievements of Beth's character and world artists, level designers, animators...) that will be most telling. And that's much more subjective, but I consider it vastly superior to Oblivion (and the great majority of other games) in this way also.

Well, so do Skyrim's, the whole world isn't loaded all the time, just the little area around you.

Not at all, just here to spark some good healthy debate

Looks fine to me. Character models are streets ahead of Oblivion.

Great post. I think the art design is going to ooze with style and really make up for any technical deficiencies.

Remember that was on the Xbox version and considering it struggled with Oblivion I'm not surprised they haven't bumped up the graphics too much.

PC version will have hi res textures.

True, but if you kill someone in the first room of a house and go into the hallway, realize you forgot something and go back into the room the body will still be there in Skyrim (at least I hope so).

In GTA (or RDR for that matter) The body, as well as any weapons or other items (which is more acceptable because there are only a few unique weapons in the game, so it is more for ammo only) will be gone or reset. Knocked over trashcans will be back where they were, lightpoles are fixed, and that kind of thing. In TES, the game still remembers where things are, even if it isn't all loaded.

Yeah but surely, if your'e trying to sell a game you'd take screenshots and gameplay footage from the platform that looks best? Maybe this is saying that all 3 will have the same graphical capabilities?

Ah, but saving the state of things has nothing to do with graphics. The GPU only draws what actually exists, the moment you leave the immediate vicinity of the body it's no longer there, and thus the GPU doesn't give a damn.

Huh?

Agreed. I especially dislike the plastic look of skin and hair/fur textures textures I've seen in the screenshots. I also notice that bloom-bleaching has made a return.

Hey! They have REALISTIC REALTIME SHADOWS. That is all that I care about. You have NO clue how hard it is to design an interior when the lights shine through every [censored] thing in the room and the walls. I dont care if it looked exactly like Oblivion but with better shadows. But they have improved everything overall. Plus, with a game of this scale its impossible to make the graphics as good as some of the other games out there that are closed-area FPS's. (Crysis, CoD, BF:BC2, etc)

Here we go again. :banghead:

It still has better graphics than CoD. :shrug:

How come the RAGE engine doesn't support that then? Since everything reverts back to normal in GTA i'm guessing if doesn't?

CoD has terrible graphics. I've watched my younger brother play Black Ops, and everything looks like it's made out of paper.

The lighting is pretty darn bad for today's standards. The rest is fine.

Take a look at this 82 page slideshow from Battlefield 3 developers about lighting: http://www.gamersbook.com/scene/news/battlefield-3-gdc-2011-technical-presentation/

Then take a look at some Skyrim screenshots. Skyrim is light-years behind and it saddens me.

The game may not be rendering everything around you, but it's still calculating all the NPC's package routines and events as time goes by.



Ehh, it doesn't look like it does. They have better environments (beautiful forests, etc) but the overall graphical goodness is probably less. But again, as long as it is better than n64 and has nice shadows I don't care.

The graphics people don't realize how much effort is being put into making the world unique. All 120 of the dungeons are unique vs. Oblivion's 5 or 6 dungeon types. All the cities are unique as well as their buildings. The whole world is hand-crafted, nothing is generated anymore. This is going to be Skyrim, not Oblivion 2.0.

Yeah. There's a reason why a 4GHz CPU will put out significantly higher FPS than a 2GHz CPU (architecture and whatnot being equal). Devs have to take more than just GPU performance into account.

I also forgot the shadows in my previous post - that'll make a hell of a difference.

Come on, graphics are just fine, where are the problem with graphics? It's not an FPS, Bethesda must focus more on contents than the mere graphics. When they've made up a good looking (but it seems a great looking to me) game their work on graphics is over.

Graphics are fine. I'd rather them work on including more content than overt graphics overhauls.

Unless you spend half your playing time staring at trees, the graphics don't matter as much as the gameplay. Plus, Skyrim has to be dumbed down to meet the consoles' limits. Not trying to start another flame war, but being a PC purist, I have to hope they optimize the graphics for the PC version.

GTA 4 is one of the worse optimized games :\

Back on topic, the footage we seen so far is on a 360 I really do not want to start a platform war but consoles ARE the reason why it may not "look" 10x better then it did in 2006.. back in 2006 it was stressing the system because of its size and what you can do. Its 2011 and they are using the same exact hardware from 2006(2004-5 for dev time) that itself pretty much explains why it looks how it does. PC version with DX11 is what they should be showing actually if they really want to sell the game such as Battlefield 3 is doing i have no doubts that PC version will look superior but im guessing the minimum specs of it won't be a 7800 video card (closest comparison to 360) which cannot even run any games past 2007 on medium...

What's the point of having this beautiful photo-realistic world when you can't do anything in it? Bethesda is focusing more on content this time.

Things like sabotoging a sawmill and causing havok in town is something that wouldn't have happened had they instead focused on graphics only.