Play Metro 2033 on ABSOLUTE MAX, and you'll see what I'm talking about. Don't just go off of screenshots, because those are usually on the inferior console port that only uses DX9 (even though in some cases, I still think the console port looks a bit better than Skyrim).

Now art direction? I'd give that to the Elder Scrolls any day.

Not completely true, my xbox elite can pull the same graphics out of my games as my ps3 can, a little better so on some of my games.

I agree with the OP. I do like eye candy, but I'm far more concerned with the RPG elements and the mechanics of the game play. Bad graphics does distract from my game play, but they ahve to be really bad. Skyrim looks very good though, and I think that Bethesda games have better then adequate graphics for my tastes.

I own Metro 2033, and have played it on max settings. So now that you've brought up art direction let's talk about how that adds to the immersion.

All this time I thought those mountains on p 48 were just artwork....


Now that I know they're a screenshot I'm sold that they've finally done mountains correctly this time 'round.

The thing is, just because the technology to make really spectacular graphics is there doesn't mean it can be utilized to that extend for every game.

Take the ever popular example of Crysis: Pretty game. Done a few years ago. But it's a completely different kind of game compared to the TES games. Crysis doesn't have all sorts of complex AI schedules for a large number of NPCs that need to be tracked. Most NPCs just walk around a little when you get close, and they all look the same.

I also saw people complaining about how GTA 4 has higher system requirements than Crysis, but doesn't look as pretty. Again, not the same kind of game. GTA 4 has all those pedestrians walking around, driving cars, etc.


And then there are the console limitations of course.

Not think, no. Metro 2033 in particular really isn't deniable on this point - it looks far better than the media on Skyrim we've seen released so far, again because the environments are considerably more limited and the hardware it's intended for (at least on PC) is considerably more ridiculous than the hardware that Skyrim was supposedly running on for those screenshots. There's not really any way for Skyrim to compete there. Uncharted 2 is a similar case - it's running on similarly-powerful hardware, but it had the assistance and funding of the company that actually made the console it was developed for, was developed solely for that console and specifically to take advantage of that console's strengths as much as possible, and quite frankly may well be the best-looking third-person console game to date. And for Red Dead Redemption... again, Bethesda can't really afford to compete with Rockstar. I don't mean "can't afford" as in "it's too much of a risk". I mean they don't have enough money to achieve the sorts of things that Rockstar regularly achieves with their games.


A few points:

1) Crysis used a lot of "bullshot", especially in those "low rez" magazine pictures, so saying that it didn't look half as good there as it did with max settings on your computer simply isn't true. It's not even possible. There are effects and details in those screenshots that the game does not have.

2) Not all of the screenshots in the GI article are low-resolution.

3) Red Dead Redemption couldn't have looked gorgeous when you played it on your computer in full detail. That's literally impossible.

4) A screenshot doesn't need to come in 1080p (and actually, that wouldn't be possible given the platform that the shots in the GI article were taken from) for it to be possible to make a judgement on the level of quality involved in the graphics. There are some things you aren't going to be able to tell (texture quality being a big one, unless it's very low), but that doesn't mean that it's literally impossible to judge quality on any level and in any way. Even lower-quality screenshots can provide some reasonable indication of what to expect from a game's looks.


See above.


The only aspects I think this is really arguable on so far are that the textures and models may be higher quality in Skyrim. It's hard to tell in the screenshots. The character models are somewhat better outside of sheer polycount (there may only be one character that's clearly visible in the screenshots, but that character still looks less-than-incredible to me except when compared to Bethesda's past efforts and Rockstar's characters look... well, incredible), the environments look considerably better than what we've seen so far, and the distance views in RDR in particular have some effects that I have yet to see for Skyrim.


It looks better on both. It look far, far better on PC.

thats just not true.
that console does not have the hardware capability to max out EVEN OBLIVION, my notebook plays ob in 360 quality but with higher view distance and tons of mods, dont give me that argument unless its fact.
also 360 does not render games in 1080p like the ps3.
thats just for HARDWARE!
it doesn't even matter if you dont have a monitor or tv that can support those resolutions

but as for the game itself which is stylized so it wont matter what you play it on.
what does it matter, we will all experience the same game.
and like i said, the screenshots we got were likely from the xbox 360, thats saying a'lot because they look fantastic!
when we get some HD SCREENSHOTS then we will know the MAXIMUM potential that this game has graphically.

True, but we 'll wait and see. I just know from what the information I got from the crappy scans I saw, was that it looked great, maybe not next gen, but fairly close. I think it's obvious that Skyrim is graphically and artistically superior to the last game.

DAMN! :clap:

It's not. I have yet to see a screen shot of a game looked better than the actually game on a console or the PC. (in a magazine) The reason of that is that when you take a beautiful and detailed picture and shrink it down to 10-20% of it's original size (like putting the picture in a magazine) it does not look anywhere as good as the original. To test this, take a beautiful screenshot you have that is like 1280 x 1065 or something around there and shrink it down to around 280 x 190 (guesstimating but you can just use paint to shrink it to a percentage such a 10-20%) and compare them, the bigger one looks MUCH better. I'm not trying to be the champion of Bethesda, I just don't want people to jump to conclusions and be unhappy when they don't need to be until we get confirmation of if the graphics are groundbreaking or not. From the pictures in the game informer and cracking out my GI issues from olden and comparing them to the other best of the generation games of this time and Skyrim equals them if not being slightly better but I can't make that determination because it is just too small to compare details that closely. But the quality of graphics are AT LEAST equal to Metro 2033 from what I can compare.

It adds immensely to it, as was the reason I was more immersed in Morrowind than Oblivion. Morrowind's art direction was out of this world (literally). It was very unique and really made you feel like you were a stranger in a different land. Oblivion's made me feel like I was just in some forests of the UK or something. Very uninspired and took way too many cues from the middle ages and LotR than it should've. Hell, for about the first 5 hours, I felt like I was playing more of a LotR based game than an Elder Scrolls game. As for Skyrim's that's still sort of left to be seen, as the screenshots only revealed small bits of the game's art direction.

Will I be fully immersed in Skyrim? We'll see when it releases. All I know is that so far, it's taking too much inspiration from Conan the Barbarian, rather than being inspired from Elder Scrolls lore itself.

I highly doubt it. GI has a weird grit to the shots do to the print quality and paper. The actual screens are probably a whole lot more crisp then that. Also you are basing this off of screenshots which hardly does the game justice. Be patient and wait for more info and videos then you will see the actual graphic work in those shots.

Further more graphics are not necessary to immersion; story is. Story makes you care about something graphics help you understand it. Also most people don't realize how important sound is and we have not heard any clips from the game. Mistakes in the visuals can actually be hidden by Great story and Sound design. I make movies I know this from experience and actual studies. It works the same in games. Go back to great games 8 years ago and most likely they had more to do with the story then the graphics. Beyond Good and Evil would be an excellent example play it now and you might not be able to make out what some of the things on the screen were supposed to be but that was never important because the story made you care to an extent.

The 360 can render games in 1080p. It generally doesn't. The PS3 generally doesn't either. Neither of them can handle running most games at 1920x1080 with a decent framerate, so the best you can generally expect from a title is 720p (which is what Oblivion displays at on both the PS3 and the Xbox 360).

As for the overall argument over which of the two can handle better graphics... well, generally the 360. Not because it's a significantly more powerful system, just because it's significantly easier to develop for and more similar to the platform most developers are already familiar with (the PC). Oblivion does look and run somewhat better on the PS3, but this is a result of improvements and optimizations made over the entire year they spent porting the game to PS3 - it has nothing at all to do with the PS3 being more powerful.

EDIT: Need to make a bit of a correction: the 360 version of Oblivion can go up to 1080i, apparently. The PS3 version can't.

At this time of gaming compared to the gaming industry, the graphics look, as you said, pheonominal! And you are definately right, http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1156353-this-is-how-tes-v-should-look-like/

Actually, I don't even think that render looks that great for a game, for terragen though it looks fantastic.

You don't think that a photograph looks that great?

It's not a photograph xD

Totally right, sorry, I meant to say Metro 2033. I was thinking about Red Dead Redemption while typing that sentence because I was going to make a comment about how it looked on the 360 compared to the screenshot since they are obviously on the same port and I accidently mixed up the names of the games. Brain fart on my part.

As for "Low-resolution" I don't mean that GI is using low quality pictures, I'm meaning that when you reduce a pictures size the detail begins to degrade. Like I said, just take a screenshot of something you think looks good at a high resolution and shrink it down to about 10-20% of it's original size. It looks a lot less appealing now right?

Depends on how you do so. They aren't shrinking them down in MS Paint and then putting them into their article, and while there's certainly a loss of quality it's not the sort of thing that would really make it impossible to judge anything in terms of the game's graphics.


You really, really hurt your credibility in terms of being able to judge graphics when you try to argue that a photograph's graphics don't look that good,

EDIT: And again: enthusiasm is fine, but you've reached the point where you're apparently responding to pretty much everything you're shown by saying that Skyrim's graphics are better regardless of whether or not that really makes sense. It takes five seconds of reading to see that the person who posted that picture stated that it's a photo, but you still seem to be trying to say that it doesn't look that impressive in comparison.

I'm not so sure that's a photograph. If it is, some heavy filters were applied to it. The bloom makes my eyes bleed.

This. Basically the level of detail and resolution games run at on consoles are set from title to title and depends on which settings will play the game on that console without causing the system to struggle. Thus, AA is always a bad decision on the consoles. Same with shadow quality and so forth. Not all games are set to the same standard of visual settings as another.

yeah i should say that it cant "really" handle it. its not that the graphics card doesn't support the resolution its that the processor usually overheats and the system needs extra cooling. the new slim one might do it better. im going off of old knowledge maybe.
the ps3 only has its own titles that run in 1080..i think demon soul is the best looking 1080p title for ps3.

but my real argument is that the pc MIGHT look better. we dont know, those are 360 screens.
we need some hd screens to be able to tell.

alot of games are being held back by ps3s 360s limitations. the market calls for multiplatform games but some of the technology that we have now cannot be used in ps3 or 360.
no directx10/11
console-ation. :hubbahubba:

It's not, it's a digital painting...trust me.

http://digitalpainters.net/index.php?action=gallery;sa=view;id=16

note, not mine.

i agree with the topic creator, people set their expectations to unbelievably impossible standards these days... for everything!

skyrim looks incredible to me, and i really like the looks of the dragons, landscape, the few enemies we got to see, etc...

im kind of glad they're trying some new things, it'd be kinda predictable and not all that new if they surprised us with just slight alterations of oblivion's HUD and all that.

i always get pretty immersed into their games, so i cant wait to see what i get to do in this one.