I will not play a game that svcks, but has good graphics. I do and will play a game with poor/dated graphics and good gameplay. That's all that needs to be said.

a lot of what made oblivion so great were the graphics in comparison to the other games we had back then.

do you remember how cool it felt to interact with objects in the environment that actually moved for the first time? oblivion was on of the first games that i played that allowed the player to pick a mug off of a table and throw it around. heck, i spent a good chunk of time throwing fireballs at signs just to watch them swing back and forth.

don't misinterpret this next statement, oblivion was a great game, but it owes a lot of its success to the time that it was released. because the games that existed at the time looked so poor, OB had a big initial "wow-factor". that first impression got people to put the game in their xboxes or PCs, and then the game hooked them. better graphics are never a bad thing

A valid point but please answer: if Skyrim had Arena graphics would you be upset?

Its not the graphics that changes one game to the other.

Its the game play and the mechanics (how the games run) that changes one game to the other.

The graphics do change but its only eye candy.

I repeat, how do you measure gameplay mediocrity and graphical mediocrity in proportion to one another? Why are you treating them as an either/or affair? Do poor animations (arguably a part of graphics considering they are visuals and that's what graphics are) not affect your experience (notice the difference between game combat that looks like game combat and the tame bashing each other with a club and not noticing effect of Arena-Oblivion)? Do advanced lighting techniques and believable presentation not affect your experience? If you don't care about graphics, why don't you play board games, instead of them?

You're not understanding me. I'm not saying a game shouldn't have good graphics, but I won't play a game with ONLY good graphics. I will play a game if I think it's fun, but doesn't have top of the line tech.

Seems skullcruseher understood me at least.

I agree with your opinion and i'm sure many high end PC users will agree as well. However, current generation consoles don't even support graphical settings like Anti-aliasing...and consoles own a much bigger market (collaboratively) than the PC..so obviously performance development will be focused on this platform.

Regardless, i'm thankful that we have a company like Bethesda who takes the time to simultaneously release the game on all three platforms. Many developers (Ubisoft, Lionhead, Bioware) will take up to another 8 months before they port the game over to the PC...some of them being console exclusives too.

In regards to the OP saying Oblivion's graphics weren't that good. Oblivions graphics were amazing for its time. Before Crysis came about Oblivion was basically the PC nerd's benchmark.

I like Minecraft and play Daggerfall and Baldur's Gate from time to time. I'm perfectly capable of understand what you're getting at, but why do you treat them as separate, either/or things? Where in the great book of developing did it ever say graphics designers and quest designers had to all move away from their posts to assist in the other department that has nothing to do with them? Just because some things can be ranked as higher in importance than others doesn't make those other things any less important. When the tech is available to them and they have graphics designers on their team, do you believe we should be content with a game that isn't graphically decent for its time?

Instead of sending this memo to me send it to EVERY developer then. I don't know a single game that has the very best visuals, animations, physics, and gameplay all in one package. If you do, please refer it to me.

It seems "graphics vs gameplay" has become just as popular as "consoles vs PCs". People want to argue for the sake or arguing and is in the end rather pointless.

I personally don't think people really understand the connection between graphics and gameplay.
Gameplay would for Skyrim basically mean lots of things to do and lots of ways to interact with the world.
Graphics would mean how you look at everything and how believable things are.

Connection example: You're chopping wood and selling it to an NPC. The wood is a long brown thing that you can't see any detail of. If it weren't a text menu saying it was wood you wouldn't know it was wood. You chop into two pieces.
You grab it and go to an NPC. The NPC has a square-boxed head with a drawed smiley face on it. You sell the wood to the NPC, gain a bit gold.

I think people who says "Graphics don't matter at all!" need to rethink that a bit. They're allowed to say it, of couse, but I don't think that's the reality or the case of Skyrim. In any case, they can always play "Skyrim" in the game Daggerfall, if graphics now doesn't matter at all.

Skyrim is at least "graphically decent", so what's the problem?

Please refer me a game with TES depth and Battlefield 3 graphics so I can go buy it right now.

The Graphics were fine in Oblivion although they did look computer generated.

Skyrim looks very realisitic although it's too soon to have an opinion on the graphics.

I say graphics don't make the game, but it's nice to see the visual eye candy, and to be able to see what people can do. But I want something that can push my quad core and make my gfx card have a heart attack >=)

Please wait for Skyrim

No team is made up of demi-gods. They're all multi-person, diverse groups of people with different experiences and styles. No game has a flawless everything because no team is a superstar, infallible team. Game development is still compartmentalized. A sound designer isn't going to make artwork for the game. A quest designer isn't going to help optimize the engine of a game. Animators are not going to make dungeons. People do different things and Bethesda is paying people good money to specifically focus on the graphics. It's never an either/or thing. If you're a fan of Morrowind and/or Oblivion, look to them. They have their flaws, but their graphics were mindblowing at their respective release dates (excluding animations) and I'm sure if you're on these forums, you thought the gameplay was fantastic, as well. Looking at Skyrim, I think the graphics are incredible and I have no doubt the gameplay will be great, too. There are always flaws, but that's not because people from one department of game design abandoned their post to work on another department.

Idk... Witcher 2?

Jk, that game isn't even out that and I don't know much about it except for that Witcher 1 was really good in general and Witcher 2 looks really really good.

A game should try to focus on all aspects of a game. Not gameplay more than graphics or the other way around. Same goes for sound and everything else. Always it must be considered what the game is actually trying to achieve, very obviously.

This goes for Skyrim.

So in other words, you can't. I understand.

I don't think anyone can.
it's unrealistic to demand TES depth and all the features TES got and at the same time BF 3 graphics. Bethesda can't do everything.

So far it seems Skyrim got really great gameplay. Lots of features and stuff to do. Much better than before.
The graphics are pretty OK now I think. Not amazing, compared to BF3. I wish the graphics could have been a bit better. I also hope they will, before 11/11/11.

Fair enough.

It's all about art and have little to do with high quality graphics, even though high quality graphics is a plus.

Super Nintendo Final Fantasy games look as good now as then, in my eyes.

For when it was released, the graphics were pretty stunning. They've also aged very well, even today you can still say it looks "good", especially if you have use mods to improve it even more.

Skyrim does look better, but not head and shoulders above other games of it's time the way OB was. 5 or 6 years from now will we still say Skyrim looks "good"? I dunno, if a new console comes out by then and game graphics are finally allowed to move forward, probably not.

Is this supposed to mean anything? :blink: