I would rate it 7. The lighting effects saved it. Artistically, I would rate the graphics 8 from what I have seen. My opinion though.

An 8 seems about right to me. It's definitely impressive, and my opinion of it might go up when I see it running on a high end PC and get a chance to check out that dynamic snowfall firsthand.

Still, take a look at the open-world visuals in Arma III (which totally needs to be included in the OP's list, as it destroys just about everything there):

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/e3-2011-arma-iii/716033

Skyrim looks good, but Arma looks real.

All I'm saying is they still have time to polish the game.

The gameplay videos have shown some decent graphics and features anyway, with the exception of draw distance that looks kinda bad in the Tundra.

I would rate it a 8 given the competition. In a bethesdian only judgement it's a 10+. My rating may change when I put my hands on it though, these movies are the 360 in all its 'splendor', whereas the PC is another story. In good hands, the engine beast will only be unleashed on the PC.

7.5


I fear Bethesda might be trapping itself into a corner if it doesn't revamp the graphics engine to a greater extent for its next game, probably Fallout 4. You see, Art direction seems to be sort of the saving grace of Skyrim graphics. It's outstanding, in so much that somehow manages to obliterate the tech shortcomings.
I doubt that'll be possible in Fallout 4. Not only is the artificiality and desolation of the wasteland environments less picturesque but games like Battlefield 3 and others that undoubtedlly will follow and improve upon it will just keep raising the bar. Bethesda will have to catch up.

I mean, take ID TECH 5. It's not Open World friendly, all right then.
Bethesda, take notes. Outsource some stuff. Bring them in.
Hire John Carmack as an external consultant, for heavens sake, do whatever you have to do, and we'll have
a monumental tremendous TES VI.

Here's hoping to that.

Oops, my mistake :sweat:


I never played Red Dead Redemption, but I have played GTAIV and there are some very noticeable differences between GTAIV and Oblivion, despite the games being sandbox games.

GTAIV barely keep track of the game world stuff, if cause a huge mass destruction and return a minute later, any sign of mass destruction is gone. Oblivion (and probably Skyrim too) keeps track track of everything and it take 3 ingame days until corpses are being removed from the game world. The Assasin's Creed games have the same issue, the game forgets everything and "resets" the game world even if you just revisit it a few minutes later. Infact, the modern TES games are pretty much the only Sandbox games that do not do this.
All NPCs in GTAIV are pretty much just random people generated by the game walking the streets, while all the NPCs in Oblivion (and probably Skyrim too) are unique and the game keeps track of all those NPCs (their location, what they do and so on) at all times.
In GTAIV you're only able to walk into a few selected buildings, while in Oblivion (and probably Skyrim too) you can walk into them all.
If you start a quest in GTAIV, you're pretty much locked into that quest until you finish it or die. You can't do anything else, you can't start a new quest while doing a quest.

So the RAGE engine (or at least GTAIV) take huge shortcuts into handling the game world, as it decides to keep track of far less stuff.

8/10

:o HOW THE [censored] CAN YOU SAY SOMETHING LIKE THIS !!!! :flame: :swear:

:facepalm: :shrug:

The game is too frickin' big to have Crysis 2 graphics so you're expecting way too much. It looks absolutely amazing for a TES installment.

A lot of biased votes here. Who is voting 10 out of 10 compared to the likes of CryEngine and Frostbite?

More importantly, who the hell is voting 1 out of 10?

that thread is [censored] stupid. you compare engine demos that run on 5000$ computers to a xbox 360 game and say that its what the engine looks like. theres no way of saying how much they can do with the engine we dont know anything about it.


/thread

Same 1 out of 10.

Waiting for PC gameplay of at least 720p then I can vote.

9/10
I like what I see and most important, it is what Bethesda find appropriate for their game. Yea, their game. When id or Crytek or whoever will ever make a TES, then we'll see if they can do a better engine that can run a TES.