The water is vastly improved from the old games. The stream flowing through Bleak Falls Barrow looks cold. Also, Beth has actually managed to put realistic looking ripples onto the water surfaces in outdoors areas. No more pools of liquid mercury. The waterfall textures need some work but even those look much better in the newest videos than the river rapids in the very first trailer that was released.

You can't compare Skyrim to Oblivion , i mean Oblivion came out in 2006 why would you compare to 2011 game with a 2006 game? You should compare Skyrim water with some of the new games like Just Cause 2(especially after enabling GPU Accelerated Water) , Hydrophobia, Uncharted 2 and 3, Bioshock 1 ( very realistic) . All of those games have much better water than Skyrim and all of those games are a bit older, so not to lie ourselves Skyrim water is not very good sadly.

A bit unfair to compare Skyrim's water to a game in which water is basically the only selling point.


But yeah it could be better.

You forgot the most obvious:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hEhU1q_BWw&feature=related

All water looks good except for the big rapids in rivers. They look quite horrible to be honest, and it seems they still haven't changed since the trailer.

Sorry but you CAN compare Oblivion to Skyrim they are running on the same hardware a 360 built 2006 has the same specs as a 360 built today although newer ones are intergrated so less heat = less failure rate same goes for PS3.. all of the games you listed are [censored] compared to PC versions of graphic intensive games and Crysis 2(at first it was a true console port DX11 patch saved Crytek some rep). Uncharted is a PS3 exclusive and can be compared to MGS4 which are few of the best looking console games on the current market. And each game you listed is a closed linear game vs Oblivion or Skyrim's open world game

No i am pretty sure its dumb to compare a 2006 game with 2011, plus i don't know if you've read but Skyrim uses completely different engine that Oblivion, doesn't metter if they are running on xbox 360, there are lots of games who look much better now than the 2006 ones and are on xbox360 same as the 2006 ones games. Anyways just saying that i am not at all impressed by the water in Skyrim, but i don't really care that much plus there are mods to fix that, anyways i know you all are gona buy this game including me but that doesn't mean that you need to say that everything in this game is so pretty and amazing and bla bla bla cuz its not and thats ok, so like i said stop fooling yourselves by thinking that the water is great cuz its not, all the games i typed in my previous post have much better looking water than Skyrim and all are older.

nope your logic goes out the window when I can compare a 2007 game with any game today and still have better graphics and size then the majority of em since your PC player like I am you should be familiar with it.

Devs got better at optimization and techniques which made it possible to fully utilize the potential that the current generation has that was a bout roughly 4 years ago though.. now its been in the current stage to cut/trade something for something else either that be size for graphics, or graphic for mechanics or vice versa.

Now you can't compare Morrowind with Oblivion 2 separate platform 2 separate hardware, but you can compare Skyrim to Oblivion as you can compare Oblivion to fallout 3 and NV

Now that the bodys flow downstream all we need is blood to accompany it. I'm hoping for a more blood mod...

Ok i wont argue anymore cuz what ur saying makes no sense, just by saying its ok to compare games made in 2011 to 2006 just cuz they run on same platform is very stupid,but ok if you can compare it to Oblivion i guess its ok to compare it to the games i typed and guess what all of the those games i typed have much better water than Skyrim so end of story.( i can tell you another 10 more games that have much better water but you get the point)

What you do not seem to understand is the games you listed are NOT OPEN WORLD they are closed linear games that have multiple maps that load in and out thus able traded the size for graphics. Also you cannot compare EXCLUSIVE PLATFORM TITLES to multiplatform ones because the production of a exclusive title is focused on one platform not 2 or 3.

One game you can compare too Oblivion and Skyrim is Just Cause as well as GTA4, Borderlands, Dead island, Fable, and of course Fallout 3 and NV all of which do not have gorgeous water. Now for Skyrim you will have to compare those games with the console version not the PC versions because as of yet we don't have PC footage to compare with.

@Salidin: Talking about comparing games to Skyrim water wise Just Cause 2's water looks really close to Skyrim's only a bit lower res because well it the console version I played and it is a third person game but I do hope it is something similar for the sea.

http://img571.imageshack.us/img571/8334/justcause2i.jpg