Don't get me wrong - Bethesda makes awesome games and are one of the best companies producing games these days in my opinion but when it comes to animation, whether that be because of the Gamebryo engine(Unlikely seeing as how modders seem to come up with replacement animation packs very soon after their games release) or other reasons, I probably hold them in the lowest regard of any company out there. While they succeed in almost everything else animation has always been the #1 problem for Bethesda in my eyes.

Is anyone else having a really hard time imagining how the animation will be in Skyrim? Obviously it's going to be a improvement or they wouldn't have talked it up so much but still, I just can't imagine fluid, sleek animations in a Bethesda open world game.. Hopefully they blow us out of the water with it though.. would be very nice It's the one thing stopping their open world games from feeling like "real" worlds.

i just started playing oblivion again for the hype of skyrim after playing ALOT of new vegas and i realize how HORRIBLE the talking screens are and they nearly give me a headache with th really fast zoom in thing.

Indeed, I want to play Oblivion again for the hype of Skyrim but I don't think I'm going to be able to do so without downloading complete animation overhauls(and the unofficial patch which fixes everything Bethesda forgot about of course) for just that reason.

I kind of feel like this too - great games, but this isn't their strong point imo. But they seem to be happy, so I'm interested to see the results in a vid (especially NPC animations while in conversation, that appealed to me a lot as I think the NPCs are one of the things which needed the most work).

I'm just really hoping that they hired some new talent to do the animations this time around as I really do think it was lack of talent rather than the engine because as I said, the community came out with far superior animation packs pretty soon after the games were released (Morrowind,Oblivion,F3,F:NV) and they were sooo much better in every aspect. Perhaps the people handling the animations just weren't being given enough time or something.

I hope third person view is actually viable this time..

I agree, it's always been a talent issue. Good animation has been around a long time. I got the feeling there was never a legit, seasoned animator on board even with Oblivion. It was like they had the artists do it in their spare time. So hopefully they have a few more hands on deck now, plus better tools. I'm really looking forward to seeing how it looks. : )