Watching the trailer and although it looks awesome, I cant help to wonder if Bethesda is aiming towards the realistic look in Skyrim (realism in a fantasy game...). Anyway from what I've seen, forests look brown and boring, buildings are brown or just lacking in color in general. I played Morrowind and it was "darker" than Oblivion for sure, but I reckon that was due to limitations of the current generation of graphics cards and not necessarily a 100% design decision. They couldn't pull off, back then, what we saw in Oblivion with HDR and the likes.

So what do you guys think? Yay for the ever so boring brown or yay for delicious vivid colors?

Quick example with Oblivion so you get what I mean

Vivid
http://s275.photobucket.com/albums/jj299/BounceDK/?action=view¤t=win.jpg

Boring brown™
http://s275.photobucket.com/albums/jj299/BounceDK/?action=view¤t=fail-1.jpg

http://gamerant.com/elder-scrolls-5-skyrim-new-screens-art-dyce-66765/elder-scrolls-5-skyrim-screenshot-forest-hunt/

Looks pretty colourful to me. Hopefully there will be a mix.

[Edit]: and this one:

http://www.giantbomb.com/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim/61-33394/screenshots/52-523424/content14091_136_1_1297163461/51-1703366/

I d prefer "boring brown", Morrowind was like that i think Morrowind is the best TES game until now .
"Fun vivid colors" were in Oblivion i didnt liked that.

I'd rather natural colours not boring and solely drab.
However Oblivion was a tad too bright, not that much just a little bit.
If it's like the Anime DA:2 look or similar tones, the game will give me a headache.
So muted, natural but with colours.

Not sure if you have ever actually been to an actual snow-covered mountain top or not... but 99% of the colors you will will be white, grey, and brown. Honestly, the 'washed' out colors look far more realistic to me.

I too would prefer natural looking colours over the often more amplified colours of Oblivion. Oblivion had a very... cartoony feel to the scenery in places. Skyrim so far looks to be going along the more naturally coloured path, going from what I can see in the trailer and screenshots. :thumbsup:

It's not so much the colors as the saturation. My biggest visual concern with Skyrim is it still has that plastic-y sheen that every object and model in Oblivion had. Now, it helps that, for instance, the NPC faces no longer look like they are designed out of cheap plastic, but I don't want one half of their face to turn white with glare because there's a candle in the corner.

Dark and gritty like Fallout 3.

Im colorblind so the difference is miniscule for me

You missed the scenes with the fall forest, pine forest and waterfall?

Oblivion really went over the top with HDR, and I'm glad that Skyrim isn't as colourful as Oblivion. I'm happy to have what you call dull rather than vivid.

As long as everything doesn't give off a blinding glow I'll be happy. It'll take more than a more vivid color pallet to make me happy with the art design. It ain't horrible but it ain't great either, but that's just me.

Everything looks great to me.

The world isn;t just sugar and rainbows everywhere.

I don't think there's anything boring about brown specifically but rather http://www.gamefaqs.com/ps3/928399-resistance-fall-of-man/images/gs_screen-94 (the sky is the same color as the ground even). Oblivion seemed like it could be http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/924363-the-elder-scrolls-iv-oblivion/images/gs_screen-156, but comparing similar forest scenes in both games Skyrim seems to have more http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2011/055/615805_20110225_screen008.jpg so it looks good to me.

Brown and boring over colorful anyday

I think it will be more of a gritty-grey, at least in the northern regions. But I guess there will be a large variety of colorthemes in Skyrim.

Morrowind was pretty colorful in certain regions; the Telvanni towers come to mind. So I think it actually was mostly a design choice when other areas were browner and grittier. And personally, I always thought that Oblivion had very boring colors. I mean, your win-screenshot is from Shivering Isles, which is a completely different story (a story made of a lot of awesome). Cyrodiil didn't have overly bright colors, and often (especially in the distance) it looked very grey and desaturated. And the spots of color they put in somehow seemed very unnatural. For example, Cheydinhal was purple. That looked very strange. And Leyawiin was colorful but somehow it still managed to be the most depressing city in the game. Like a sad clown.


I wish I could make Oblivion look like that. Seriously, I think that screenshot looks better than the green forest screenshot from Skyrim. And I recently watched the E3 video that featured this scene, and I thought "This looks so good! Why did it never look so good in my game?"
The textures are the same, but I think the lighting is better somehow. More contrast in it, or something.

Ah, concerning Skyrim: I like the look a lot, so far. It's colorful in all the right places. And I think those forests look very beautiful.

In some remote areas, the lack of color pushes the inhabitants to "compensate" by using colorful banners, clothing, or other ways to put some "life" into an otherwise drab and dull world. As long as Skyrim has those occasional colorful elements to counterbalance the natural browns, grays, and greens, I'll be happy with it. If it's a colorful cartoon world, that's a major negative to me. If it has that plastic sheen like almost everything had in OB, or the glowing plastic wrap that enchanted items had in MW, then I'll be extremely disappointed. If EVERYTHING is dull and muted, it'll be rather depressing.

I think what I'd like is to have a blue tint to most of the world. Bluish greens and greys, etc. That would add greatly to the feeling of the coldness throughout the world.

At the same time, I'd also like to see spots of brightly contrasting warm colors. It would provide the emphasis to show the warmth of the inn you pass along the road or the heat of the volcanic tundra.

Me as well. (Red/green, here.)

I'd rather have "boring" brown, than happy happy colour land.

I myself don't get aroused at the mention of morrowind and shivering isles colour. Skyrim looks sweet to me and its not all brown it has some white too!

How about Freezing White?

[censored] this "gritty" [censored], I'm with OP.

Brown and gray are staples of my wardrobe because they're neutrals and tend to go well with almost anything. The problem is that when it's all brown and gray, everything looks washed out, devoid of colour, and boring. This naturally makes the player feel less energized while playing the game, and it's easier to tire of it. Don't get me wrong, I don't want extreme over saturation of colour, but definitely some more varied colours in different environments. Vines and moss growing on old rock formations (or ruins) are typical fantasy fare. What if you add some colourful wildflowers to contrast with the gray rock and dark green vegetation?

Seriously, Bethesda has access to real art people, but then use them only for generic envrionments? What a shame.

I don't have any time this morning to express myself thoroughly about this color debate, but I want to say that I approve of the realistic approach to Skyrim and love the art direction. It is gritty and dark and has realistic over tones. Most game developers aren't even willing to approach a game this way anymore and try to stylize their game with unrealistic sized weapons and environments using a color palette that looks like the environment was painted with water colors by 6th graders.

Please don't change what your doing Bethesda, as far as I'm concerned you're working magic into Skyrim with this art direction.