After watching > http://www.neoseeker.com/news/7891-elder-scrolls-oblivion-running-in-cryengine2/ < of a mod for crysis, which places assets from Oblivion into crysis, I realized how bad oblivion's lighting really was, and how important lighting is to how a game looks. Now watch the video for yourself, then look at this > http://static.zenimax.com/bethblog/upload/2011/01/Markarth021.jpg <. That is the only official high-res image of Skyrim we have at the moment. Look at these random images of Oblivion > http://images.wikia.com/oblivion/images/c/c6/AnvilFightersGuild.jpg < > http://www.drinksalot.btinternet.co.uk/oblivion/ScreenShot11.jpg < and these images of Fallout 3 > http://www.ngohq.com/attachments/screenshots/1420d1227439590-fallout-3-screenshots-fo3027.jpg < > http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_0zxxVnlL4fo/TF0bpeOx1jI/AAAAAAAAAIA/MSU-YNWOAOE/s1600/fallout_3.jpg < The lighting of Skyrim looks very similar to Oblivion's/F3's. Bethesda put in all the effort to make a new engine and overlooked the lighting. Yes, they added more advanced shadows, but it doesn't look like they improved much beyond that. When I watched that video I realized that lighting is the one of the most important aspects of the look of a game. Simply placing oblivion's meshes in Crysis improved how they looked dramatically. Do you think that Skyrim's lighting looks like Oblivion's/F3's? I know it's too late in Skyrim's development to change something as significant as the lighting, which is really disappointing. At the moment it looks like Skyrim is running on a slightly modified version of F3's heavily modified version of Gamebyro. Hopefully, the screenshot of Skyrim is from the 360 version or the PC version set to on low graphics.
Edit: Someone mentioned console bashing. I implied that 360 graphics where crap compared to PC. That's a true statement(depending on your rig) for the most part. I am not bashing consoles. I play games primarily on the 360 and I can admit that the graphics it can produce are terri-bad compared to a high-end PC.
Not to mention the console bashing in the OP statement. We don't allow that here no matter if you think it true or not.