What are you talking about? Did you watch the uncompressed demo? In oblivion the only things that had shadows were actors (pc/npcs/creatures), and trees (pretty sure I'm not missing anything here). In the footage that we've seen of Skyrim so far you can see that in addition to actors and trees, shadows are also cast by foliage, rocks, buildings, containers, pretty much every other static object, and even items like weapons lying around. Almost everything has a shadow. In Oblivion they were originally planning on having dynamic shadows and had them in the e3 demo, but they removed them before the game was released because of resource limitations (even in the PC version, which was frankly stupid). I don't see any way you could possibly think Oblivion had more shadows than Skyrim.

After playing the BF 3 beta on the Xbox 360, I can (with a clear conscience) say that, so far, Skyrim on 360 looks better than BF 3 on 360.....

http://img811.imageshack.us/img811/1589/skyrim01.jpg
Terrible shadows...

Well I played BF3 Beta on PC and honestly.. Im not impressed with that either. The artstyle is terrible if you ask me (I played it on ultra settings)

@HeX16 how old is that screenshot? Nuff said.

Well, the animations and such have vastly improved since New Vegas, and that's what counts much for me.
But still, if you compare Skyrim's and Witcher 2's graphics.....Skyrim isn't that good looking then, but alas very nice for the eye.

Oh yes, I remember how large a role graphics played in making Monkey Island, Zork, Tetris, Space Invaders, and every-Blizzard-game-ever incredibly successful and fun games.

For that we don't have doubts, TW2 is jaw dropping graphics! and not only that...

Please continue, my good sir.

Come on!, of course in that time it was fun, but back that it wasn't about art and real piece of work, than it was just a about spend some good entertaining time and that it...Now you can compere video game industry next to art masterpieces!.

What's wrong with them? Looks like decent enough shadows to me. It can't always be sunrise and sunset you know.

What do you mean, "in that time"? Every game I listed is still fun, and I think the artists who worked on those games (with the potential exception of Zork) would disagree. As would the millions of people who still buy every Blizzard game as it comes out, and they're renowned for having graphics that are way behind the curve.

Graphics have always been secondary to gameplay. For example: Lair. Looked gorgeous. Played like crap.

Sorry can you please tell me what is you are complaining about? You started off saying that the new engines graphics weren't that impressive on the 360 and you hoped that the PC had better graphics to save or prove Bethesda right about the engine?

But now you are just comparing Skyrim to every other game as if that somehow makes your original point (whatever that was) more valid.

So are you saying Skyrims graphics are bad in comparison to other games? Or are you doubting the game engine has not improved much?

No, my point about new engine!, it can be better on xbox360 so its not so impressive, and of course it has improve a lot since Fallout3, probably on PC version as well, just i have some doubts about actual texture size improvements(not distance), on PC...

Graphics look great, the PC version is going to be truly incredible.