Recently got me myself a new plasma, you know...right on time before all those incredible games are coming out, and now i'm just trying out ALOT of games from my collection. Of course i was gonna check one of my favorite Xbox 360 games, Oblivion. And wow...i'm surprised about how good it still looks man, boy do i still love those vibrant colours and i'm most definitely gonna miss that in Skyrim. Skyrim seems to go for the more 'realistic' approach in terms of visuals. I entered a shop and noticed how nice the lighting still is to this day...(can't say the same about some Skyrim shots where there's practically no lighting..please let this be different in the full game). Buildings also still look very nice...can't say the same about NPC's and in Skyrim that's a clear improvement. I also noticed other things that i never noticed before, treeleaves moving in the wind and what not, very nice.

The cool thing is...when i watch videos on Gametrailers or Youtube of Oblivion, i'm like 'damn..this really doesn't look too good nowadays' but then i play it on my own screen and it's a completely different story. This also means that Skyrim will look much much better than on the released videos. This is basically always the case with every game, but now with Oblivion i really noticed it. I still haven't finished every sidequest in the game and i have yet to finish Shivering Isles, gonna make sure i'll get to that before Skyrim drops

Plasma?

plasma screen......T.V

Oblivion despite the people of Cyrodiil it is a very beautiful game... To me it still does outdoor environments better then most games out there today.. It is the most tranquil feeling game I've ever played, I could walk the forests of Cyrodiil for hours and not get bored as the forests were lush; not the mention the wonderful soundtrack that complemented it.

This


http://panasonic.nl/html/nl_NL/Panasonic+producten/3D/3D+tv/TX-P50VT30/overview/220079/index.html





Yeah, and i'm alittle..just alittle bit afraid the environment of Skyrim won't be 'inviting' and vibrant enough..that it makes you want to keep exploring and exploring, ah well...we'll see.

Well Bethesda always knew how to make good game engines, even Morrowind looks good today with a couple of mods: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBYTzo6zIoY So why should Oblivion be different? Looks is one of it's best points after all

I completely disagree, without texture mods Oblivion looks pretty horrid compared to Skyrim, and other recent games.
I mean, it looked good when it came out, but not now. The only way I can see that is if you have some rose tinted glasses on.

If you notice the fire in Oblivion is done much better than it is in Dragon Age II...

I would agree that Oblivion still looks good today although I can tell where the age of the game shows such as the Trees, the distance scale, The Forts, etc. Although none of that matters because graphics don't make a game great, I mean Morrowind and Daggerfall are an example of that, the graphics aren't incredible but the game is really good.

This is also pretty much my only small concern about skyrim: Cyrodiil had a mostly bright, clean and happy visual style(just watch those beautiful sunrises), whereas most of Skyrim look s rather grey and dull :-/

The dungeons however, are the best I have ever seen

The landscapes in Oblivion look fine ... unless you look closely, or move around and notice how badly implemented the LoD system is. And then an NPC's face comes into view, and the horror hits you ...

Yeah it looks great until you hit the Vampirism bug... then it makes you want to stick to Ti 86 games. ^^

Skyrim has multiple environments, how could it be grey and dull?

I just started getting back into Oblivion from about a year break, and after playing Crysis 2, Mass Effect 2 and other games with good graphics, I found myself downloading a ton of texture replacers, which helped. Now http://i438.photobucket.com/albums/qq102/Starforce9/Oblivion2011-08-0400-08-31-59.jpg and I am fine with it for now. But I wait for Skyrim, and its texture replacers now. Thats not to say Oblivion's graphics arent good, they are, but just compared to some of today's games, they look a bit dated to me.

I am running Oblivion with several texture mods (Quarl's Koldorn's, etc). And with them it looks fantastic even by today's standards.

Technically Fallout 3 is better. I'm mostly playing Fallout 3 at the moment. However, just because of FO3's purposefully drab environment Oblivion looks more beautiful. Much more so than say Dragon's Age. (Interestingly Fallout New Vegas doesn't look as good as either Fallout 3 or Oblivion, even though it is the most recently released).

This just goes to show how advanced Oblivion was at the time of it's release.

One exception - NPCs. The NPCs in the game don't look as good as current games. For example the heads are too large for the bodies and so look a slight bit cartoonish. I guess NPCs are the hardest things to get right. Same is true with Morrowind. With a high powered computer and lots of mods Morrowind can look really beautiful, except for the NPCs with look pretty bad by today's standards (even with mods).

However NPCs in Oblivion can...kind of be made better. Shove a face texture replacer and a body mod and it can look pretty decent. Morrowind however, still looks rather awful unfortunately.

I disagree. The level of artistry and attention to detail of modded heads and hairs make modded Morrowind faces look nearly photorealistic nowadays. It's my opinion that modded Morrowind NPCs look far better than modded NPCs in Oblivion or modded NPCs in Dragon Age: Origins, to name two more recent games.

There ya go. I've never tried Daggerfall or Morrowind, but to me good graphics are secondary to game play. I'm still digging the original Tomb Raider! Guess that tells ya something.

So far as the OP goes, I have nothing to compare Oblivion to (nothing with "better" grahics, that is) so I still get blown away by the scenery & little details sometimes.

I agree, it still looks great on the 360. and even on the PC vanilla Oblivion looks good. I play exclusively on the PC now, and I've tried all kinds of character mods, texture replacers, etc etc, but at this point the only visual mods I use are higher res textures for faces (IFT + Enayla's) and one hair mod.

I agree Morrowind characters can look a lot better than stock, for example with BB and face texture replacers, but I haven't seen anything that improves it to the level you're talking about. However my Morrowind setup is circa late 2009, so I'm sure things have not stood still since then. What head / face replacers do you use in MW?