Edit: I forgot to change the title to follow where the topic went - this topic is a comparison in the growth of Bethesda's game worlds starting with Morrowind.

As we are all obviously starting to psyche up for the long wait (potential delays?! enough of that noise, whats the chance of an *early* release? :glare: ) to Skyrim, i've gone back and looked at some of Bethesda's previous engines and designs, preparing for a new and welcome engine update. In my personal opinion, the most important part of a video game is the world it takes place, how genuine it feels. Rarely do I come across a world that seamlessly falls together as well as Bethesda's have, (the only exception being Rockstar San Diago's Red Dead Redemption.) Bethesda has a way of taking they're world to the very edge of the existing technology, and trapping us inside.

Starting with Morrowind's Bloodmoon expansion, we saw pine trees and snow appear for the first time. I remember getting the game on a white Chirstmas years ago and, after watching the snow fall in the game world, saying "wow, this snow looks so nice, almost like the real snow falling outside."
It was a great excuse to not dress up and go play outside.

[img]http://img59.imageshack.us/i/theelderscrollsiiiblood.jpg[/img]
http://img59.imageshack.us/i/theelderscrollsiiiblood.jpg

Next up we had vanilla Oblivion, hyped on these forums by a smaller, if not just as excited crowd. Things were looking good, the first real show of the next-generation gaming systems. We all (I) made my first and foremost priority to head north and climb the highest mountain to take in just how wonderful the world looked.

[img]http://img411.imageshack.us/i/brumak.jpg/[/img]
http://img411.imageshack.us/i/brumak.jpg/

Next, and a surprise to me, was the total conversion "Nehrim." Having not been around the forums to often in the last year, i'm not sure how accepted or approved, or even well known, the Nehrim conversion has been to the community, and i've never played it myself (I'm an Xbox360 owner, my PC doesn't stand a chance). As it is, however, the designers were able to push the engine "as-is" to its full potential (on nice PC's, of course) with line-of-sight and the foliage/terrain detail.

[img]http://img197.imageshack.us/i/neh2.jpg/[/img]
http://img197.imageshack.us/i/neh2.jpg/


Now, Line Break:

We have Skyrim. It has been described as "abandoning the renaissance fair," "darker and gritter," with "a sense of age to the world and the towns inside."
We've heard that rather than a single biome in the world, we're going to see many; glaciers and snow plains, tundras, forests, mountains. Each area is rumored to have its own style and, (by assumption) culture.

Snow, (my favorite) is supposed to fall as it should in the real world, water will flow as it should, shadows will shine as they should - you've all read the articles:

Will the world be a perfect recreation? No. But in my short trip down memory lane, it appears Bethesda will only be carrying on with the genuine worlds I loved so much, starting in Morrowind. What we have all been hearing has been answering the questions I have secretly been asking for years - with very litle in the way of disappointment.

You might want to switch the screen of skyrim to one that game informer actually released. That one you have now will get you suspended.

Interesting look at graphical advancement. Now, if you'll go back even further, you'll notice even BIGGER jumps in evolution. Followed by shorter and shorter leaps. The curve isn't climbing as fast it seems.

Arena wasn't even 3D. It was 2.5D, Like Doom.

Daggerfall was a GIGANTIC LEAP from Arena, featuring a true 3D engine. You could have unique shapes that you could never have with Arena. Lighting was state-of-the-art, and the game world was bigger and more immersive than anything seen in history.

Morrowind was an even bigger jump. It was one of the first big games to feature the use of pixel shading effects. (HOLY CRAP! Look at that water! It ripples when rain hits it! WOW!) Every character, enemy, piece of armor, weapon, fork, cup, spoon, and rock was rendered in beautiful, richly textured, dynamically lighted 3D. This was an unprecedented level of detail! Sure, it was at the expense of world size and scale, but that didn't matter. This was a rich world, and seemed all the bigger still.

Oblivion was a fairly big leap from Morrowind. Perhaps not as big as the leap from Daggerfall to Morrowind. 3D is now old hat, and nobody really cares that every fork is fully realized, but HEY! PHYSICS! Everything has accurate physics applied, though those physics could have been implemented better. And remember those awesome pixel shader effects on the water in Morrowind? Well, that has been taken to the next level! Now EVERYTHING has it! Finally every pock mark and brick looks real enough to touch. And FINALLY! LOD view distances. I can see my house from here.

Now Skyrim. They can't go as far graphically. Sure, it looks better, but by how much really? The leap certainly isn't as big as from Daggerfall to Morrowind, or even Morrowind to Oblivion. Graphics aren't where they can improve as dramatically. The graphics improvement curve is approaching it's limit, and is starting to plateau. Now, the innovation has to be in the game mechanics. Skyrim might not have the same WHIZ BANG graphical effect that we've enjoyed in the past 15 years of tech advancement, but I guarantee it will play a lot better. The physics will be more accurate, the enemies and NPCS smarter, the gameplay more interesting and unpredictable, the world richer, and more detailed than ever before. The age of better graphics is over, and the era of smarter gameplay has begun.

That's because Skyrim is being developed as a current gen game. Oblivion was supposed to be a next-gen launch title.

Yeah, I suspect that the fact Skyrim is being developed for the exact same hardware as Oblivion really limits how far they can push the graphics.

Yes the curve of advancement on graphic engine is slowing down, but there is still room for advancement until we reach the quality of real-life vista, but we have to wait for the next waves of break though in rendering technology.

And I agree that the time for advancement in other game mechanisms has arrived, and those parts need some serious shake-up.

The introduction of high quality procedurally generated content would revolutionize any aspect of the games, when it will be introduced there, and "Radiant Story" is the first step in that direction, a small step in comparison of what would come in the future.

When procedurally generated voice-overs is introduced, another huge step would be taken regarding quest development and AI.

And AI is one of the departments that really, really needs some advancement as well.

I can go on for a long time about what future technology could bring to us, but it would bore most of the forum dwellers.

You know, when I watch something like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO8enzbYXeo&feature=related, it makes me think that they could make an equally impressive leap in graphics. That is, if they weren't designing for antiquated hardware.

There is still a lot that can be done graphically, but I think the most significant changes will be in the game mechanics and AI, not the graphics.

Ahh, this is making me become a little peeved on the prospect of when the next generation consoles finally arrive, all the last six/seven years of technology improvements would be accredited to them by the many people that don't understand how technology works.

Anyway, I think Skyrim will be a good leap forward in showing a 'real' immersive world. Though if there's no DX10, DX11 support, that would sadden me. The leaps forward from each Elder Scroll game, though, has been quite well.

I do believe in terms of gameplay there are still huge leaps able to be made too. Even improving on old scripted event ideas by improved presentation would be one way to do it. With shaders, many things can be done real-time too, without need for cutscenes or written descriptions. Things like Radiant Story, as people mentioned above, seems like a good way too to improve on the whole game's gameplay and atmosphere.

Let's hope Bethesda, with Skyrim, will manage to push the envelope in both graphics and gameplay -- And else, hey, as long as there's the support for DX10/11, we as a modder community will -make- it become that leap

The only reason they are starting to plateau is because of current gen counsles. They are limited by harware. Take a look at games like Crysis and Metro 2033 on a high end computer, EASILY a generation ahead of Oblivion.

This is a true story, I didn't play Xbox 360 for a long while after I built my new computer. Then, Halo Reach came out. Being a Xbox exclusive I had to get it for Xbox. A couple of my friends got it before me and were saying how the graphics are sooooo awesome and sooooo much better than Halo 3. I got it, put it in and started playing and no kidding, I thought it looked like [censored]. Seriously, I was like "Man, this game looks terrible". It's the same feeling you 360 guys get if you go back and play the origional Xbox. Current tech is EASILY a generation ahead. This doesn't mean that Skyrim will look bad though, because Mafia 2 is DX9 and it looks AMAZING on my PC!

*edit*
I'm not trying to turn this into a war about 360 vs. PC I'm just saying don't expect a generational leap when we are still on the same generation.... PC's can hope for a wee bit more though :bolt:

DrBondo, I pray to the Daedric Princes you're right about a new era of game development.

Well you still have restrictions on GPU speeds and video memory so polycounts and textures sizes aren't going to jump by orders-of-magnitude on same hardware. Think how things will change when 16-core GPUs and 8GB video cards are common.

I really get tired of reading statemements like this because it just isn't true. I remember when the Super Nintendo came out and everyone talked about how amazing everything looked. Now fast forward a bit to the Playstation. Again we were amazed. Then the PS2 came out and I remember hearing statements like, "Wow! Can it really get any better?." Now go back and play some of those PS2 games and they just look cheap and dated. The fact is that once enough time passes and technology advances, we get used to a certain standard of the visuals in our games. There's always a lot of talk about the next pretty game, but eventually it becomes dated. The same will happen to Crysis as well. Sure, Crysis was a game before it's time graphically, but given enough time, we will look back and the game will look dated. There really is no limit on how good games can look. Technology, combined with creativity and imagination has no limit!

The biggest limit we have right now is not technology, it's economics. Things have slowed a bit due to this. I'm not blaming it all on the consoles either. True, the consoles are aging and they are a factor, but I think that developers as a whole are holding back right now. Here's why. There is so much mony on the line, so developers arent making games with crazy system requirements the average PC can't run. It doesn't make economic sense. What does make sense during this time of economic recovery is to make a game available to as many people as possible, and that means make a game with very playable system requirements, across all platforms. That's what generates sales. Eventually things will catch up and we'll see big advancements in graphics again.

Here's something to think about. Most of us have probably seen the movie Avatar, right? The world of Pandora is completely rendered using CGI effects, and it looks beautiful. Now, I understand it is a prerendered world and not real time. But image one day playing a game with that level of detail. It can be done. It's just that none of us have hardware to actually run something that advanced. But time changes everything. Like I said, Technology, combined with creativity and imagination has no limit!

I agree fully. The age of graphics has just begun. Just look at tessellation... amazing.
Economics can limit the use of this (which to focus on: graphics, gameplay; what people to hire, etc.). I'm not sure how much money Bethesda got though so I can't say anything about the current circumstances.
But from what it seems, Skyrim has decreased in this graphics "WOW ZOMG !!!!!!!!!!!!"-feeling that I felt when I first saw Oblivion and Morrowind. So perhaps it's to say they've focused less on graphics than they have before?
Again, just speculation.

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure Dr.Bondo was referring to the fact that current gen consoles have really been pushed the the limit and that graphics are not going to get any better until new systems come out. Thus, developers have to focus on ***GASP*** gameplay, instead of how shiny the world is. I don't think anyone on the planet would honestly think video game graphics have hit their all time peak, and its actually kinda funny you would assume thats what he meant. Obviously technology is going to get better, and when new consoles are released (or some devs grow a set and make PC dedicated games) developers will once again forget about gameplay and focus on 4 hour games that look like movies... I'm pretty sure thats the obvious to anyone with half a brain.

Oh, and there is a limit... its called Photorealism. What happens when graphics in games are every bit as good as reality? Kinda hard to get more realistic then that.



*sigh* No, its not really much of a choice for Bethesda. They are developing the game to run smooth on the same 5-6 year old hardware that Oblivion was built to run on. How much better do you honestly think they can make the graphics for an open world game?

If you want to talk about advancements, you cannot leave out the work that modders have done.

Morrowind 2002-2010 comparison: http://www.tesnexus.com/imageshare/images/41808-1296413411.jpg

I think you should go back and read Dr Bondo's post. He's clearly referring to gaming in general and not consoles. He never even mentions the consoles in his post. He references the evolution of the TES games which originated on the PC.

Also, the limit of graphics is not photorealism. We've been making films since the 1920's, but the visual quality today is much better. There are always improvements to be made, ways of making it look better graphically. Hey, the Gamecube had photo style gameplay in some of the games, but games today certainly look better, play smoother , and have a much better art style to them, imo. In the end, it's always creativity and imagination that creates the next great game!

sorry im not buying the consoles are at their limit graphically crap... oblivion is like 5 years old and were pretty much launch titles for the 360 and PS3... graphics has gotten better since then take a look at the latest uncharted game and Ass Creed brother hood... those games are a big step up from Oblivion and i do expect Skyrim to be close to on par with those games even though it is a complete open world RPG. now are those as good as PC games now, of course not cuz pc users can buy a new graphic card every couple years but the consoles still have more juice to show.

I agree with all you have said, but graphics companies will keep pushing and opening new doors or else risk loosing buisness. I think it'll never stop, just like we never stopped using fossil fuels even though we sent people to the moon almost 35 years ago on better chemical technology. what makes money, will never stop.

I think what factors with the current graphical advancement recession is that worlds are believable enough as they are and minute advancements are much too costly on HW to be fully worth implementation.

Someone mentionned Avatar. today's pre-render is tomorrow's live render. always. when i took my Maya and 3ds max college course it took me 4 hours to render a 2second scene that doesn't look to far off from what skyrim looks like today. bump mapping and parallax mapping, displacement maps, these were tech that needed quite a lot of time to render, or a render farm to get done. on modern hardware, we whine when it doesn't do it 30+ times a second.

( I know the rendering engine has to do with it too, just making a comparison, you know what i mean)

I'm not buying the game for the graphics I'm buying the game for the lore - I love the depth of the world, if I want to play a pretty action game I'll put on Enslaved, Odyssey to the West and enjoy an 8hr game - otherwise I'll put on Skyrim and enjoy 2 years of gaming

That was me. ...very good points you've made.

That is one perfect post.
:trophy:

I think the best big advancement will be related to 3D imaging. Hell, some TV maker in japan already made a TV that you can see in full 3D WITHOUT the glasses.
But, for now, you gotta be at a very limited angle to the screen.
Still, I believe that's the next big deal.
Because, let's admit it, We will someday hit a point where the images in games/movies are just as detailled as to what we can see in the real world with our eyes.
Technology won't "stop evolving", it's just that it'll evolve in different ways once it's hit a certain point