the fact they didnt really change the engine that much between oblivion -> fallout 3 might be a good reason why...they did do quite a bit to it, but essentially it was just an upgraded oblivion engine, rather then a major rebuild like morowind to oblivion.

Im betting their next game will look groundbreaking again....bethesda games often are the height of graphics when they get released.

compare oblivions size to mass effect 2.

Going to have to give a big HELL NO! to these ones.

And again, compare the number of animations, amount of dialog texture work and optimization.

Trust me guys, both those who are worried the consoles won't work and those who are hoping the consoles won't work, they will. Not only did Todd say they're making major changes to the engine from the ground up, but even the console itself has had updates downloaded over time and software in general is just better. They can pull an amazing-looking TES game out of this generation before needing to change over to the next one.

Just a side note about comparing TES games to games like Mass Effect:

Please keep in mind that every single non-furniture item (spoons, cups, rakes, etc.) in Oblivion has to have physics applied to it as they are not nailed down whereas most (if not all) other games available on consoles which are considered contemporaries to Oblivion do not apply physics to random "junk". They pretty much apply it only to bad guys so that their deaths look realistic.

This is probably a contributing factor to both the size limitation of Oblivion, as well as the resource hogging on consoles.

Then instead of comparing TES to Mass Effect, compare it to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSkexsxH9Qw, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSdytyGLO6k, and GTAIV. All open-world sandbox games, with vastly superior visuals to Oblivion. Red Dead looks the best, because it's the most recent release. It even has a fully functioning ecosystem, with predator-prey relationships and vultures that circle high above corpses.

You can bet Todd's team is taking note of all these graphical capabilities that modern games have, and that their new engine is primed to look even better than Red Dead. I'll also wager they're going to have a strong focus on the world's ecosystem as well, since graphics aren't enough to impress people in this generation anymore. You have to go the extra mile.

Todd stated in an interview that the main character in a TES game isn't the player, but the world around him. Bringing that world to life, as well as being gorgeous to oggle at, seems to be the next natural step.

I just watched both videos and saw no evidence of any physics being applied to the filler material. Their goal wasn't to create a feeling of living in those worlds, rather their goal was to create a feeling of destroying them.

Bethesda is trying to find THE TES in my opinion. Morrowind was very (and perfectly so) story in-depth and just very big on variety. Oblivion was pushed out, yes, but Oblivion is a lot better graphics-wise than Morrowind (like you don't know this already)!

I bet that TES 5 will be some type of merge between the two. Great story, at least better than Oblivion, and exceptional graphics, better than MW though not necessarily better than Oblivion.

One game Bethesda will find its standard so to speak. Then all the rest of there TES games will follow that ONE GAME but only different and improved.






P.s. - I had a dream last night that Vivec and Amelexia (?) brought me to a gate and the gate opened to a blinding white light. Mehrunes Dagon and Dagoth Ur were there and I walked a little way past them till I saw a faint outline of a word. The word came closer, but not readable. The blinding light stops me from reading the word now that it is right in front of me. Suddenly an oblivion gate opens and inside the gate is Lorkmers(?) heart. The gate closes and all is dark except the word glowing bluish white. The word said Flintshire. I turned around and saw only darkness, then I started to fall and fell into a pool of blood. Then I woke up! Very Strange!

Where are the physics in Oblivion's exterior world? There's some in the cities (separate cells from the world), and lots in the interiors (separate cells of the cities and world), but very little outside. Only ragdoll physics from corpses, and the weapons they drop. With no destructible envronments, and with even the rope-and-wood bridges lacking physics, i'd argue that Oblivion has less of a resource hungry overworld than Just Cause 2 and Red Dead (ignoring engines and optimization).

My point is, the other sandbox games currently look better, and offer more interactivity than Oblivion, and so TES:V will probably build on what other sandbox games are offering for an amazing experience.

If you cast a spell or bump a table, things go flying everywhere using real-time (if flawed) physics calculations. True, there aren't lots of them laying around in the outside area, but then the outside area also didn't have any problems with freezing.

For fun, and since I'm apparently the only one with any actual knowledge here (Do you know what things like gloss map/floating point/shader model actually mean?) I'll tell you guys.

The game will, first off, look much better than Fallout 3 or Oblivion. Games always tend to look better over a consoles life cycle since there are a ton of smart people employed specifically to figure out how to do that. Graphics, whether you think they improve a game or not, help sell games. The second thing, if you've missed it, is the games producer Mr. Todd Howard telling Kotaku that they as a company spent a year after Fallout 3 was finished making how their next game (assumedly Elderscrolls) look and run better.

Now for some more information: Bethesda, for various reasons, likes building it's own "game engine" which if you must know is a lot of things other than just how it looks. Now, just for the sake of argument, I'll assume they mean that they are building that part (called the renderer) as well. So how will the game look? Well we can make educated guesses. The guys who design game technology tend do be a lot more collegial than other industries, as in they are far more willing to share with each other how they do things. In fact there are two major conferences where a lot of this is discussed, the Game Developers Conference which is about making games in general, and Siggraph which is an acryonym for "Special Interest Group on GRAPHics and Interactive Techniques".

Considering that there are also books written on how to make games run well and look good, it's not too hard to surmise that the next Elder Scrolls will in fact look something like other large, open world games with a lot of things going on. So instead of boring you with technical terms I'll just provide links to current and future games of similar scope can style, and you can look at them.

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/gameplay-series-red-dead/61318
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/nvidia-mini-doc-just-cause-2/62588
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/x10-introducing-fable-iii/61842

The Elderscrolls 5, in such technical terms as "animation" "polygons" and "textures" will look like some combination of the videos viewable above. In terms of "art direction" as in the colors, brightness, character design, architecture and etc. Well that's up to the artists that work at Bethesda. The technical stuff only provides them options for what they can do, how they use it is up to them.

I agree. Secondly, I really really want to play Red Dead Redemption. I was playing Battlefield Bad Company Two Recently, and I hope the graphics are at least up to that level, but more importantly, of a similar artistic design.

As you said, technology is only one aspect of graphics, the artistic choices made by a developer determine how it really looks. Oblivion had a childish fantasy gloss that was far too reminiscent of Fable for me. I prefer a grittier fantasy world, Lord of the Rings the movie vs. Lord of the Rings the cartoon.

Speaking of Fable, my fourth point. I never thought much of it. Too linear in gameplay and world. So much promised and so little delivered. But it is a successful franchise, and I see that it is evolving quite well, and I was truly interested in some of the footage from that trailer. Did I mention they have announced Fable 3, when the first Fable came out a few months before Oblivion? Yes, it has much less content, but let's say we have Fable 6 by the time TES V is one or two years old. It very well could be a better game.

Isn't Fable 3 that game where you can fart to impress NPC's?
Improved indeed.

http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/fullstory.php?id=162212

I would assume so.

Sushi scrib

Armor Games... yeah, April fails day

Apperance is not only about good graphics, but also if the design is good. What good is uber graphics if we get another "ordinary" architechture in cities? Or another dull forest? Really, I wasnt impressed when I first saw oblivions, and not because it had bad graphics (it was allright), but simply the cities, landscape, ruins wasnt anything magnificent.

Now Shivering Isles was just beautiful! :thumbsup:

I think you would despise Arena and Daggerfall, then.

My main hope is not in the pure graphical quality, the magnitude of the bloom, the texture resolutions, or anything like that. I'm just hoping they pursue the edgier, grungier style of Morrowind as opposed to the lighted direction in Oblivion. I can't put my finger on it exactly, but everything in Oblivion just seems bigger and also cartoonier, between the horrible plastic Facegen heads and the big blocky LotR architecture.

:whisper:

The renderer has been gamebyro (MW- netimmerse). I'll assume that they are still licensing it.

Hehe... WII



Exactly. Oblivion, as gorgeous as it was, looked more like a theme park.

Something along the lines of Just Cause 2 should be fine.

Fallout 3 Having Better GFX is debatable.


On topic:

I don't really Care about GFX as long as the gameplay is up to Par, I would rather have horrible Graphics and awesome Gameplay rather than have horrible gameplay with awesome graphics. I love Morrowind much more than Oblivion, it is obviously not because of the Graphics, The Gameplay feels more like an RPG, Oblivion feels Dumbed down compared to Morrowind.



For me Morrowind is much more original, the Creatures are original,the architecture is original, hell the landscape is original, I felt like Oblivion was just a Classic Dragon Slayer type story.

I agree with that. Oblivion was not so unique with its whole 'demons from hell' storyline.