Don't let someone that says "graphics aren't everything" fool you. They fooled me, until today. After seeing basically half of the ES races Skyrim-version, i realized something:
I want to play a full playthrough of every single race! That's 10 playthroughs. I only played 3 playthroughs of Oblivion (2 complete; 1 half). I usually only do 1-2 playthroughs in games (Oblivion broke that record of 3). Now thanks to these amazing face/body models and graphics, i want to try to play and love every race! Graphics do matter people, they add replayability to roleplayers.

*EDIT: I also want to add that i am very impressed with what they did to the Bosmer race. Oblivions and Morrowind's bosmers looked like ugly little chubby children with wierd hair, now they look some-what threatening. I neve thought i would say this:
Wood Elves look threatening!!

Graphics do not matter, no matter what.

No, that's wrong.

I could have more fun playing Pong than playing Crysis 2 or anything else. Graphics do not matter. Just because a game has good graphics doesn't mean it will be fun.

I care more about the races' abilities than their aesthetics. Fixing up faces and bodies is one thing mods did very well so it was never much of an issue. I hope the races are better balanced this time around with all of them getting useful and unique abilities.

Morrowind's character models were better than Oblivion's.

Fact.

http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/4941/ss20110803115521.png

This is a huge discussion and it all come down to opinion and preferance. Gameplay for me, is most important, then story and characters. But atmosphere, detail, and the like all correspond to graphics, which is also very important for me.

thats complete bull. they contribute to atmosphere and facial emotions which do both play big parts in gameplay.

People need to differentiate between graphics and art style. They both matter somewhat as they rely on each other. For example, we wouldn't have these new rugged, higher res textures were it not for the new engine...
I must also add that I do not think that the bosmer's body mesh goes with the face's, the face is too gaunt in comparison to the enormous body...

So you're only playing the different races because they look different and not because of their different racial abilities and such?

Tell that to Morrowind :biggrin:

I think I would want to beat my head against a brick wall (:banghead:) if I had to endure the same story ten times in a row... once is enough, twice is stretching it!

No, They don't actually matter, Story, Guilds and Lore, That's what matter.

Way to take a massive dump all over the field of art design. Good to know artists are pouring their heart and soul into an area of the game that is completely worthless, guess they should have all just been programmers instead.

Christ, what an [censored].

EDIT: Talos, feel free to assume this was directed at you too.

Someone should make a text game version of Morrowind. Guaranteed GOTY.

*sigh*

I appreciate what the artists do, and it makes the game look good, but they don't have to be good graphics to be fun...

This, graphics are so over-rated. Why have a game show me things when I can have them described to me? /sarcasm

Is anyone shocked when i actually said Wood Elves look threatening. I never thought that would be possible. Ever. I had a roleplaying plan set up to make my character hate Bosmers eoth a passion and murder like every one i see out of disgust but now i think i'll move on to Argonians (they are still ugly, in a beautiful way). They are ugly lizard dinosaurs....no matter how good you make face models; whoch they almost perfected, lizard people will always be ugly

Having good graphics or stylized aesthetics set the tone of the game and attract people to it. Pong doesn't need good graphics because it's Pong, there's nothing more than what you need to see on-screen. Because games are more complicated now, there is a need to differentiate between things in the game, and from other games in that genre, visually. It also helps to immerse the player and good or stylized graphics are often indicative of the amount of effort the developers put into all the other aspects of the game.

I agree, the graphics may not have been as good but all the oblivion ones look like potatoes -.-

So you appreciate what they do, it's just that they're completely wasting their time, energy, and passions on something that has no bearing on the overall product, and is essentially worthless as far as game design is concerned. Yeah, my original point stands.

Sorry for my spelling errors; damn iphone

GFX only matter to some extent. Most that matters is gameplay

I think that graphics do matter, but they sure as hell aren't everything!

A beautiful game with crap gameplay is crap. A game with brilliant gameplay but crap graphics isn't crap - but it's far less than it could have been.