Let me begin this thread by saying hello! It will be my very first on the Bethesda Softworks Forums and I am eager to converse with you all about The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in the many long, enduring months to come. Forgive me if this subject has been brought up one too many times for I know how frustrating that can be to some but allow me to say that this particular thread you are reading is more or less a means to introduce myself. With that out of the way I will now discuss what was advertised in the title.

Landscape! How beautiful it looks from the various screenshots and trailer, eh? Foreboding mountain ranges, vast forests of birch trees, snow covered wastes, rushing waters. But that's just what we've seen! There are also valleys of volcanic rock, gorges cut from rivers, glaciers that reach out to Atmora! I have no doubt in my mind that this will be the most majestic game enviroment I have ever played in. Dare I say comparable to the hypnotizing, luscious planet of Pandora from Avatar? Mayhap better?

It is quite apparent that the cities and towns have been modeled around the natural scenery, instead of the other way around, like Oblivion. One notable village from the trailer rests on the peak of a small mountain overlooking a marshlands across the bay. A rock bridge arches over the river below and leads to a seperate, tall standing crag. Leave it to the crafty citizens of Skyrim to build a castle atop it. Riverwood looks to be wedged between two promontory type hills (if my eyes don't decieve me), and Markarth seems like it is located in a deep crevasse with stairs ascending all the way up from the bottom. Buildings may be stacked on top of eachother here or emerging from the cliffs, it being a vertical kind of place. Every city is entirely unique. A great improvement over Oblivion's flat plane, cookie-cutter towns.

Drooling yet? Maybe you already know all of this and I'm boring you to death. You probably just skipped around the text didn't you? Well if you were kind enough to actually read my take on things, thanks! I know some of us have been wondering how big, exactly, Skyrim will be. Todd Howard stated it will be roughly the same size as Cyrodiil, though the mountainous landscape will give it a greater sense of depth. How tall are these mountains you may ask. Will there be long ranges of them? How well have they improved from Oblivion's hills? Can we scale them like some sort of... of... mountain scaler? Maybe this is just me thinking here.

Many things are to be considered such as waves in the sea, frozen lakes, underwater glaciers, volcanoes, etc. Will enviroments change over time, i.e. ice melting, glaciers breaking apart into the ocean, volcanoes erupting? Surely I can't expect something so whimsical as a massive land formation spewing out clouds of smoke and fiery hot lava over the forests of Skyrim but a guy can dream can't he? If it seems like I've been skipping around topics, you're not imagining things. I apologize for the jumbled up combination of thoughts, statements, and questions but I tied everything together quite nicely to give it some relevance. I welcome all of you to make predictions, comment my own and share any information you have on this gorgeous landscape.

Where?

i feel like cartman in the south park episode where he just couldnt wait for the new wii thank you Bethesda for something to drool over!

When the camera spans over the different cities, it can be seen behind the small settlement with the wind mill.

I would love the game to look like this
http://cdn.zenimax.com/akqacms/files/tes/screenshots/CompositeMountain_wLegal.jpg

Though that looks like concept art to me.

That looks like the entrance to the larger city (Solitude, I think). It's the same style and it's very close. One village I haven't heard mentioned is in the mountain, just as he does the dragon shout, if you pause at the right time you can see a building with a straw roof surrounded by a rock wall, but much of the town or if it's just a building, the rest of the wall, is blocked from view.

In my opinion the best thing about landscapes would be changing environments, like trees falling, leaves falling, snow avalanches, rocks falling, lakes freezing, bridges collapsing, caves being flooded, villages being hit by earthquakes, ships in the harbors coming and leaving, I'm a svcker for things happening in real time so I could see real changes in the world that don't depend on my actions/story. i don't know what they meant with "soil erosion" in Oblivion, but I'd like to see changes so drastic that I couldn't overlook them: "wait, isn't this the tree where I found that hidden stash? When the hell did it burn? Must have been a thunderbolt..."

@OP: Welcome to the forums, http://images.uesp.net//c/c4/Fishystick.jpg.

Landscapes (beautiful, powerful, fantastical ones) are one of the main things I love about TES games, and Skyrim does look like it's going to be the best yet -- by far -- in this way at least.

I assume this is the scene from the trailer being discussed: http://i801.photobucket.com/albums/yy297/b_harrison/skyrim/skyrim_gameplay_settlement1.jpg http://i801.photobucket.com/albums/yy297/b_harrison/skyrim/skyrim_gameplay_settlement2.jpg

Edit: I've seen it. Looks a like a dam or bridge of some sort, nothing big. I'm thinking Solitude is the port city in the far background with the ships.
Update: I have concluded that the "port city" in the background with ships is actually just marshlands with a building near the water. This is pure speculation.


What amazes me most is the utter enormity of the mountain at the end of the trailer. I can't help but think that it's far too large to be in the game.


Thanks! :laugh:
Yes, that is the same scene.
I completely agree with you about the landscapes. Can't wait to visit!

The last time I watched the trailer i noticed that as well. It looked like a small farm or settlement... But may be a bigger city.

From what I've seen in the trailor and screen shots, Skyrim doesnt have alot of colour. In realy life you've see ALOT more detail, not so much in the texture desolution, but things like moss growing on teh rocks and stains on walls, Those ruins are supposed to be thousands of years old but they look like they were bui9lt last week. Theres so much detail theyre missing out on. Thats one reason I live the STALKER series. Everything in the STALKER games has alot of details, from rust, to old burn marks, to bits of pain peeling off. So I would expect that kind of detail from a current gen game. When I watch the Skyrim trailor all I see is grey.

Bethesda needs to add a narrator for Skyrim, and it needs to be you. I fell in love with Skyrim all over again, just by reading what you wrote.

Skyrim has always been described as a frozen wasteland-type place. I welcome various environments but for the most part I hope to see frozen forest/plains/mountains. Stay out in a blizzard all night and you should die, unless you're a Nord or have magical protection.

When is it described as a frozen wasteland?

That would be boring.

Critics are also welcome, though I have to strongly disagree with you on that one! Now, all I play is console games so when you say "detail" do you mean artistic detail or lack of textures and layers? I think the ruins look great and I don't know if you've ever been up north before but things can get pretty gray and gloomy on a snowy day. It's part of the overall style of Skyrim.

Oh man, thanks so much! That means a lot. But I don't think they would hire a 17 year old.

I only really felt this problem in one place, and that was when looking at the Markarth castle in the video and comparing it too the concept art here. http://download3.zenimax.com/akqacms/files/tes/concept_art/MarkarthCastleExterior.jpg

Look at that lovely moss growing around the waterfall! Why didn't they keep that?

In Oblivion Skyrim is referred to by many NPCs as being an extremely cold place. I think one NPC even mentions that Bruma might be as cold as Skyrim but the influences of the Cyrodillic culture can still be found in it. Also in Cyrodill, it's very noticable that the south is very meadow or swamp like, while the north is generally just snowy. So there will likely be a lot of snow in Skyrim as skyrim is directly north of Cyrodill, that said, I still hope it isn't all snow, I'd hate for the entire region to literally just be frozen wastelands... I had more then enough wasteland in Fallout 3....

You never know if they'll implement it later during the polishing stage or if they already have and just aren't showing it off. It looks awesome to me either way.

Bruma is already very high up in the Jerall mountains, and it's only the beginning of the snowy region. That's because higher altitudes mean more snow and lower temperatures. If you've ever seen pictures or been to Iceland, Norway, Sweden, etc. you'll know that while colder than, say, France, it is still not a snowy wasteland, quite a beautiful and diverse environment, and most of the snow is up in the mountains. http://www.google.com.au/images?hl=en&source=hp&biw=1680&bih=778&q=norway&gbv=2&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=&oq=

Texture detail like this.

http://screenshot.xfire.com/s/107132944-4.jpg
http://screenshot.xfire.com/s/106416713-4.jpg
http://screenshot.xfire.com/s/105256524-4.jpg

It may not me snow but those textures are incredibly detailed, and they use Specular Occlusion.

That seems alright, not really any more impressive than the tower in Markarth.

I'd love to see that, with all the npc schedules Oblivion still felt too static, no ship moved, no carriage on the roads, no house being built or demolished over time. Everything seemed to wait for me to do something.

That too me is way less appealing then what i have seen of Skyrim.

Like I said, the game's still in the polishing stage. I don't honestly know if developers work on textures in that time or in what order they do but I'm counting on Skyrim to look even better than what it looks like now. Just by a tad though.


These are excellent ideas. I hope one day soon we'll see a game that displays monumental events in real time like this but I cannot expect too much of it from Skyrim. There is, however, the matter of dragons attacking villages! Apparently they can commit to aerial attacks or land in the township and breathe fire down the streets. Maybe they can even eat people? Wishful thinking.