I was playing a little bit of FO3 this weekend and it donned on me why fallout is so bad comparatively to the elder scrolls. While the world has a plethora of different objects and scenery every little bit of it is dark and dingy. This is what made the fallout world no fun to explore, and the Oblivion/Morrowind ones so great to explore.

I know that there is a lot of lush scenery in Skyrim, what I want to know is will the attitude surrounding the game be too "gritty"? Will I ever feel happiness for my character in the game.

Note: I didn't necessarily like the mood in Oblivion, it felt too medieval.

i actually, really liked fallout 3. found it better then oblivion, at any rate. but hey, everyone is entitled t their own opinion, eh?

I'd like a nice mix.

I want some areas to be dark, grim, epic, and moody... and others to be bright, jolly, and quaint.

Well, it's very dark because nuclear blasts tend to kill things. And plants haven't been able to regrow en mass yet.
Edit: Oh, and theres very little electrical/fossil fuel lighting

That's the point of the art style. Consistency.

Fallout was (And is) so popular on the territory of the CIS specifically because it's, in your own words, "dingy". Similar to everyday life.

It's also totally okay to not like post-apoc. Just don't be very vocal about it.

I want a good contrast between underground and outside. I want really really dark dungeons where you have to hold a torch to be able to see anything.

Fallout was supposed to be dark and grimy... apparently you missed the part where theres was a NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST

I feel the complete opposite from the OP. I hate Oblivion's generic green hills and forests, and unicorns :rolleyes:, but I love Fallout's (1, 2, and 3) post apocalyptic ruins. Morrowind also had a more "realistic" "gritty" and overall more unique feel to its style than Oblivion.

Skyrim so far looks to be a generic "Conanesque" winter wasteland, but if Solstheim in Bloodmoon is anything to go off of, I'm sure Skyrim will have a more realistic and gritty feel as well.

And you have an avatar made from one of the loading screens of Fallout 1.

I really liked how Morrowind handled lighting. I could use Arena/Daggerfall as comparisons as well, but because those used an in-house software renderer it wouldn't exactly translate the same way if I simply stated how they worked. I loved how Morrowind's interiors were very dim and "sleepy", but also broken up now and then by bright light sources emitted by lanterns and other sources. I hated how in Oblivion, everything seemed to be glowing - most notably the dungeons, which were pretty much completely monochrome and lit by nondescript "glows" instead of any real torches or candles. Seriously, am I the only one who noticed this?

All dungeon textures were basically grey, and then colorized to hell by slapdash lighting. Houses' interiors were only slightly better, because half of the game's textures http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2006/features/hardware/oblivionperf/hdr3.jpg. That is NOT how you make textures! They shouldn't have any biased lighting on them like that! They should be flat and uniformly lit out of the engine, like they were in virtually every other TES game. :banghead:

I like how the lighting has been handled in Skyrim so far. We can see lots of darker areas in the tavern screenshot for example, with NPCs partly obscured in the dim lighting. Those of you who have seen the new Playstation Official screenshots will also notice the room in the image of the Blind Berserking Beardguy™ is pretty reminiscent of the dark dungeons of Daggerfall. :celebration:

I actually liked exploring in Fallout 3 more than unmodded Oblivion, I think, and the reason is because it had more interesting locations to explore, it felt like Bethesda put more thought into each location, in Oblivion, your typical dingeon might have a different layout from its counterparts, but one fort ruin populated by undead ultimately felt pretty much the same as others. I think a lot of what helped with Fallout 3 was that Bethesda left some clues giving us an idea what sort of things had happened in the past in a place, maybe you'd find old messages on a computer, or notes, or just a pair of skeletons lying in a bed together, things that might tell us what purpose a place served before the bombs fell, or what those raiders that moved in to it were doing, something Oblivion rarely did, and the general dark feeling fit with the post apocalyptic setting of the game, it's not like I'd expect a world where civilization was basically wiped out by nuclear war and the survivors have to struggle to get by in a hostile world to feel bright and happy, and I'm at least hoping for Skyrim to have more interesting locations than Oblivion, due to Bethesda going for hand-made locations in exteriors and having more dungeon designers and fewer dungeons than they did in Oblivion. As far as the feel, it's been said that Bethesda is going for a darker, grittier feel than Oblivion, but I doubt the world will be quite as bleak as Fallout, after all, Skyrim is set after the downfall of the Empire, not a nuclear war that largely obliterated human civilization and rendered much of the world inhospitible.

I'd just like realistic light sources in houses and dungeons instead of oblivion glowing indoor scenes

I like dark and gritty fantasy best, so I'm thrilled with the design they are going with compared to Oblivion. It has it's own kind of charm to it.

Changed that for you.

Really, Fallout 3 was grimy, like Fallout 1 and 2. Fallout New Vegas was a bit less grimy and dark though.
Skyrim should be dark too because The World Eater is back and also everyone is fighting over the presence of the empire in Skyrim.

Exactly. That's the main difference between Morrowind/Fallout 3 and Oblivion (and maybe Daggerfall).

In Morrowind and Fallout 3, almost everything feels "hand placed". There are unique areas to explore, and you WANT to explore them, because the loot is usually worth it.

In Oblivion almost all the dungeons are cut-and-pasted copies of one another, and they each had a pattern that they followed (bandit, creature, mythical creature, necromancers, etc.) and you knew exactly what to expect based on the first enemy you saw. One dungeon never felt any different from another, and it didn't matter which one you went to because the loot was levelled to your character anyway. It made absolutely no sense, and I can't stand to play the game without heavy overhaul mods.

I'm excited that Skyrim is supposedly more like Fallout 3 and Morrowind in this sense. Since there are 10 level designers instead of the 1 they had for Oblivion, we will hopefully see more hand-placed areas and rewards.

Nothing I've seen from Skyrim's screenshots so far seems gritty to me, and the past TES games are the ones being compared to as not gritty. It seems unlikely that this one will be gritty either.

This.

I hope the mood of the environment shows us the danger level of the area.

It would be nice to have a bit of lushness in there. The fall forest looks nice. However, I was a bit dissapointed to see the Tundra appearing much less lush and green in the screens than in the concept art.

I like snow in sunny days. Sunny cold days. Sunny freaking cold days. The nights I like to see crystal clear sky with billions of stars. I want Skyrim to have a cold vibe color wise, if they can pull off the cold and the omnipresent danger, it's cool.

This is what I want:
I want to walk into town from the cold frost covered forest and FEEL like I found refuge... The distinct changes to feels are what make emotions toward the word change. I want to feel like my character is WARM when he walks into the tavern. Just make me believe it.

Also... no "Where the hell is this light coming from?" Moments please...

As I said in my original post I didn't like Oblivion's mood either. Like someone else said I would like a mix of both.

I am just wondering if anyone else got as depressed as I did while playing fallout. The enjoyment of RPGs for me is "upgrading" my character. Whether that means making him become the head of the mages guild or finding a new item to kill things with. The only reason I didn't like fallout was because it felt pointless to succeed in such an ugly world, nobody really cared. Perhaps fallout had a better story, but thats not what I buy bethesda rpgs for. Just my thoughts.

P.S. I don't mind gritty as long as their are people their to appreciate what I will do for them.

Wow you took this literally. LOL

I certainly can understand where you're coming from.
Have you considered that maybe your personal preferences lean towards dystopias?

And do you really feel this to be generic?

Markarth
http://www.elderscrolls.com/skyrim/media/

oblivions color palette svcked hard. everything was overly neon and cartoony looking. skyrim looks much better as far as the more muted colors are concnerned. oblivion is literally the only game where i had to adjust my graphics card settings to lower the color saturation.

It got depressing after a while playing Fallout, I would love to see greenery reclaim the waste in that game and keep the mutations in place from that game and come up with some new ones reguarding plants. I love Fallout but it is a far cry from how much I adore Elder Scrolls I love the lush forest of the world and the lands of Vvardenfell Island I mean that was some harsh landscape but it had forest and plantlife I loved the unique and untraditional fantasy feel that that landscape created Oblivion was to rooted bright typical everyday fantasy. I feel they should make every provence feel like its a whole new world we have never seen before thats what made Morrowind great.