I guess people just like the darker vibe... it adds to the mystery of the environment.

Personally, I enjoy dark and violent stories.

Not necessarily referring to the quality of exterior lighting, but to the atmosphere and tone of the quests, art direction, lore and NPC dialog.

If I understand correctly, Skyrim will be set against the backdrop of a bloody civil war. I'm sure there will be some comedic elements in the game but for the most part it seems like it should be somewhat less cheerful in tone than Oblivion (which is my favorite game so far).

I completely agree.

Let's compare how boring, bright and sunny Oblivion was compared to previous TES games.

http://images.uesp.net//5/59/DF-King_of_Worms.png vs. http://images.uesp.net/d/df/OB-NPC-Mannimarco.jpg

http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs15/f/2007/087/8/2/Morrowind_by_Demi_urgic.jpg vs. http://phibiansoft.net/files/oblivion192012008qaa16aftaa.png

EDIT: This is what http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OxhegBrXThk/TabxOE86RhI/AAAAAAAAAVQ/ef8ispdll_w/s1600/teletubbies-happypreview-copy.jpg felt like to me.

Skyrim is not Fallout. It's not a wasteland. It's a harsh, rugged fantasy world. Todd said in one of his Game Informer interviews that the difference between western RPGs and Japanese RPGs is that ours are generally more rooted in realism with fantasy interspersed throughout, while the eastern games have more of a high-fantasy colourful style.

You'll still be able to walk through a forest and admire the way it looks. Of course there are going to be beautiful environments - Morrowind, imo, was a lot darker and grittier than Oblivion, but there were still places in it that were nice to look at. I think part of the reason I disliked Oblivion so much was because it was so flowery and cheerful all the time, as opposed to Morrowind when you could practically feel the threat of Dagoth Ur growing as the game progressed.

I want Skyrim to be like that - beautiful, but in a harsher, more realistic fashion. And realistically, Tamriel would be a very difficult place to eke out a living. It won't necessarily be dark by way of environments (although I certainly hope there will be locations like that), but moreover dark in the way of the storyline and the way the world around you will behave.

To oblivion with all that nice stuff! We need darkness! Darker darkness! Darker than Oblivion's Dark brotherhood. Darker than Oblivion's redguard!

Nevermind.

WTH 704 fps on FRAPS?

jeeezus what kind of video card do you have in your rig?

The one which runs Photoshop.

Because despite liking the game as much as I like it, Oblivion has too much "bunnies, butterflies and sunshines" mentality / atmosphere IMO.

It's really just a matter of preference. Games come in all different styles, and the dark grittiness of Skyrim contrasts nicely with brighter fantasy games like Fable III and Kingdoms of Amalur. The fantasy genre can be a pretty stagnant pool of standards and similarities, so it's good to distinguish yourselves from the competition.

In addition, the nature of the Nords and most hostile arctic environments in general promote darker themes than other settings and circumstances. The Imperial province of Cyrodiil could have been darker, but it would ruin the visualizations of Imperial society: very peaceful, orderly, and calm, which is then disrupted by the magical gates that lead to Mordor.

This is also probably unrelated, but modern media in general seems to favor darker tones. You can see the difference in revisionist media - things that have been remade or adapted from other works. James Bond in Sean Connery's day was very fantastic and grand, but Daniel Craig's Bond is dark, realistic, and visceral. Batman has always been a rather dark superhero, but The Dark Knight took out any unrealistic aspect and made the setting much darker. There's just something about the new millennium and angst I guess.

I just used a random screenshot on google.

EDIT: and I used a 360 when I played Oblivion.

Yeah, because the last time I went to Scandinavia everything was PITCH BLACK! >_>

Darker refers to mood rather than lighting. I'm sure there will still be beautiful mountains, forests etc and there will still be humour, but the atmosphere will be darker.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/File:SR-ForestHunt_wLegal.jpg
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/File:SR-Giant01_wLegal.jpg
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/File:SR-img-LakeWaterfall.jpg
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/File:SR-prerelease-2011-04-01-4.jpg
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/File:SR-prerelease-2011-04-01-6.jpg
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/File:SR-ForestTrack_wLegal.jpg
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/File:SR-TownScene_wLegal.jpg

Actual darkness or the tone of the game?

OP, you mention exploration.

How does this image not invoke an incredible sense of wonder for you? While also instilling in you a feel of trepidation?

This image makes me want to explore, and travel across those mountains, while the tone and level of brightness compliments this, by making me feel that I am in a World with things that want to kill me, and I should therefore be careful on my journey.

I want a darker Skyrim as opposed to the generic Cyrodiil. Not scary like Amnesia, but more mature story and more violence. The wilderness should be more dangerous and hostile than Oblivion's as well, and that doesn't mean every mudcrab should be aggressive, that means there should always be very strong creatures that you could run into, that would one-bite-eat you. The dungeons should be literally darker, the torches should be a must in some places. The general atmosphere in towns should be an atmosphere of war and worry. In Oblivion there was a weird contrast between what was actually happening outside the city gates and the merry people inside, chatting about nothing. The dark atmosphere would be easily built if the world is designed to reflect the main story more believably than in Oblivion.

Skyrim is not Morrowind 2 nor is it Oblivion 2.

It's the north, and Northern environments are fairly bleak, even with their fractured beauty. It'll be a welcome break from the blinding bloom and saturated color palette, and highly civilized nature of Oblivion.



oh, OH, I'm seeing it now. The era of "self entitled Oblivion fans"

Just as the "Morrowind fans" ragged on Oblivion, the "Oblivion fans" shall rag on Skyrim for being a different game.

Move AWAY from high fantasy? I want them to move towards high fantasy, and that's precisely BECAUSE I want the setting to be more creative and less bland, though when I think of high-fantasy, I don't automatically think of Lord of the Rings, granted, that is commonly classified as "high fantasy", to me, high fantasy is pretty much what it's name implies, it's fantasy that goes rather far into the realm of the fantastical, which leaves room for more creativity as you're not bound as much by the laws of reality. I'd actually argue that Morrowind is higher on that scale than Oblivion, despite resembling Lord of the Rings less (I'm refering to just the default game here, if you take Shivering Isles into account, that's pretty high too.), because the world as a whole feels like a greater departure from real life, most of the animals that populate the world are alien, and the environments as a whole are a lot more exotic, the cultures themselves are also stranger. I mean, when did you ever see thousand year old wizards who live in mushroom towers that you can't reach the top of without levitation in Cyrodiil? Or in Middle Earth, for that matter? And what about councilors of a noble house who live in a giant crab shell? I bet you don't remember THAT in Lord of the Rings. When I think of "high fantasy", this is what comes to mind. I actually consider Lord of the Rings to be reletively low on the high fantasy scale, though still clearly high fantasy, and this is mainly because there isn't really all that much in the way of obvious magic in the setting, and the setting itself looks a lot like Medieval Europe when you ignore the elves and orcs and hobbits and tree men and all that, if you ignore those parts, of course.

But anyway, the recent trend in gaming in general seems to be to make things darker, it's just what's popular these days, probably because of the notion that something has to be "dark" to be "mature". Of course, I could name a number of examples of things where "dark" does not translate into "mature" and could actually equate to its opposite. But regardless, Bethesda probably wants to take advantage of this trend, although it sounds to me like the original poster is not refering to the setting having a bleaker, more brutal tone, but rather means dark in the literal sense, refering to the visuals of the game being less colorful, but that's kind of a trend in gaming too, just look at how many developers seem to think that brown equals realistic (I can only assume these developers don't go out much because if they did, they'd realize that colors other than brown and gray are not original to the realm of fiction and do in fact exist in real life.) But regardless, the color pallete of Skyrim doesn't really seem all that dark from what I've seen, not unreasonably so, anyway, I actually expected to see more snow covered wastelands than the screenshots and trailer lead me to expect, so I'm not too worried about the visuals of the game being too bland, in fact, they actually strike me as more interesting than the ones from Oblivion.

Regardless, though, as is said, Skyrim is not "Oblivion 2", it's the Elder Scrolls V, and the past Elder Scrolls games each often had their own feel to their worlds, and that makes sense, because with each game taking place in a different provinces, with different culture and environments, naturally, they're not going to feel exactly the same. so I don't mind if Bethesda goes with a different feel from Oblivion, I just want the feel they go for to work well for Skyrim.



I can fully agree on that, really, that should be basic logic in games, dungeons should be dark, if there are no light sources nearby, hand-held or ambient, and you're not using any kind of magic to lighten the environment or help you see in the dark. Anyone who fails to understand why this is should perform an experiment, find a room with no windows, if there is such a place in your house. Than close the door fully, and switch off the lights. You may notice that you can't see very well, or even at all, now, caves work the same way, if you're away from the entrance and there are no lights about, it's going to be pretty dark, I want this to be reflected in games at all, dungeons which are supposed "pitch black" should not have visibility equivalent to a cloudy afternoon outside.

I don't want the game to be 'darker' (as in dark color), I want it be more 'realistic'. Cyrodiil felt a bit like Star Trek - the perfect world, everyone is happy and wealthy and healthy. Even the few beggars felt more like regular people who prefer to sleep outdoors and don't care for their appearance. Other than that they were polite, they didn't drink, they didn't commit crimes.

I want dark back alleys in towns where you can meet prosttutes, where thieves steal your money if you don't pay attention and where people get drunk all day long. I want a crime system like in the middle ages, where people are publicly executed, where dead bodies hang outside of towns as a deterrent. I want corrupt counts who prey upon the poor and rule their county without any remorse.

Of course there should also be the opposite of that, just like in real life.

The color/saturation of the landscape has nothing to do with it, it just makes the gameworld feel dull and boring if you use grey/brown tones all the time and it doesn't make much sense either.

Thats right. Morrowind was darker than OB, mostly because of the setting of the game, and I really like the idea of a darker setting in Skyrim.

Sir, I agree with the rest of your post to the n'th degree. However, you're misrepresenting the position of others here. I also believe colour and saturation does have something to do with it, and definitely effects the mood of the game, I feel the position that it doesn't is one worthy of ridicule.

IMO, the bloom effect on Oblivion was ridiculous. Just because I don't want everything to be super-bright, does not mean that I want everything to be 'grey/brown tones all the time', as you put it.

Oblivion was too "clean" and shiny, even the ruins. Dirt can add a lot to a believable war atmosphere. Piles of dead bodies with flies swarming, uglyness, disease, torture and screams, extreme poverty, cruel warleaders, racism, public executions could all make Skyrim darker for my taste. It is civil war, isn't it? There must be some suffering displayed.

more darkness the deeper and older it gets

I like the fact Skyrim will have both areas that will feel bright and areas feeling dark. It adds a lot of variation and makes it fun to experience for every type of player.