I'm sorry guys, but grapihcs are not jumping as much anymore *rolls eyes* and that is a good thing. THe important thing is that it's all-around the same level, unlike oblivion and morrowind whose characters are quite terrible

Not really. A lot of the textures are extremely low quality (particularly on the rocks and terrain, a lot of the time it looks like they just took an ultra-low-res texture and passed a filter over it to make it look grainy - some of the rocks have pixels the size of my fist), the trees have always had issues with looking exceptionally flat, the terrain being a series of hills and valleys is something that other companies had gotten around years before, and the characters models and textures... well, there's no real arguing for those at all. Games released several years prior to Oblivion on much weaker hardware did those miles better than Oblivion did.

Basically, Bethesda's never really been on the forefront in terms of the technical features of their graphics, and in terms of the actual quality of the art itself (and especially the character art) their RPGs have been pretty hideous for a while now. I can't speak much on the technical side for Skyrim - the features they've confirmed aren't exactly unique to it, and small still images aren't a great way to judge that sort of thing - but at least in terms of the art direction, it's a definite step up for the company and it's well beyond what I'd actually thought they were capable of.

I don't think magazine pictures make a good argument against graphics. Usually games look better when played than looked at on paper.

Its like staring at snow blindness.

And this is why you don't publish the first screenshots in a magazine.

Are you having a giraffe, mate?

I see great improvement from Oblivion. From what I've seen, they look to match RDR (wouldn't say they surpass RDR, but still mighty fine).

Fair enough, have your own opinion, but this is one of those cases where there isn't much room for argument...

agreed

Can't wait to see the gameplay video in HD.

To be fair, Skyrim still has a good year of development ahead of itself to get polished and pretty. :happy: and we still havent seen a clear resolution picture of the game yet so you really cant judge it based on low rez GI scans.

Bolded for emphasis. THANK GOD.

Like other people have said, it's extremely difficult to judge the graphics of the game from small pictures in a magazine (and for many of you, low-quality scans). If you are going to bash the visuals, at least wait until we have high-resolution images available to us from Bethesda or GI. In addition, games can look deceptively subpar in stills but look much better in videos. We have no idea how Skyrim looks in realtime, with the improvements in animations, character models, and other areas. Give it time.

Also, can someone definitively answer what platform the screenshots are taken on? I'm assuming PC, but if they turn out to be from the 360 or PS3, I would be wowed. Regardless, I find them impressive. In combination with great draw distances and good detail to the game's environment, I have confidence Bethesda will make the game look pretty enough. As to the actual topic, there is absolutely no comparison between Skyrim and Oblivion, even based on low-resolution magazine images. Skyrim looks much better, but admittedly, it doesn't QUITE look like a next-generation game...yet. The hyperbole being slung around pre-magazine release may have raised my expectations to impossible heights, but I'm still pleased as to what I see. I'll withhold judgement until we have more in the way of larger images and videos.

Dude, what's your problem. Every post I've read by you is basically knocking the game. Didn't you just ask for a link to scans of the screenshots not an hour ago? So you haven't actually seen the screens? Also to be fair, it's very hard to judge what the game will look like with the few screens provided by Game Informer. Wait for some with better resolution and/or actual gameplay footage before jumping to RIDICULOUS conclusions.

I don't know why I even wasted my time replying to you. You're obviously a troll.

Well, it seems like we can all say that the mountains look more realistic and the bodies of the characters look seamless and more detailed. Additionally the monsters and animals look a lot more detailed. The weapons also look a lot higher quality, graphically. I haven't seen any repeated textures either, which is amazing. I'm just wondering how the water will look (the one picture showing water isn't focused on the water enough to tell). Wondering if it'll look as nice as Just Cause 2's.

They certainly look different... as much as I can tell from magazine scans. Some of the pictures look more like concept art than actual screen shots. I don't know if that's good or bad, or just a victim of the scans. I'm no photographical expert, but every time that I've tried to scan anything from a magazine, the results were always horribly grainy, washed out, color pixelated, or had some funky honeycomb pattern all over the place. So I'll take all the 'net scans I see with a grain of salt. I mean first of all, actual shots in a magazine are going to be dithered because of how color magazines are printed. Then you have someone scanning that, which further dilutes the quality untold amounts, depending on how they do it, and what they do it with. End result, low quality garbage. At least compared against a genuine screen capture directly from the game to your HD monitor

So I'll withhold judgment until some high-res captures hit GI's site, or Bethesda releases something. Like others have said, I already see many things and details that are head and shoulders above Oblivion. Screen shots are nice, but they still don't do any justice to a moving world. I'll be interested to see NPC animations, how snow falls, how flickering light dances, etc. The stuff that brings life to an otherwise static screen shot world.

So far, I'd say there's a marked improvement between Skyrim and Oblivion. Details are sharper, environments look much more realistic and atmospheric, and the men and women both have very distinct looks between them. There also appears to be a lot less Bloom going around. Ultimately, though, the animation is going to make or break the graphics for me. If they're as stiff as before, then the only good visuals will come from stills.

Exactly what I was thinking... :thumbsup:

Did you even look at the screenshots. Man. You are sooo wrong. Skyrim looks great at the photos and thats just an screenshot. Think when the full game gets out.

^^^this. Also from the really grainy scans that I saw (which even in the real magazine the pictures won't look as good as they will for the actual game and those pictures are from the console versions, not the PC at full settings) it looks just like Oblivion....but as I said that was from really terrible pictures that look like they were painted on a canvas. So actually for paintings, those picks look pretty damn good :drool:

Has this been verified? I would be incredibly impressed if this is the case.

The gaming industry is nearing the point where games will look as photo-realistic as possible and thus the graphics leap has slowed down considerably the last 6 years. When I saw the Oblivion picks in GI I could tell it looked way better than Morrowind but when I actually played the game it looked WAY better than even the picture in the magazine. You have to see the game in HD resolution to truly see the detail. Now if you don't believe that then your probably one of those people that can't tell the difference from standard resolution tv and high definition resolution (yes, these people exist.)



From what I saw in the screenies, I could see what seemed to look like low AA around the edges of the character so I am assuming it is the console or they are running their PC on lower settings. My m17x will make that game beautiful is all I know and I'm going to HDMI it to my TV and play that game on my 50" tv. Even if it was only a slight increase in graphics over Oblivion, which it is obviously much better, I would be fine with it because Oblivion still looks great to me. Yes there are better looking games than Oblivion now but it still looks great especially when looking at landscape from a decent distance. The only things that give Oblivion away as an aged game is when you get close to walls and see the textures are stylized and if you look at the distant hills, they look like they were drawn with a crayon because it isn't drawing textures at that far of a distance which they already confirmed that Skyrim will.

From a casual observation, though I can't see any animations, the characters in these stills still seem to have more natural poses. And that, combined with Todd's quote about animations being a priority for them, plus the article detailing a greater attention to the 3rd-person viewpoint as well as character interactions (Thankfully, no ultra-zoom ocular fixation this time around), seems to point to animations indeed being improved. To what point remains to be seen.

As long as the games depth and content didnt suffer I could care less what it looks like. I see a Beth dude lurking about, can he at least confirm that Skyrim hasn't been watered-down.

or Oblivion went to the face-doctor

but honestly, I was disappointed in the images disclosed from GI

This is why it looks the same. When they announced TES V was coming in 2011, I knew the graphics wouldn't be a tremendous improvement because the consoles are on the same generation as TES IV.

PC graphics have come a long way since then, I played Oblivion on an X1900XT 512mb and that card will barely run most modern games, but they concentrate the tech around what consoles can do, and consoles have not improved since 2006.

I'll disagree by saying I think there will be improvements, but it will be in things like animation. There can't be a traditional "eye-popping" experience with TES V since we're still on the same generation as 5 years ago. (sigh)

As a side benefit, probably any PC will run TES V remarkably, it won't be such a demanding game that Oblivion was, hardware wise.

GRAPHICS ARE NOT THE FOCUS OF RPG'S!!!! :facepalm: :banghead:

Sorry for yelling, but it seems that it needs to be screamed from the roof tops. Game play and game mechanics are the focus, not graphics. If you want graphics, please go play something else. Let the devs focus on what is imporant, graphics are not.