Let's talk in a civil manner, please. People have a right to speak their mind. Just keep it in a civil manner!
We all know that it's a fact that Skyrim will be sold on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 because it's alot of money to be earned there and also on PC.

Many of us remember The Elder Scrolls to be a PC game first back in 1994 but I remember Morrowind in 2002 much better and it was after that time they ported Morrowind over to the Xbox 360.
So I'm not sure how it is today.

But I know that Oblivion was released for Xbox 360 first and then 1 year later on PlayStation 3. So it's not strange if they built the game for Xbox 360 first then made it for PC; do we call it ported to PC? I don't know.

Okey, here is my final question & opinion:
It's offical they didn't want to wait for the next Xbox or PlayStation to hit the market. And those consoles are pretty old now.
Could this potentially stopped Skyrim to reach it's full potential on the PC? Gameplay-wise, technical-wise. What do you think?



And of course people see this and that as "flame bait" but you should realize not everyone in the world will like everyones opinion and.. I show no hostility, I just speak my mind and have some questions and like to see the result. If you don't like what you read, then you have to understand they are in the rigth of that opinion and speak their mind. Don't flame!
Thank you!

The consoles allowed Skyrim to reach its full potential. The focus shifted from graphics to content. If it weren't for the consoles, Skyrim would have been another Oblivion.

"But can it run Skyrim at max graphics?"

Gameplay-wise, no.
Technical-wise, yes.

I don't think it's right of you to say that because of consoles.. The Elder Scrolls games became better with more content, if you do think so.. you never played any of the previous Elder Scrolls games at all..
Like Morrowind, I really felt that it was a bigger world with more gameplay and fun then Oblivion in my opinion and Morrowind was made on PC before it ever was ported to the console.

Your logic isn't very logical. Sorry.

There's a 10 page thread here TC http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1193729-pc-gamers-do-feel-this-way/page__fromsearch__1 it's been locked, but i'm sure whatever responses you get here you'll find in there.

Please don't try to hijack threads with linking me to a thread that has nothing to do with this.
That guy wrote one line with no questions, and I have an opinion and questions in my thread and poll. Freedom of speech and I mean no harm or show no hostility against anyone.

Oblivion had so much less content than Morrowind because firstly they struggled to build the game properly to work on consoles they hadn't seen yet (a lot of time spent trying to get the final specs and make sure it would not be too much for them) and secondly because they had to limit their content to fit the dialogue on the disc using the technology available at the time. And making good graphics has almost nothing to do with the amount of content you can put in unless you're limited by the technology.

Flamebait if I ever saw it.

Consoles only hold the game back graphically, which isn't a particularly legitimate concern anyway. In terms of game design, there's nothing a console can't do that a PC can.


Now, I think a more legitimate concern is; is the console demographic itself holding the game back? Not so much the hardware, but the people drawn to the "Ease of operation" that consoles possess, Developers are getting increasingly weary certain types of games. For example, Zero Punctuation brought up a good point with Castlevania Symphony of the Night, (Ironically a console game, but let's ignore that for now, since it was a different age of gamers anyway), about one third, to one half of the game's content is "Hidden", with no explicit instructions of hints towards unlocking the fabled "Reverse Castle". Games like this just don't get made anymore, because this generation has an odd sense of entitlement. This usually doesn't hurt games, but in the case of Elder Scrolls games, and other games that have a huge emphasis on exploration, and thus not being entirely forthcoming with every detail, it can really hurt that sense of rewarding exploration.

Maybe Skyrim won't reach it's full potential as a PC game, but I'm certain it will reach very nearly its fullest potential as a kick-ass RPG

Morrowind < Oblivion < Fallout 3 All amazing games and they just keep getting better. Consoles or not, Bethesda is on one hell of a hot-streak

This. Gameplay shouldn't really be limited by technology at this point. A game can pretty much play anyway the developers want it to. As far as technology, yes, using older hardware as a base limits the maximum capabilities of the graphics. Then again, graphics really aren't that important to me, and should not be the real focus of a TES game when it comes down to it. Its all about setting and story, which is only limited by the Devs imagination and determination.

His question was asking pretty much what you're asking, "Are the current consoles holding back the PC version". I also linked you to that thread because it's 10 pages of discussion and I thought you'd appreciate skimming over all that content to see what the community thought.

BTW, your third poll question is flawed. If it wasn't about "more money" then that budget wouldn't be no where near what it is.

1) Xbox/PS3 = more cash for the company, not the opposite way around, less cash due to modifying it for that multi-console role. Patches will differntiate between PC, PS3 and Xbox anyway. You still get to mod the hell out of it and all the features, including better graphics, than Xbox/PS3 users do not get. It makes the game even more popular. Technology will increase over time, they're going to need a bit of cash for it so correct move.

2) Every game is better on PC! To say you have a good PC that can handle it.

3) Technicality and technology has always been better on PC.

Bethesda has done the correct thing. I'm so glad they're not like other companies and did not make it "this console only".

I have played the previous Elder Scrolls games. Thanks for assuming...

My argument only pertains to Bethesda choosing to optimize Skyrim for consoles rather than for PC. It has nothing to do with the previous games.

Wish they designed it for High End-PCs and just scaled it down for consoles/slow PCs. That way everyone wins.

Yes and I was thinking more about the limitations that a 5-6 year old console has and not only with the graphics..
You can imagine that Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 may limit how big they make towns and how populated on area is because a 5-6 year old console will easily drop in frame rates with new games these days.

You forget that Oblivion was supposed to be a next-gen launch title. Bethesda was forced to focus on creating next-generation assets, when that effort could have been used for other parts of the game.

I'm curious how it works now tho. Because with a PC, you arn't really limited by any space available on a disc but with consoles you are.
That's a pretty important factor on how far a developer goes with content in a game. When there is a limit set for them already, with the disc.

if.............if bethesda had developed the game the correct way it would not be an issue. other developers have successfully developed games so that they look spectacular on high end rigs but also scale down for consoles and still look good. Two worlds 2 and DAO 2 are good examples of differeing approaches. leaving aside the average gameplay of both games and just looking at their graphics, there is a huge difference between how TW2 looks on a console and how it looks on a PC. HUGE! difference. the difference is much smaller for DAO 2 even with the extra hi rez textures that you could download. im glad that they at least offered it but i think it was in response to overwhelming feedback at how crappy the game looked.

as for gameplay i agree with the other poster that its not the hardware but the target audience that directs how games are made. when i finally got around to playing portal i was amazed at how uber easy the levels were. they designed those maps for 6 year olds. i know this cause i absolutely svck at most puzzle games. at first i figured......well maybe its just to hard to make more difficult maps but then i found the extra challenge maps and wondered why some of those werent the default maps to begin with, those were awesome maps cause i svcked at half of them which is how it should be for the universe to be proper again. when games like bioshock give you quest arrows in a linear corridor game where there is very limited choice to go you know you have hit the bottom.

another example of this is the new witcher 2 game. its somewhat of a throwback to older games that required that you constantly move around in combat and take advantage of tools that are provided for you. alot of people were shocked that you just couldnt stand there in one spot and button mash bad guy after bad guy forever like you could in assassins creed. GASP! enemies attacked you all at once instead of taking turns........who would have thought that should happen. :rolleyes:

oblivion was another great example of designing a game to a lower common denominator.

as for skyrim though, im not overly worried. textures are easy enough to mod in and the big thing i was looking for, objects casting shadows, is confirmed in. the rest mods can take care of as far as im concerned and the gameplay footage looked very good to me.

the one area that is unforgivable to me, and microsoft can svck it as far as im concerned, is the limit on having all data on one disk and not allowing games to have an additional disk with stuff that can be put on the hard drive.

Todd has said that they have better compression techniques.

What are they? How do they work? I haven't a clue.

Did you feel that Oblivion was a fully fleshed PC game when you played it on the PC?

No, traces of consolitis simplicus were easy to spot. Interfaces and the default inventory were obviously made for television screens. Race specific dialogue was limited(3 elf races shared the same voice) and the whole gameworld was simplified so that consoles could run the game without major slowdowns. There are surely more but that's enough for now.

Do you think\imagine Skyrim today could be technical better on PC if they didn't have to make it for 5-6 year old consoles?

Absolutely. They could more effectively make the game much more optimised and support state of the art technology like multi-core CPUs, 64bit architecture, DX11 and etc..

Do you wish that 'more-money' wasn't everything, but being true to the PC gaming community was their goal at heart? (Like those behind Witcher 2)

I bet that at least some of the people at gamesas would like to think so. But the top brass at Beth & Zenimax are obviously looking to make as much money as possible, because it is their duty to their shareholders.

:batman:

I'm not worried at all. When I took up this discussion I did not have textures on my mind, I was more thinking about the limitations that 5-6 year old consoles have when it come to how much activities there is at one location, making the game drop huge in frame rates.

Imagine how far they could go if they made more life in the game (i'm not saying there isn't life in the game) but with the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, they can't handle if it's like a large epic battle in a game like Skyrim, right?

So if you remove the consoles that are pretty old and think of a standard PC, well then you could maybe go "oh wait, let's do this epic battle." insted of "that won't work on Xbox 360, the frame rate drops down to 8 now." - Because with standard PC or any PC at all you can configure while Xbox 360 you can't.

Just to make sure when I say epic, I mean epic. Not a fight between 6 angry ghosts.

PCs are more than just about graphics. Taking advantage of today's processors, it could've had the capability to handle more advanced character AI. It could've handled many more physics-enabled objects. With the added memory, more things could've been loaded at one time, avoiding load screens and separate-cell syndrome. With the way PC games are installed, there's no issue with requiring multiple DVDs (though the PS3's BluRay also avoids the issue, but the 360 still has that problem).

i agree with the AI and large battles part. if an indie developer like taleworlds can make a swords and boards game where literally hundreds of people are fighting battles at on time on screen and it runs on older PCs yet oblivion had problems with less than 20 combatants. i think its jsut that the AI overwhelmed the consoles ENIAC processor.

I'm just curious. Everyone said Oblivion was held back by consoles and now generally some people are saying Skyirm will be held back because of consoles.
I never remember anyone saying that Morrowind was held back by consoles...why is this? I'm curious.