What did Bethesda ever DO to you man? o.O"
You make absolutely no sense in your posts, and I'm objective here! seriously, what you are saying is practically: Bethesda runs a conspiracy to make their screenshots look better and is lying about everything they are saying, even though everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, and again, just to be clear, I mean everything, proves otherwise.
You may "think" this is an edited screenshot and won't be in-game, but you are completely and 100% with no doubt wrong. However, if you think it was just composed of a few screenshots attached together, then I would respond: "Yeah, possibly".

In any case this is a valid screenshot, it may not all fit in our screens, but it is in fact (100%) a valid screenshot.

If you want proof take a look at the Oblivion screenshot and Morrowind screenshot's section in the website and tell me that it's edited to look good.

Even if it looks different, point is that it is so "perfectly" placed (the sunset, the mountains, the clouds) because it was made by hand! DUH! the entire game is made by hand, and you'd expect some areas to look better than others, look at the trailer again and you'll notice some clips in it look entirely different from one another.

Point, /Case.

Lol. I was trying to avoid it coming to this.

Sorry xD he drives me insane!

Sorry if it came out wrong, please ignore the sarcasm and read through it, it has valid points.

Trust me I read it, Ive been trying to say the same thing, nicely. I just came off of a two day ban for telling someone their thought process was shallow lol.

I think its absurd to say the screen is edited. If you read through this thread Ive been saying it the whole time. It just doesnt seem like anything a game company would do, its very misleading and downright shady. Im not saying that editing a screenshot is unheard of, but if they say its a screenshot and post it on their official page, then its going to be in game.

Especially if a developer later comes out and confirms it when asked about the exact same screen. Obviously we werent the only people to think it looked like concept art, but he shattered that. He didnt say, "No, its a edited screen blah blah blah". He flat out said "Its a screen. Looks great huh?" If he went through all that just for us to later find out it was just a doctored photo and that screen will never be seen in game......well I think that would be a pretty crappy move on their part, and they would lose a LOT of trust going forth.

Couldn't agree more

I've not yet seen a game company that actually edited or "lied" about their screenshots, they don't want the game to look different or worse when it comes out, they want us to be drawn to the game through screenshots, but advertising the game continues even after the game is out, and if people find out later on that they did in fact edited their screenshots they would lose a lot of trust, like you were saying.

Plus, look at it again, it looks 3D to me, a really good one, but still 3D. And I can't see much you can edit around this screenshot anyway...

What kind of silly question is that? it's a damn mountain range, some of the faces running vertically. OFC you can't go everywhere, not without Levitation of some form.

The reason for the post is in resopnse to a developer stating that anywhere in Skyrim you can see, you can go.

So since this is a screenshot, the OP was pointing out exactly what you are saying. I believe he was trying to say it doesnt look like you can go there, and asking how that fits in with the 'see anywhere, go anywhere' quote.

And if that isnt what the OP meant that is certainly the question we are asking now.

I think the reason people have doubts may be something extremely simple. http://cdnstatic.gamesas.com/akqacms/files/tes/screenshots/CompositeMountain_wLegal.jpg, and here's my theory:

As well as, and due to the image being stitched (evidence: image is named "composite"; a composition of several screenshots to create a significantly wider view), it's also scaled down from its original res to 1600x447. From what? 2560x720, which you'll note is double the horizontal resolution of all the other officially released full-size screenshots (1280x720).

I conclude that this beautiful landscape screenshot consists of two 1280x720 in-game Xbox 360 screenshots stitched seamlessly together to produce a single 2560x720 screenshot which was then scaled down to a resolution of 1600x447 (a reduction to approximately 62% of the original), which effectively supersamples the entire image.

I present to you different Skyrim screenshots scaled to 62% of their full resolution. I invite your opinions as to whether or not the resulting graphical quality -- of the mountains in particular -- is comparable to that of the composite screenshot in question.

http://i801.photobucket.com/albums/yy297/b_harrison/misc/DragonMountains_supersampled.jpg ? http://cms.elderscrolls.com/sites/default/files/tes/screenshots/DragonMountains_wLegal.jpg

http://i801.photobucket.com/albums/yy297/b_harrison/misc/LakeMountains_supersampled.jpg ? http://cms.elderscrolls.com/sites/default/files/tes/screenshots/LakeMountains_wLegal.jpg

http://i801.photobucket.com/albums/yy297/b_harrison/misc/DragonApproach_supersampled.jpg ? http://cms.elderscrolls.com/sites/default/files/tes/screenshots/DragonApproach_wLegal.jpg


Lastly, I further conclude that the composite screenshot in question is a good approximation of what Skyrim's mountains will look like on the PC platform with a moderate to high value of antialiasing enabled.

That's a figure of speech, it's not to be taken literally. They said the exact same for previous ES games, but guess what - you couldn't climb the walls of the cities.

Statements like that are figurative, not literal.

someone said something about that mointain has nothing to scale it by like a tree or w/e which all i can say about climbing this mountain is... you'd better have a HIGH acrobatics skill!!!

You're 'missing the point.' 'The point' was the query on whether your character would be able to go to every mountain visible (assuming there's a way to scale mountains like in Oblivion). Or if there'd be an 'invisible wall' or some other barrier obstructing clear passage to everything seen such as the distant mountains where the sun is rising/setting. But that's an interesting related issue of whether the character will be able to reach the sheer-looking peaks of mountains seen in this game, they do seem steeper than Oblivion's. I really hope you'll be able to, otherwise it seems massively unsatisfying to not be able to reach a mountain peak and be restricted from that maximum vista spot.

If that is a screenshot, that is one bizzaro aspect ratio, maybe it's from playing on two monitors?

I know it's difficult :S but read the thread before posting such comments...

Well I;'ve read the whole thread. I conclude

-The image is a screenshot.
-It's a composite image which has then been shrunk in size
-Whether any other processing has taken place on the image is unknown
-Because it's a screenshot the mountains shown must be 'in' the game.
-The 'go anywhere you can see' comment cannot be taken literally because there must be land borders (+ you can see the sun)

From this that the main unanswered queation is whether the mountain is in the main gamespace and therefore acceessble, or whether it is inaccessable because it is beyond some uncrossable border.

Actually there is a third possibility, that the shot is from a cutscene or cinematic of some kind which could technically be 'in' the game..

For all we know it could be dividing the provinces. It all depends on where in the map it's located. I voted no but there's truly no way we can tell.

I looked up composite in the dictionary. It said made up of several things, a composite, and there was a definition about images that said "a picture, photograph, or the like, that combines several separate pictures. ". Nothing about editing it.

And why would they edit it? I mean it's not like Bethesda have been misleading or even putting excessive effort into making us impressed with the other screenshots. They clearly didn't go through and say "don't use this, the hair looks bad here" or "Redo that scene, there's a rock popping up" or "Don't use the footage where the blood is visible without the guy actually getting hit". They could easily have avoided these graphical flaws if they wanted, but it's clear they just aren't interested in misleading us. They even used the 360 version rather than using better graphics on PC. So why would they lie with this one image? Plus, although we haven't seen anything that far out, going by what we have seen of the mountains in the trailer and such, I don't think distant views like that are really implausible.

Soon you'll be roaming round starting fights with giants only to run away and hide in a cave, where you get caught in some spiderwebs and attacked by a frost spider. Then when you manage to burn and slash it to death gladly exiting the cave, you will see a village in the distance which is being attacked by a dragon! What will you do when that time comes?

... or it could be a regular screenshot cut in half...

To answer the OP:
If that indeed is in-game, the answer is no, you will not be able to get there. That would be the end of the playable map.

I expect we can go to everything we see in the image.

Okay, so if this mountain range is in-fact in the game, then where in the world of Skyrim is it located based on this map: http://riftwall.com/images/skyrim_text.jpg

Let's try and figure it out judging from the mountain layouts in the map diagram and the scale of the mountains in the screen. To me it appears that it could be Hrothgar viewed from the south, or possibly the mountain range in the North Eastern reaches in Winterhold. Possibly that range to the right of the word "Winterhold", viewed from the north?

What do you guys think?

of course it is a screenshot, it is obvious, if we look closely we can see some texture problems and some issues with the models, plus we saw in the in-game trailer that mountains do have those fog parts in it, so yea this is easily a screenshot image, and why it wouldn't be, it is to good to be? thats good! if todd howard and pete hines said it is, so it is, they never lied to us, there is no reason to, and if you associating everything to oblivion, you must know that they had to take some things out in the last place, wasn'1t their fault...

People are way too gullible. This may be a "screenshot" of in-game art, but not in-game assets.

Watch the trailer. That's what the game engine really looks like. Not this.

And no, you won't be able to go anywhere you can see. Like the tops of the buildings in Fallout 3, there will be places that are unreachable due to no levitation or climbing.

Gonna need a hell of a lot of acrobatics to jump onto those clouds....

It's probably 2-3 screenshots combined to make a panorama view of the mountain ranges, no editing.

Todd said we could go anywhere we see in Skyrim, so if the ranges are inside the borders of skyrim, imo we can go there.
He had also said something about the total land mass of skyrim being more than cyrodil because of the mountains. I assume that means mountains are scalable, being the same land, just in a different shape (acrobatics taken into account).

At the time of the post, 13 people had voted "yes," so I am fully aware of what is being asked in the question and I responded accordingly. And I also voted "yes" because I don't think every area will be accessible.