Skyrim - 20 Minutes of Footage

[Thaurin]

I assume this "graphics thing" is a thing one simply gets used to.
I learned driving in a BMW. Dream car, great to work with. Having to drive a much older and much less good car of my parents after that, it was like going back in history - or from a luxury flat into a farmer's house.

Yes, it is. I used to be much more tolerant of blocky, pixelated graphics. Obviously, since there was nothing else. A game like 11th Hour (the better-looking sequel to 7th Guest) was absolutely cutting edge in 1995, but it used video stored on CD-ROM (what is this? CD's for the computer? Woah!). It can now easily be done more beautifully in real-time. I thought DooM was the most realistic 3D I had ever seen back when it came out. It doesn't help that I do my gaming on the 37" LCD TV screen in the living room these days, of course.

I also think it's getting harder and harder to impress me in other areas. The amount of stuff that comes out is just huge compared to then. We're spoiled. However, I was playing on Dungeon Siege 3 on Xbox 360 recently and was reminded again that this level of graphics is pretty much "enough." Compared to PS2 and original Xbox, where character models were still a bit too blocky, textures too blurry and pixel shaders too simplistic.

So yes, I think Skyrim is an improvement over Oblivion graphics-wise so far. And graphics have reached a comfortable level, too. Easy on the eyes and without a pressing need to dramatically improve more. That's one reason why PC graphics are not progressing very fast any more.

 

[Paul]

Sorry, but I've found these Skyrim videos much more immersive than The Witcher 2's sometimes clumsy graphics.

No idea what you mean by that. Pretty much every area in Witcher 2 (Prologue, Flotsam and its forest, Vergen and area surrounding it, military camp..) looks so amazing both tech and art wise that I have yet to see anything from Skyrim that impresses me as much. Not to mention characters and their clothing, again there is no equal to TW2.

That is not to say that TW2 was flawless, for example lipsync and emotions could be improved. And of course it is maybe somewhat easier to make more storydriven and linear RPG look better that it is with openworld one. But since we were talking purely about graphics..

 

[jhwisner]

No idea what you mean by that. Pretty much every area in Witcher 2 (Prologue, Flotsam and its forest, Vergen and area surrounding it, military camp..) looks so amazing both tech and art wise.

I thought the caves and mines were all pretty piss-poor in terms of art and level design. They were boring, repettitive, and seemed like they were done by the one lazy guy on the entire team. I do agree that much of the game looked astounding but there were certainly times when the talent they brought to bear for the character design and for Flotsam in particular seemed to be quite absent.

Don't get me wrong - I think Bethesda would have done well to hire off most of their art team at a 3x pay increase. They would just need to ask each of them "did you think the cave and dungeon segments of Oblivion were good" and not hire the guy who said yes; at times it felt like that was his or her inspiration.

 

[Thaurin]

No idea what you mean by that. [...] But since we were talking purely about graphics..

Not just graphics, also atmosphere. What I mean is exactly this:

The witcher 2 had its moments - times where the graphics and area design really worked to create an impressive sense of place that I have not seen matched in any sandbox style RPGs. That's one of the advantages of more path based exploration - the ability to anticipate common perspectives and enhance the scene for maximum impact. It was damned uneven though and I did get the distinct feeling that the care taken with some areas was not at all applied to others (the mines and tunnels). But yeah I guess that's what you meant by "sometimes" right?

The Witcher 2 does look good, but sometimes--and I can't put my finger on it--it feels sort of wrong, unpolished. It's the wooden, emotionless animation, maybe, or some sort of feeling of inconsistent design. I'm still not that far in, so I've only seen a couple of areas, but the game sometimes leaves me with the feeling that it could have been so much better. But again, I don't really know how.

Now, Skyrim gives you the feeling of epic scale. The landscape is inviting and you have the feeling that you can walk around and find stuff. That is of course the main strong point of open-world RPGs like this, but that's what I mean with the immersion factor. The graphics did not at all look like "crap" to me.

 

[DeepO]

No problems with general Skyrim´s visuals here.
I´d say the environments look, eh, tasteful. Though there were few spots in the interiors where bloom was overkill, generally I didn´t find it bothersome in the exteriors. The colour scheme is fitting to the region and gives the game distinct character making it immediately recognizable.
Music is pretty good and I really like the ambient tune in the beginning of the first vid.
I like the presentation of perk trees and the map sure looks nifty.
Puzzle element is welcomed, hopefully they´ve put some effort into making them feel integral to the experience and weren´t afraid making some of them challenging.

Didn´t like some of the HUD elements (compass quite big and on the top, big letters announcing skill increase) and inventory system, while improvement over vanilla Oblivion, still seems like it may become PITA once more items are accumulated.

Anyway, I´m pretty sure I´ll find the game fun in the beginning just for the basic exploration/sigthseeing and checking out game systems, but I´ve yet to see more info on level scaling, perks and quest design to see what kind of longer lasting value I´m likely to find there.
I think the perk system has potential to make character development interesting and I like that learning dragon shouts seems to be directly tied with exploration.

Overall I´m cautiously optimistic as of now.

Btw, was anywhere confirmed whether swimming is implemented?

Not to mention characters and their clothing, again there is no equal to TW2.

I strongly agree with this.

I also agree that The Witcher 2 looks better, but I also think that the level of the games´ openworldness does need to be taken into account even when talking purely about visuals.
If it´s true that you can reach pretty much every far away area seen in Skyrim, than visuals of these areas carry different immersion value and feel of dimension than some of such in The Witcher 2 which were unreachable or just parts of the sky box.

 

[lostforever]

I must be going blind or something but the graphics looks pretty good to me. I would say The Witcher 2 had better quality graphics overall but we have not seen much in Skyrim yet. They keep on showing the same old video again and again (which I think is good thing since less spoilers) so its hard to say how the overall game will look.

However based on these videos, Skyrim lacks a certain "atmosphere" compared to the Gothic/Risen games. It this "atmosphere" that sort of makes the Gothic games standout and makes them better than the TES games. I can't put on finger on it exactly to explain what this "atmosphere" is but the world in Gothic games seems more alive and sort of dangerous. You never get this feeling in TES games (may be Morrowind but certainly not Oblivion). Again to be fair, we have not played or seen much of Skyrim to judge it fully yet.

 

[DArtagnan]

Both Skyrim and The Witcher 2 look absolutely fantastic.

I don't personally see the point in trying to figure out which is the best looking, but I'll leave that to others.

I will say, for my part, that I'm more impressed with what's happening on screen in Skyrim - but I might consider the limited selection of areas in The Witcher 2 to be handled with a greater eye for detail. But it's key to remember that The Witcher 2 is TINY in terms of content - compared to Skyrim.

 

[BillSeurer]

The dragons are like OH MY GOD goodness, even with the rough edges.

 

[lostforever]

The dragons are like OH MY GOD goodness, even with the rough edges.

Well I am sort of underwhelmed by the dragons so far. To me dragons are these majestic creates and very embodiment of raw power but the dragons in Skyrim videos seems like pushovers. They have been turned into Random_Orc_02 type of monsters.

 

[crpgnut]

Btw, was anywhere confirmed whether swimming is implemented?

Yes. In one of the hands-on previews, one of the reporters mentioned swimming around and that he was wasting his valuable 60 minutes, playing in the water:

http://www.gamesradar.com/spelunking-giant-hunting-swimming-and-looting-skyrim/

I gave her some of her gold pieces back in exchange for one of them, then jumped into the river to see what swimming was like.

Visually, going underwater was pretty similar to Oblivion, in that the camera can be angled just above the surface of the water to see it as a flat layer, while the terrain underneath it looked perfectly clear. Angling it down a little, however, brought back the familiar underwater murk, and it stayed murky right up until I saw the water end ahead of me in a shiny wall.



Clearly this merited further investigation, and so I swam through it – only to come out on the other side of a waterfall. Luckily, you don’t take falling damage if you land in Skyrim’s water, and so after plummeting to safety, I lazily swam into the shallows, eventually coming to the little mountain village of Riverwood

 

[Motoki]

On this graphics thing, I am dissapoint. Not because I absolutely must have Crysis level visuals in every game, but because the earlier pre-release stills looked a lot better. Bethesda is the master at this though. The pre-release stills for Oblivion and Morrowind were like this too. Obviously higher resolution renders that were made to make the game look better than the end product really ends up being.

Bethesda is basically like the person on Myspace or Facebook who knows how to use camera angles to take really amazing pictures that make them look 20 years younger and 50 lbs lighter and then you meet them and wonder, is this really the same person?

 

[DeepO]

Yes.

Cool, thanks!

 

[mbuddha]

First mod download - remove blurry blood splatter in 1st person. Is my head a video camera?

Other than that, all looks a treat to me. However I would like to see some footage of cities and some more NPC interaction. I wish they had a conversation with the giant instead of incurring his wrath by attacking the mammoth.

 

[Motoki]

I wish they had a conversation with the giant instead of incurring his wrath by attacking the mammoth.

Although they are herders and obviously intelligent, I am doubting the game will treat them as such. I am betting they are pretty much just another enemy to fight.

Giantish was actually a language skill you could learn in Daggerfall, though you didn't really get to interact with them. All it would do is make them not attack you if you passed a skill check when encountering one.

 

[CelticFrost]

I still play the Ultima's and still love HoM3(just bought it again a month ago on GOG). With that being said I am not hung up on graphics, but in my post earlier I guess my point is with a month to go I was hoping for a more polished video clip. Better yet let us see a PC video clip...worries me that it won't be ready to ship end of OCT to stores for release on Nov 11 as I don't think playing the witcher2 with the new DLC2 and dark mode will take me to Nov.

 

[crpgnut]

They're showing it on the weakest graphical platform on purpose. This way, the Xbox players can't cry foul for Bethesda showing the game in resolutions much higher than what the Xbox can perform. I know it'll look even better than what we've been treated to. How much better remains to be seen.

 

[rune_74]

I must be missing something, it doesn't look bad at all on the lowest powered system....I think it looks great.

How anyone can see bad here is beyond me, funny in a world of rpgs where graphics aren't all that important these seem to matter

 

[Thaurin]

The graphics ARE a lot less colourful than Oblivion's. That's a shame, because I kind of liked that.

 

[lostforever]

The graphics ARE a lot less colourful than Oblivion's. That's a shame, because I kind of liked that.

I had the opposite feeling for some reason. I thought Skyrim looked bit more "green" than Oblivion!

 

[Thaurin]

Although they are herders and obviously intelligent, I am doubting the game will treat them as such. I am betting they are pretty much just another enemy to fight.

It took a comment on YouTube to tip me off, but you *can* talk to the giants. There was a pop-up in the HUD when the player hovered over him with "Talk" and the "A" button. Interesting!