Skyrim - Journalist Character Screens

Having worked on one of the larger face replacer mods for Morrowind I have to say the original stock Bethesda heads were just horrid for that game even for the time.

Rhedd (a modder at the time who had also done some professional stuff) really revolutionized the modding scene and the characters for that game. Almost every head and hair replacer was based on his work.

A face replacer mod pretty much a prerequisite for playing Morrowind, so much so that I think people forget what the original stock faces looked like. To say they were low resolution, even for the time, is an understatement. Also some of the UV maps were all messed up.

While I appreciate the sort of gritty art direction, in terms of the humanoid characters it was not Bethesda's finest work by a longshot.

Oblivion and the Fallout games that followed it added the 'Sims style' face tweaking which makes a huge difference. A lot of how the character looks is on you and how much time and effort you spend tweaking it to be just so. There definitely are cosmetic mods to help that along as well and I'm sure there will be with Skyrim.

I don't think Bethesda (or for that matter Obisidian in FNV) are necessarily the best at creating decent looking faces but the tools are there and the modding community will generally step in and remedy that.

GothicGothicness said:

I suppose Betheshda just can't make good looking characters…. there characters always look crappy at least the humans. Morrowind is acctually the best so far.

The overall graphics acctually looks worse than oblivion. Hopefully it means they have focused on the gameplay and other things this time around.

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I have to disagree with this as well. I thought the Skyrim characters looked great (the blond viking nord is pretty cool looking - I like the rough look) and I made some awesome ones in Morrowind and Oblivion. Just takes some effort and time to play around with things.

But "looks" are pretty much opinion based anyhow.

I am an Oblivion hater but I think the faces I have seen so far for Skyrim looks pretty good!

However I find the "art direction" for Skyrim (based on the videos I have seen so far) is greatly lacking say compared to Wither 2 or even Risen.

lostforever said:

However I find the "art direction" for Skyrim lacking (based on the videos I have seen so far) is greatly lacking say compared to Wither 2 or even Risen.

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At this point I would just like to see more of it to get an idea. A lot will come from getting a peek inside the cities. I can understand not wanting to show us important plot areas in dungeons (though the exterior shot of the one near the throat of the world was pretty nice.) So getting a look at the cities would go a long way to show how much detail and distinction is put into the various locales, clothing, etc. Or if you're a pessimist it will show the lack thereof I suppose if that's the case.

Here is another Dunmer shot.

Generally I like the design/art direction, my biggest complaint would be that some of the humanoid races so far look rather indistinct (Bosmer, Redguard).
Also, unlike the first one, that new Orc looks weird, unless it´s a half-orc variant .
I wonder if High Elves will look as relatively indistinguishable as the Wood Elves we´ve seen so far.
Beast races look nifty, Argonian especially.
The more gritty style fits well with the setting.

DeepO said:

The more gritty style fits well with the setting.

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I agree.

But it is - imho - also part of a trend, of a fashion that's currently running, imho, and the more gritty any art style, the less I'm going to buy any game that has it - in stark contrast to the masses, as far as I perceive it.

But to any one his or her own, so to say ...

Alrik Fassbauer said:

I agree.

But it is - imho - also part of a trend, of a fashion that's currently running, imho, and the more gritty any art style, the less I'm going to buy any game that has it - in stark contrast to the masses, as far as I perceive it.

But to any one his or her own, so to say …

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In that regard I'm slightly relieved to see more colors than brown, grey, and grayish-brown. Also no chest high walls is a plus.

I think they just don't know what a face look like. In Oblivion they used a face generator to make all the faces. Technically it has a lot of shaders, mapping, and even self-shadowing, but these "auto-generated" faces have even less character than the horrible morrowind faces did in my opinion. These faces look more like a solid block and less like a face, these faces completely lack any human life in them.

Faces can't be auto-generated, you need a talented artist to create them. Just compare oblivion to any game where the artist created the faces.

At least this kind of morrowind face which of course is not technically that good looking, has some glint of a person in it http://images.uesp.net/5/58/MW-Screenshot5.jpg.

Does this mean that Bethesda doesn't have artists capable of "drawing" good faces ?

It simply means that it's not a priority for them.

GothicGothicness said:

I think they just don't know what a face look like. In Oblivion they used a face generator to make all the faces. Technically it has a lot of shaders, mapping, and even self-shadowing, but these "auto-generated" faces have even less character than the horrible morrowind faces did in my opinion. These faces look more like a solid block and less like a face, these faces completely lack any human life in them.

Faces can't be auto-generated, you need a talented artist to create them. Just compare oblivion to any game where the artist created the faces.

At least this kind of morrowind face which of course is not technically that good looking, has some glint of a person in it http://images.uesp.net/5/58/MW-Screenshot5.jpg.

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Well yeah, speaking strictly in the technical arena the heads in Oblivion were an improvement but artistically? They were generic and often odd because of the autogenerated aspect to them. You pretty much need a mod like TNR where someone painstakingly went through and hand tweaked all the faces.

As I've said before, Bethesda doesn't do a lot of things 'by hand'. Where ever they can get the computer to generate something they will. This has always been their design philosophy since way back. In some cases it can be a strength but often it's a weakness since with the current level of technology you just don't get the same level of detail from a computer generating something than with a person making it by hand.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

Does this mean that Bethesda doesn't have artists capable of "drawing" good faces ?

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I wouldn't say that exactly, I just think it's not a priority for them. They probably just figure the modding community will step in and up the artistic aspect on the PC version and the console players quite frankly probably don't care.

Well, I find this ... disturbing. It's as if I was selling a car thinking that "the people out there will do modifications as they seem fit". As well as doing repairs.

Releasing a game and RELYING on "the community" to fix what's needed ... This is a no-go for me ...

It's like ... Selling something "unfinished" to me and relying on me to fix up the rest ... I don't like this view they seem to have on the "customer" ...

The moddability of Bethesda's games is an added bonus that most other developers don't give. They're not obligated to provide that, yet some people still complain.

Original Link: Face Comparison For Playable Races

Direct link: Face Comparison for playable races

Well here's a good comparison lineup for the various games - though its still a very rough way of judging since still images will fail to show the face's expressiveness (or creepy uncanny-valley dwelling lack thereof.) It does at least give a modest way of comparing them on one page.

While one or two morrowind facial models actually looked alright when not moving it does at least demonstrate significant improvement in the beleivability of their faces espescially compared to the mishappen abominations that unblinkingly stared you down in Oblivion. With regard to Morrowind - obviously the dunmer were a work of love by the lead artist compared to say... the hideous david-the-gnome-like bosmer.

I would note that the Skyrim faces look quite good considering the lack of time or giving-a-shit on the part of the previewers; though with 1 hour its hard to blame them too much. I doubt anyone naming their character "Dicktits" as one did would put any positive thought in their appearance. One previewer did - according to them - attempt to make an unusual looking elf (the Bosmer that looked vaguely Morrowind-dunmer-ish.)

It does seem like they have finally decided to make faces that do look like faces. Granted they're probably the least refined of some of their art assets, but for a first actual attempt at faces that don't belong in a Shrek movie the improvement is significant. You can validly choose to disagree with the styling choices of the various races compared to concept art images from past games; I for one thought the concept art for Morrowind was pretty great stuff. It's really hard to argue for the superiority of the final products from those previous games though and be taken seriously in the slightest.

Actually with cars they do since most cars you buy don't have seat covers so if you want them you put them in yourself.

JDR13 said:

Liked the Argonian and the Khajit, but not the Bosmer or the Orc. The Orc looks nothing like it did in previous games. It looks more like some kind of Orc-Human hybrid to me.

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In TES lore Orcs are mer that got hit with an ugly stick basically, so it makes sense for them to look more like normal mer. I never liked the big green doofus look from before.

The Khajit and Argonians looks truly awesome. The Argonians in Oblivion were so fucking terrible, so to see them look like they should is great. I hope their legs are like they were in Morrowind.

jhwisner said:

Original Link: Face Comparison For Playable Races

Direct link: Face Comparison for playable races

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That's really impressive. Oblivion's faces really looked fucking terrible. I think Skyrim's designs are an improvement across the board and I love the realistic style. I don't think it is intentionally dark or grungy, I think it looks very realistic.

Shame the textures are shit.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

Well, I find this … disturbing. It's as if I was selling a car thinking that "the people out there will do modifications as they seem fit". As well as doing repairs.

Releasing a game and RELYING on "the community" to fix what's needed … This is a no-go for me …

It's like … Selling something "unfinished" to me and relying on me to fix up the rest … I don't like this view they seem to have on the "customer" …

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They don't release a game hoping for you to fix it, they release a game with so many characters that it would be impossible to hand create each one. This isn't a game with 20 to 50 npcs, this is a game with hundreds of NPC's. This whole weird view you have with bethesda is bizzarre. This whole fixation to place problems with them as some conspiracy sounds assinine.

Also the vast majority of people who buy their games never use a mod. To say they rely on mods is ridiculous.

DoctorNarrative said:

In TES lore Orcs are mer that got hit with an ugly stick basically, so it makes sense for them to look more like normal mer. I never liked the big green doofus look from before.

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The problem with that is this is the fifth game in the series. They've already established a certain look, and now they're trying to retcon it. I'd rather they stayed consistent with the style and just tried to make them look better.