Hi everyone..

I remember when I first saw the Oblivion screenshots, the first time they came out and I was totally stunned and all this talk about how friggin' good the graphic was. But I have to say that over the months as new games have released their screens that Oblivion's graphic doesn't look so unique as it once was...

I'm not saying its all about the graphic, because Oblivion still have so much other games dont have like the new AI etc. But does anyone agree that maybe when Oblivion comes out in the Holidays of 2005/2006 that the graphic might not be so unique as it once was?

But of course... I dont want to say this for sure yet until I've gotten the game and played it on my new computer when it comes out

i was thinking this exact thing. I bet 2 years before morrowind came out the graphics looked so awexom3 and fantastic, but when i got the game they sucked. the problem is, I suppose, that it would be hard to build a game as big as OB and have graphics like FFVII Advent Children (why am i cursed to continue referencing that???)

they probably wont be as great as many of the other realese titles but as of now, i think we have just gotten used to the graphics. plus all we have seen are still screenies (and we have yet to see any water or magic)

I still think the graphics will be superior to most games that will be avaiable when you get oblivion. A possible tie might be with the FPS F.E.A.R., but that's it, as far as I'm concerned, the poly count is better then the doom 3 poly count, for example, which was up to so far the most high-tech engine. Of course it will get beaten by the new UT, but that's not coming out the winter holydays

i think oblivion graphics are superb, and still will be when it comes out.

remember, youve only seen screenshots so far, and one small and meanwhile outdated, trailer. (outdated, cause they already said that some things have been fixed, as the horrible lightning)

youll be happy when you see the things actually moving around and stuff.


im still a little worried about the trees though. i downloaded the speedtree rt demo and it sucks. you can see the leaves turning around, facing the player. i know, i know, they said, we shouldnt judge the engine by that trailer, but if they are going for the sprite techniques, youll see it, no matter how fast you move around a tree.

i guess we will have to check that out, and meanwhile trust the devs

The Oblivion-Graphics are still pretty spectacular in my opinion, the thing is that no one of us in here has yet played it and thus doesn't know what it's like to see the game in motion. Screenshots alone only tell half the truth. Ok, we've got a trailer but that one doesn't even come close to the quality of the real thing.
Trust me on this one, even though you might now think the graphics are not as good as you expect them to be you'll sure be blown away when you play the actual game What bothers me a little however are those Bloom-Effects - a lot of games recently used them and somehow they just tend to make the game look a too blurry. But maybe that adds a little to realism, we'll see...





I think it's a little unfair to compare something that is pre-rendered, where every single frame took a supercomputer probably several dozen hours to render, with something that runs in real-time on a common PC...

I think the graphics are great,but graphics arent as importent to me as the game itself.I still play sega every now and then,as long as the games A.I is and the stuff you can do is the same i think i can deal with graphics that are close to looking like reality.

p.s. Morrowind is better then halo, there i said it.

the point i was trying to make is that the larger and more advanced the game is, the less time can be/is spent on graphics.

sorry, but this is just not true.

why not? the devs themselves have said that they are on a deadline and the reason that some things were not added into the game were not added in because of a lack of time to implement them. i wouldnt doubt that graphics are one of those things. i am not saying the graphics in OB are bad, just that the devs have so much more to worry about that I dont think graphics is their highest priority. therefore the graphical quality is cut in order make time for other more important things.

Hmm... Well, the Oblivion Graphic aint bad - I think its good enough when I consider the gameplay too. And of course if they dont have such a deadline as they have I'm pretty sure they would for example try to find a way to get a balanced Mounted Combat System into the game...

But they have focused pretty much on the graphic's as I see it. I still get amazed seeing some of the screenshots and taking a close look on them. But your right Shogun, that when they have a deadline as they have the dev's mostly thinks about the game-play and not to furthur advance the graphics. I guess they focus on the game itself the quests etc. because graphic doesn't matter that much for hardcore TES Gamers for example that still play Redguard or something

see, the first thing that was probably finished was the core graphics engine. you know, making the quests first, and then build the graphics engine around it, just wouldnt have worked.

therefore saying that in order to complete more ingame stuff they have cut down the works for the graphics is not true. i even doubt that the same people who are working on the graphics engine are also working on quests or ingame mechanics.

get my point: those are like 2 completely different things.

stuff like building maps, or tweaking stuff comes as last.

for the graphics itself: bethesda has always made games with top notch graphics. it happened with morrowind, and it will happen again with oblivion. im not too sure about the optimization of the code itself, but the graphics so far look really really good, definatly en par with what HL2 can do.

when there is stuff missing in the graphics engine, like normal maps or alike, it was probably never planned to be implemented, since thats no decision you make in the last 2 months of a project.

of course you cant compare the graphics engine of oblivion with some game which starts to release screenshots right now. but remember, those games are still in work and will be released end of next year (think of UT2007, which has been mentioned), while youll get OB end of this year.

damn i sound like an OB fanboy, but im actually not.

I don't mind Obbie having "worse" graphics than most games that just came out. Besides, it'll have a darned good FPS, I hope, and well.. When it comes to Oblivion, graphics isn't everything. But as long as it's better than Morrowind, I have no complains.

*Looks at the post above*

What he said.

The difference is that the "devs" and the graphic artists/modellers/etc are not the same people. The programmers that work on the core code do their thing at the same time the graphic artists do their thing. So it isn't a matter of time on graphics vs. time on core game features. However, it can be a matter of time regarding graphics for the overall development time of the game. The artists can only do what they can during the development life cycle of Oblivion.

I COMPLETELY AGREE.

The most limiting factor here is not what the devs want in the game graphically, but what hardware limitations they have to work in. My guess is that unless you are sporting the absolute latest video cards (ex: 7800 gtx) you won't be running all the graphics that are in the game as it is and still maintain great frame rates. Games are limited by hardware that is out there and remember they can't make a game that only runs on the latest video card or they wont have enough sales to make the game worth it. Rendering a single frame takes time...Games could easily have the graphical quality of movies like shrek if the hardware out there could render that quality of a frame 30-50 times per second... but they can't yet. Each frame of Shrek took hours to render each and with much more powerful computers than we have sitting on our desks.

Well said neela.

this is from the forum rules, and you have it violated 2 times, only in this thread, raistlin.

however, back on topic: i think bethesda is aiming for the highest available hardware. they have also done that for morrowind. plus they have repeatadly called an "x800 xt" a middleclass graphicscard, which is, by all means, not true

they will also aim for hardware thats in the xbox360, and what ive heard, that stuff is pretty highend.

we can expect high hardware requirements...

A lot of RPG fans don't think graphics mean much at all. I find that graphics are a big deal, and the amount of time Bethsoft spent perfecting their graphics engine in conruence with all the other work they did on the game is just right in my opinion. The graphics don't look great, and many of creatures have fake looking meshes (the troll, the minotaur, the argonian) and many of the streets and wall textures look flatter than they did originally.

I compare graphics and game-play to about the same level of balance in oblivion is what I'm trying to say. You can say I can't judge it yet because I haven't played it, but i have a pretty perceptive mind, I can tell.

im not sure what you mean by that, especially the minotaur looks very real and good. i havent seen the argonian yet, but the trolls didnt look all too good, i must agree, but thats kind of a point of view thing. compared to creatures (i.e. screens from "dark messiah of M&M") from other games, they are en par.

im a rpg fan, but im a programmer too! i always look at the technical aspects of games, and therefore, i am really looking at the graphics of a game, like implementation of shadows, physics, AI and all that stuff. therefore i want the game to look really good!

Thats true...

All developers for a game wants to make money selling this game, and of course if you give it the wickedsick graphic so you need to have the best GCard and a handfull of RAM etc. they wont sell much, because that have comed up sometimes in Oblivion General on the TES Forums...

As DoomedOne said I also most agree that I find graphics a very big deal in what I see as new games, but I wouldn't mind at all playing a couple of hours of Quake I. You can see those who play CS 1.6 or something they stick to the game even if the graphic aint that good but because the game-play is great. So of course when making a game its not always that important having great graphics when you have a history such as the TES Series that involves great games with good game-play and good graphic...


Well I've never taken a close look on the texture on the walls, but the troll's fur I've taken a look on and the argonian too... Oblivion maybe dont have the perfect fur or the realistic texturing on the walls as other games might when compare them.

I know that the devs could have made Oblivion with better graphics if they didn't want to make money Or have a deadline. Because with such a great game with such advanced AI and engine I think it would look better with that, then maybe great graphics but not the AI but the dummies from MW

I dont know much about UT2007 yet, but the screens look amazing but I doubt it have such a great game-play or AI as Oblivion have, if it would have been somekind of RPG... But I have to say that, I'm very sure I'll get addicted to Oblivion just as I got to WCIII Frozen Throne or Morrowind. And when I first have played a few hours on my new computer I'm pretty sure I'll get blowed away by the graphics and game-play

Wow, we've got some long winded posters on this thread.

graphics are not especially important to me..... i like them but it's not a big deal... i still play FFVII and i must say those graphics are quite awful (for 2005) THEY HAVE BLOCKS FOR HANDS!!!!! lol

even if the graphics in OB aren't that great i think that the AI alone would make up for it. not including things like gameplay, sound, etc.

keep in mind all that we have really seen are screenshots

I don't have much care for the graphics as long as they don't look like they don't look like they were made longer than 6 years ago. FF7 is fun and the graphics don't bother me too bad, but the characters do look hideous outside of battle.

please guys dont forget this important fact: oblivion graphics will look better than in any game you have played before!

if some of you really think that oblivion doesnt look awesome, you must have seen different screenshots or movies than me!





(ok ok, the trolls screen sucked. but thats an old one too.)

an extremely good point now that i think about it. this does look better than any game i've ever played. never thought of that.

I think the graphics in Oblivion are great, considering the amount of stuff they have to fit in! I'm sure in the actual game, the graphics will be even be more stunning, especially once we see it in motion. (Though I fear the frame-rates involved.)

Hmm... the only thing I would have complain about are the people's faces... Not really nice to look at. Though that woman in the red dress looks nice... but I hope there are more variety of faces and hair during character creation. And they won't look so... er, bland?

Besides that, I'm so excited about this game!

Ooh, I wonder how the Argonian and Khajiit's faces/expressions/scales/fur will look like, close-up!

Fur has always been a problem, now more than, lets say, 2 years ago. back then you only had to throw a nice texture on the model and everyone was fine. nowadays, with realistic hdr lighting and physics, and whatnot, people expect the fur to look realistic with every single hair being visible and moving to the wind and whatnot...

Fur as you said have always been a problem, when I first saw the screen of the Troll. Well I wasn't that much impressed by the fur, but you know when you think how much detail you need to fit into the fur with the kind of graphics, lights and texture Oblivion have its alot of extra work...

Expressions, well I most say that a long time ago on the TES Forums when someone posted a place where you could download this test version for the FaceModeller they seem to have used on Oblivion (only a better version) - the expressions on a normal humanbeeing didn't look that bad at all. But on Argonians and Khajiit's I'm really hoping expressions will look well thought it cant be easy at all. So I most say, I have my doubts the face expressions on Argonians and Khajiits will look as good as the other face expressions on Imperials etc. but in a avarage I'm pretty sure it will go over most other games. Hope that the Argonians and Khajiits (as beast-races) would also have alot of body expressions to show their aggression etc.

as far as i know theres only one game so far with acceptable and realistic moving hair, and thats not even out yet. i cant remember the name but its developed somewhere in the ucraine.

realistic hair must be the biggest problem of modern games - look at hl2 (im referring to it since its the best game engine around to date - ue3 is still to come out), they have made some fancy tricks to avoid showing to much hair. the characters are bald, have short hair or wear their hair bundled up - no long and falling hair.

It's all done with sliders, so you can make whatever face you want.

choose the eye colours(I think thats only for the humans )
choose hair lenght and style and there are some other thing I don�t remeber right now

I'm not expecting ulta-realistic fur, because that would be too hard. I just want at least a little bit of effort into the Khajiit's look, is all. In Morrowind, I thought the Khajiit were well-done, and I expect no less from Oblivion (hopefully).


Wasn't there a dev quote that mentioned that Khajiit (in Oblivion, anyway) show their expressions through body language (their ears in particular)? It was something to do with the 'persuasion game'. Not sure if that is the only way to see their expression, though.

About faces: Hopefully, we can use the sliders to make really pretty faces similar to the gorgeous Poser faces, is all I'm asking.