Or play TES.

The point is not whether we like the art-style or not, the point is it is yet again another element that is not in the spirit of TES. Simple as that.

Even in Oblivion, which was pretty colorful and light, was still striving for realism. Failing perhaps, but striving nonetheless.

Some game worlds fit a more whimsical, cartoony style. The Elder Scrolls worlds does not. Form IS content.

"Sometimes I think about joining the army. I mean its basically like FPS except better graphics."

Oblivion looks slightly cartoonish now, but only in retrospect. Those who were around when this screenshot was released (http://pcmedia.ign.com/pc/image/article/568/568154/the-elder-scrolls-iv-oblivion-20041122022247733.jpg), will remember how we were all impressed by the lush forests and the normal maps, the impressive draw distance and later the dynamic shadows (which ended up being removed). The first image of Oblivion had us all drooling over how much of an improvement it was over Morrowind's blocky characters.

The notion that it looks too colorful and light hearted came later. It was very positively reviewed for its graphics, but later was somewhat discredited, mostly due to the generic medieval themes, poor animations and unfortunate facegen features. By then, we were being treated with progressively better looking games, all which made better use of Xbox's rendering capabilities. Vanilla Oblivion didn't age so well.

TES games always had a distinctive visual appeal, it wasn't only the sandbox aspect that pushed sales. Daggerfall was released in the year of Quake and Tomb Raider, so it wasn't cutting-edge. But it was still attractive next to Duke Nukem 3d and Diablo, also released in the same period (and what an year!)

They may not have been revolutionary, but they have never looked bland or dated when they were released. TESO's environents look attractive, but then again so does Lord of the Rings Online, which is over 5 years old. Age of Conan has similar looking environments, even though it's 4 years old. Both games looked fantastic when they were announced and required steep hardware to look their best. But not The Elder Scrolls Online. They're placing all their bets on accessibility, even though the Old Republic proved earlier this year that just because everyone can play, doesn't mean everyone will play.

I disagree TESO looks like Wow. But they're certainly aiming to copy Blizzard's sucess and designing a game that is neither innovative or intriguing. It's been repeated in many interviews that their objective is to create a "fun" game, and while it does sound fairly obvious that any game should be fun, it also reveals much about their design philosophy. It lacks enough visual appeal to stand out (especially if new consoles show up in 2013) and pleasing hardcoe fans is not too high on their priorities. They're going for the casual player, whose familiarity with the Elder Scrolls franchise extends as far back as last year's Skyrim and hopefully Oblivion. Except casual players have very low adherence rates and after the first few months, designers are fighting a hopeless battle against time in order to keep subscriptions from dropping.

The producers will then rush to develop endgame content and hardcoe features that were left out from the casual friendly release in order to try and establish a hardcoe base. But then it will be too late. Server merges and an year later, the game settles down as a moderate sucess, just enough to keep the project funded. An year later, it's shut down to open room for new projects, it's switched to free-to-play or the servers are merged for a "healthy" population and a passable profit margin. But all of those outcomes are far from the original high goals of being the next big hit.

We've all seen this countless times before and I guess it proves that only a handful designers will have the balls to push forward the genre, and from those, even fewer will have enough influence to persuade the industry to support unproven formulas.

That is a much better screen shot, and without seeing the models in action it is hard to know what they will actually look like.

That Orc does look a lot better, I must admit. Is this evidence of different body types do we think?


I have to agree with the root of your sentiment. I think perhaps the devs at ZOS kind of pushed the cartoony art-style due not only to the trends in MMORPGs but also perhaps because of the amount of assets they'd have to create, it's a lot easier to make low-poly models look good by stylizing them in this way. High-fidelity, realistic models take a LOT of resources to create and despite their huge team and long dev time, the number of assets may not have fit into a schedule very well. Some MMOs have artists making several models a day all the way from the mesh, to the normals and textures, and that is a lot of tough, strenuous work.

I get why they might have gone this route, but that doesn't mean I like it and it definitely doesn't look/feel like a TES-related game in this sense.

While LOTRO or AOC's art-styles may not hold up too well these days, they certainly do err on the side of realism. The character proportions on the LOTRO humans and elves are damn near perfect, despite their simplicity, and I do wish ESO had gone more this route. Still, there is time for them to tweak some of the designs as they move forward so hopefully they'll hear some feedback, especially regarding the disconnect between certain things art-wise.

A good example is the Sphere Centurion and the Cave Spiders. The Sphere Centurion almost looks directly ripped from Skyrim: nothing cartoony about him, just not as detailed, but the cave spiders look something closer to the spiders from WoW, all bulbous and silly looking.

As always this.

This is another one of those topics that comes up in every pre-launch MMO forum. Seems like if the graphics aren't hyper realistic HD quality then they get labeled as cartoony. Besides most of this discussion is purely personal preference based. I prefer my MMO's to run smooth and not need a super computer to play it. If I want ultra real graphics I'll go find a single player game. Also the whole armchair dev comes into play here as some people for whatever reason simply refuse to believe devs when they say whats able to be done or not. Basically though some will like it some won't, personally I like it as when I saw the fly-through game footage it looked very TESish to me. I know many others agreed as well as that was the common claim in the E3 thread where the vids and info we posted.

And if the gfx are not up to scratch or if your pc is pants use some imagination. UO did well. EQ did well. Remember PS1 games? Atari 2600?

I enjoyed all the above.

Corse the gfx will be fantastic (on my PC) but they dont have to be for the game itself to be enjoyed

Have you actually SEEN the fly-throughs? There is absolutely nothing cartooney about it... Just because this game isn't Edler Scrollsey SPRPG enough for you, and cater to your little carebear whims of being able to travel through the whole world and pick flowers with your girlfriends doesn't mean the game is cartooney. The fact that people are hating on the graphics and calling them cartooney just proves that some people are out to get this game no matter what. But the game will keep rolling on, and keep succeeding without them, so no big deal.

I don't find these early fly-throughs to be cartoony at all actually. It looks like a way nicer Oblivion and a less intensive Skyrim (which is obviously because they need to be able to support massive amounts of people on a server and in one place). For all we know, the graphics shown in these early videos are with the settings on low. Maybe there will be options to bump up the graphics for higher end PCs. I will say, however, that some of the character models I saw did look like they needed some work, but that is expected since we are a ways away yet. The character models seem to be a hit and miss. Some of them looked really good, while others looked meh.

When it comes to graphics and art style; environment looks great (for a MMO that is), but characters look meh (even for a MMO).

They should take a step towards more realistic looking graphics whenever they can.

They don't have to look realistic, but a better, more defining art style would definitely help.

What's the big deal? I never said the game would svck just that I thought the orc in paticular looked a little out of proportion.

I'm not "out to get this game" (at least not in a negative way) and I'm not sure why the majority of your posts are telling people to Please continue, my good sir. because the game will be a success.

Wasn't even talking to you.

Well granted I did see it on a massive 70-inch monitor in full glory, live backstage at the TESO booth at E3. Maybe the little videos on youtube don't show everything in full detail. Some things look a lot more cartoony than others. The environments mostly look good, then there will be this odd architectural design that doesn't fit at all. Moreso the characters are very off, in most places, and then some look very good and believable. The Sphere Centurion looks right out of Skyrim while the cave skiders look like something out of WoW. It's like there's no art director and the modellers are kinda just winging it.

I'm also gonna assume this is one of your drunk posts because you might notice that not only was I happy about the Orc design in one screenshot but that I was defending the reasoning why they have done it this way.

As someone who's done 3D in film for quite some time, I can say there's no strict difference in time creating a high poly, high texture model with 'ordinary proportions' over a low-poly, low texture, stylized model. In fact, optimizing for poly count (simplifying the geometry) is often the most painful thing to do. Also, working with texture/normal UVs requires the same amount of time and effort, regardless of how detailed the texture is - well, unless it's ridiculously low-res, and you want to be half-assed about it.

But the stylized look is less taxing on performance, and that's basically the reason it's used in MMOs. Owing to the fact that people don't like making MMOs that are graphics intensive, the design has to age well, and realism (especially if it's not that great even at launch) doesn't age very well - with some exceptions.