I agree graphics are nothing to me. My friend will go on and on about this game or that and how awesome their graphics thats when I tune him out. I miss the days when people talked about the damn game their playing instead of how it looks.

Graphics wasn't even a word when I was a kid.

The two have been inextricably intertwined since the demise of the text adventure.

Fine, you go play dungeons and dragons with text and still pics, I'm more than old enough to remember those days, now we have the tech for better, both story and tech can be real good if implimented properly, I tried playing fallout 2 a couple of weeks ago, backed out at about level 4, the graphics and turn based combat were doing my head in, this despite the fact the story as far as I got was good, just not good enough to overcome the things I mentioned.

Anyway, shouldn't it be us oldies saying "ee lad in my day we had to use pencil and paper"

uh...are you complaining just to complain? cause im kinda feelin that vibe man.

Your not making any sense dude.
You're old enough to remember the good old days where games were about gameplay and not graphics then go on a rant about how it should be better graphics?
ANYONE who grew up on the old NES, Atari, Sega Genesis days would not care period.

Not true at all.
I grew up on Atari VIC 20 and Sinclair Spectrum, then got Sega master system/NES etc., and I always liked seeing new and better graphics. I remember when I first saw basic parallax in a NES game (i.e. background scrolling slower than foreground) and thought it was awesome, or when I first saw F-zero running on SNES and was blown away.
Don't get me wrong, graphics don't make or break a game for me (I wouldn't still regularly play Homeworld or Deus Ex if they did), and eye-candy is fairly low priority on my list when it comes to choosing what games to buy, but it's definitely more enjoyable when a game has nice graphics.

I can't really comment because I played FO3 on my cruddy old struggling PC on low graphics settings, and FONV on my bright sparkly new one on ultra high graphics settings. Of course FONV looks better to me.

Apart from 2 things which I have noticed: firstly there are some very badly placed statics such as rocks in FONV where you can see underneath them or they are floating, and there are a LOT of them. Secondly the distance you can see when using a scope is far less in FONV, I played a sniper in both, and in FO3 I could shoot raiders from a distance where in FONV they don't even show up.

FONV is by far the better game though, quests and NPCs are far more important in an RPG (and FONV got that bang on the money), there are plenty of great FPS games available for those who prefer that sort of thing.

The lighting is more western and animations like walking are different but I don't see any particularly major change between the engine in FO3 and NV.

Since the original NES. How about you? And I assume you're of the opinion there's no difference in the quality of the assets/graphics created by BGS vs Obsidian? All good?

10 years ago.. No games look like FNV at all. Even Bethesda own Morrowind, one of the best around still have crappy graphics compare to today standard. I think you exaggerated too much. FNV is not the best looking game but it is not the worse either. Not every game must have top of the line next gen graphic with [censored] gameplay like crysis.

I'll admit the exaggeration. So lets amend that to >6 years ago. My point still stands that Obsidian had access to the exact same engine as BGS and did not step up to the standard of FO3. I'll grant there are aspects of the game where they obviously spent more time (voice acting, dialogue choices, gameplay tweaks) but appearantly they didn't prioritize graphics. I have a problem with that because its not that hard to prevent stretching UV map on a brick wall or modelling a decent bolt action rifle.

And again, if graphics don't matter to you then they don't matter. Case closed. Personally I don't care for running around a patchwork desert carrying a grey stick thats supposed to be a gun. Its distracting to the game.

Actually I kinda gave up on graphics when they announce NV is on Gamebryo.

When I first look at Fallout 3 I was like "you are kidding me, this is a NEW game in 2008?"
Long story short, I remained myself how both 1 and 2 was also lacking in terms of graphics, and spent countless hours in 3.

EDIT:Actually, a console friend ask me why does MY NV look so good......

I've always held that shooters could get by with a little less detail than RPGs cause the player is well occupied with trying not be shot. I mean when you play COD2 you're rarely going to concern yourself with how a wine bottle looks but on the otherhand the devs on that game recognized that details mattered.FO3 and FONV are 'RPS's and there's quite a bit of just standing around looking at things. So I have higher expections for how stuff looks.

Actually when the 1st screenshots on NV were posted on the BethBlog I commented that perhaps they should choose something else as the pics posted weren't very flattering. I honestly didn't think the game would be released looking like that.

:facepalm:

Also, people ITT are counting polygons for Christ's sake. Go play this: http://thebuzzmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/crysis-warhead-screenshot-3.jpg