Its supposed to be gritty and dulled, The country of Tamriel has been through hell and back. Major Wars and civil strife throughout the provinces for the last 2 centuries.

Nooo...i can't read that...It's like watching Matrix and asking " Why not change the Blue/Green dominant? "
Guys The province of Skyrim is sad, dangerous, colorless, cold and spooky.I can't imagening it with some great summer colors, come on...
I can actually agreed if the game Skyrim would give u access to Oblivion and Morrowind...I mean travelling south u can actually go to the Imperial city so u would see the differences between the 2 provinces.
Just remember Bruma, it is a cold and colorless city and it's the closest Nord city in Cyrodil so more u travel north more it will be colder...All that to say that i think Skyrim is just perfect, it's really what i've expected to be.
But it's impossible to make everyone happy right?

Completely agree.

If you go to the mountains. What do you expect to see?
Do you expect that all of a sudden your feet is walking on pavement, or desert sand?
This is the northern. We have mountains and a general sense of Flora.

Have you EVER been to the wild yourself?
I grew up in it.
And the flora and fauna is the same for hundred and thousands of miles in each direction.
Natural caves look the same but for the angles and directions they are leading too.

You are missing the point of the game and its athmosphere completely.
if you want to walk from the desert onto a spaceship and next minute be in the metro station: Fallout 3 is that way.....

Bethesda have done an AMAZING job in creating atmosphere with their visual effects and landscape design. And they have it spot on.
Only people with no knowledge of true nature would possible come up with such arguments.
Its sad for people that grow up in cities never to lay eyes on the nature we have, they would then understand what so many fight for.

A little too sarcastic but good point...

The rationale behind (the very fine and interesting setting)




http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-10-28-skyrim-dev-oblivions-setting-felt-a-bit-generic

this game needs more. . . .cowbell.

love the game the way it is

Lets not cry over spilt beans

I think the OP's main point was about the blatant reuse of the same elements over and over in dungeons (cookie-cutter style), not about the diversity of the landscapes. This was one of the complaints about Oblivion.

In Morrowind each dungeon was meticulously assembled from a set of small individual elements (a floor piece, a length of wall, a bunch of step blocks, and some wall mouldings), then rotate some of the pieces by a fraction of a degree to make them seem like they had shifted over the centuries, and add "clutter" to dirty it up. There was an element of "care" to the dungeons, because someone obviously took the time and effort to make sure that each one of those places had something unique about it; and generally a whole lot of "unique" in each.

In Oblivion, the dungeons were built up by plopping down x number of pre-fab hall sections, a corner section, two or three stair sections, and a few room elements to make a dungeon in a matter of minutes, then add the details, occupants, and loot. If it sometimes seemed like every third step in a staircase was tilted slightly, and every fourth floor tile had a crack in the same corner, that's because it was the same few sections used over and over and over.....it got repetitive in a hurry.

Something between the two methods, where they use pre-arranged sections, but some of the elements are able to be adjusted after the fact to "personalize" them (or individually swapped out for damaged versions), would give ALMOST the same results as in Morrowind with only slightly more work than was used for Oblivion. Customizing just a few sections, and making one or two simple tweaks on each section changed, would probably be sufficient to break up the "cookie cutter" effect.

Obviously, repetition allows for less time designing it, less data to store and load, and less chance for mistakes. The "cost" of repetitive use of functional blocks is a poorer game experience. Daggerfall's procedurally generated landscapes (several thousand square miles of "not much to see") are the opposite extreme from Morrowind's hand-placed approach, and both extremes have their drawbacks. It pains me to hear that Bethesda is leaning toward that end of the continuum again.

A hack job? Have you played other games? Like, any at all?

I'll give you a 5/10 for all the bites you got, OP.

This ^^

What the? You think Cyrodiil has more diverse enviroments than Skyrim and Morrowind? WTF..

Just... wtf..

The game is only 5gb and not 15gb because Bethesda has amazing compression software, it has no relation to the amount of content in the game.

Are the graphics different for console and PC? I think the textures are among the most beautiful and realistic I have even seen in a game. Grant you I'm only level 10. I'm on PC

Haters gonna hate

I like the world of Skyrim a lot. It definitely looks better than Oblivion's, which always struck me as kind of generic and plastic. Skyrim has a very well crafted world, with memorable locations and cool vistas.

However, so far I'm finding the color palette to be a little too dull - or rather, a little too flat. I realize that it's supposed to be that way because this world is meant to be bleak and gritty, but a gritty feeling can be achieved just as well with a more vibrant palette. It feels almost like it's trying too hard to pull off the gritty approach. This could very well change though when I discover more locations as I'm not too far in the game yet.

Maybe it's just me, maybe I'm simply more accustomed to the European RPG approach to mood and atmosphere (Gothic and Witcher series for example) - but Skyrim looks grittier than it feels, which sort of detracts from the feeling of menace and foreboding you always had in the aforementioned games.

This is just a minor peeve though and doesn't affect my enjoyment of this wonderful game

I agree with you when you say about the european style of RPG but this game is trying to have is unique style.And for me its power is to be bleak and gritty as u said.
Just a point of view...

It does have a unique style, and it succeeds - I wouldn't be posting on these boards if it didn't It all comes down to personal taste!

U're absolutly right...

Skyrim is not dull.

Skyrim is bleak, often barren, cold, and harsh.


It is full of colour that is hidden away. It is extremely varied, but it is consistent. The architecture changes, but it is not wildly different to the point of being absurd. Just look at the different styles of buildings used in different cities. All the buildings appear to fit in the region, but some cities have very unique feels to them compared to the rest.

Thanks, it's my first drawing using a wacom, however, I don't have any more, but I could easily remedy that! As to the documentary "Painting with fire" I am streaming it now as we speak, as for a video game that is done in the same vein as Frazzetta's style, the only person who could even come close to his vision would have to be Martin Scorsese!

On Topic: I'd like you to give an example of any game that doesn't re-use dungeon textures!

best game i ever played, just wish there were more armors and weapons especially uniqye weaapons like in morrowind, this is my favorite game but imo if u put morrowind with these graphics and combat style that would be quite a bit better