Hlvr, good to read from you.
Welcome back!
I'd say your benchmarks are stricter than mine. Also you're in the know tech wise, which I'm not.
Stil, those maxed out PC screens look darn amazing to me!
The way i see it - judgeing from youtube vids - it goes like this:
Dark Souls: terrible, terrible art direction. Creature design is atrocious. Visually very uninspired and primitive.
Reckoning - Kingdoms of Amalur: Dreadful art direction. Creature design is plain awful. Tech wise, Skyrim looks far more advanced to my untrained eyes.
The Witcher 2. It beats SKyrim hands down tech wise. No question about it. But SKyrim has the upper hand with its unmatched art direction.
So here you go. My jaw dropped as I saw those maxed out PC screens.
You can call me pedestrian.
Again, great to see you're back!
Cheers!

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Hi!

Good to be back, even if only for a while... (will be playing Skyrim, of course!)
I agree with you completely. Skyrim may not have the best technology (for instance concerning texture depth, lighting techniques, shaders, etc), but the art itself and how the art is put into the game is superb and astonishing.
Even though, I think Skyrim's technology and pure graphical look is impressive considering the size and detail that the game has.
If you compare graphics only, Skyrim is not that impressive to the best graphical games, but it's still pretty good. If you compare everything in an overall assessment, then Skyrim's visuals are very impressive.
Personally, I think how the art is displayed in terms of color hue and color contrast is brilliant. Watching the sun set over a vast valley from a high, snowy mountain where the fog is surrounding the sky is just beautiful. This is proof that games can truly have one of the most beautiful and astonishing visuals, even though the graphics aren't the best in the gaming industry.
Cheers back.