Oblivion was a bit of a mix for me at the time. On the one hand, I was completely blown away by how nice the gameworld looked - particularly the forests; but at the same time, I hated how the characters looked. In a strange way though, I'm less put off by the character models now than I was at the time. I find them kind of quirky and charming now.

Skyrim is a step up from Oblivion in terms of graphics, but not major one. Certainly nothing to get excited about.

Well what I meant really was that Skyrims graphics look alot more serious, dark, and realistic. Where as Oblivions graphics seem alot more casual, laid back, and colorful.

It's just like how I think of the difference in graphics between mass effect and dragon age. Mass Effects graphics seem alot more detailed where as Dragon age seems alot more casual even though Mass Effect came out first.

Oblivion had some of the best graphics around, and the screenshots blew me away. Skyrim's graphics are below average by PC standards and middle of the ride compared to other console games. Nothing really wrong with that, though.

Probably the thing that excited me the most was that the characters weren't as goofy and cartoonish. Oblivion being my first ES game, I was pretty confused and amazed at the same time. Orcs were mean and aggressive looking and less like Shrek, and Bosmer didn't look like smiley little troll dolls.

I think Oblivion looks amazing, for its time. Skyrim looks amazing to me, more then any other game I have played honestly. What other game can you see such amazing looking landscapes? None that I know of

its technology. I bet when tes 6 comes out, u will wow at the graphics and complain about skyrim's graphics

I think that Skyrim's graphics will still be considered 'decent' when a sequel comes out - it is getting quite close to realistic, and I don't see any massive improvements being made. Improvement is still possible of course, but I think that will mostly be in animation, not actual graphics. It will be outdated eventually - Skyrim's art style is one that can still be improved on. Games like Mario Galaxy will probably still be discovered good-looking in 15 years, because it makes the most of it's art style and the Wii's capabilities. Skyrim is not at the highest level yet.

Oblivion was slightly disappointing at release. First the fan failed on a brand new card (brand new SLI rig actually) and I got this massive lag till I looked indide and saw the melted card. Then when I got that replaced and got into the game I found practically the first thing I had to do was download the distant LOD mods, because the standard outdoor textures were far too milky. Once I saw how it was supposed to look it was (and still is) gorgeous.

Skyrim didn't blow me away - it was just as I expected. The impressive thing was the distant LOD didn't need a boost and it looked just as good as the screenshots out of the box, on a mid-range rig.

Exactly.

Skyrim's graphics are just barely, incrementally better than Oblivion's. But the art design is a giant leap. It's as coherent and detailed as Morrowind, if not quite so inspired.

They were horrible. I could make my character look pretty good - after about an hour of fiddling with the sliders! The NPCs were hopeless though. There was a very good mod that really improved the NPCs. A guy named Veritas Secreto redid each and every NPC (except guards) with http://tes.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=39872&navtag=file/images.php?id=39872&tab=3.

Using something like that, plus Robert's body mods and Qarl's Texture Pack 3 make Oblivion look good enough for me.

Only below average due to how far PCs have come recently

This is just natural. For each new game in a series, the expectations are slightly raised. Bethesda delivers, and you get accustomed to the new, even more realistic look. You can compare anything of varying quality, size, etc and find that once you get used to the best thing available, what once worked great svcks in comparison.

This isn't what's going on here. Morrowind to Oblivion was a titanic leap in terms of graphics. Skyrim has only made a very small improvement.

I had to upgrade my graphics card for Oblivion. Luckily I don't have such a problem with Skyrim, it's running smooth as a babys butt on my 5850 in 1080p - However Skyrim doesn't 'wow' me like Oblivion did in terms of graphics, other games look far far better.

There comes a point where developers can't keep up with the advancement in hardware especially as by the time skyrim came out, there was a whole new level of graphics, they were prob using a high end graphic system when they started

http://images.wikia.com/elderscrolls/images/d/d5/Obliv01B.jpg

This is the image that remains in my head when I think of Oblivion. I was amazed by the detail. Now after having played the game and know the games faults, I see the images flaws.

Oblivion was such a huge jump from the previous generation of graphics, so it stood out more. Skyrim is still in the same generation of console hardware, so such a drastic improvement over oblivion wasn't really possible.

I probably will.

there was a time I thought http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/4407/descent3.gifwas revolutionary lifelike graphics.

Actually, it's a question of advancement in console hardware not keeping up with the developers, and the developers restraining themselves to that standard.

If Oblivion is any indication, a PC-only Skyrim would have rivaled BF3 and Crysis. With [censored] lighting, of course.

Also, funny how our screen names are pretty much the same.

When I started Daggerfall, I thought - nice!
When I walked to the lake edge at the start of Morrowind and splashed about I thought - WOW!
When I emerged from the start dungeon in Oblivion I thought - OMG it's amazing!
When I started Skyrim I thought - Oh, it's a bit ordinary (Qualifier - this is on PS3 so to be expected) If I had it on PC it would have been a WOW! I'm sure.

Point being it's all relative, at each release the graphics have been brought along enough to be looking good for the period.

In time we will come to look back at Skyrim and think it looked butt ugly.

Remembering of course that the game will always be developed "behind cutting edge" both to allow a wider user base capable of running it and because the dev cycle takes time so can't be aimed at tech thats destined for 3 years ahead.

I believe it's due to two things;

1. How much technology can evolve and improve in a very short period of time
2. How the game designers use the technology available to them

Bethesda really squeeze a lot out of the technology they have, I'm not 100% but I'm pretty sure skyrim has a completely new engine to oblivion allowing such a huge difference between how the game looks becauses of how the game uses resources, whereas some game sequels use the same engine as their prequel counterparts therefore look kind of similar because the engine limits the newer games or expansions(WoW), art style does play a big role as well. Remember oblivion at the time won best game graphics or something so they were not bad, it's just the fact they had the means to make Skyrim so much better.

echo-

i freakin loved Descent!!

played it over and over.

had about a 15 finger, customized layout on my keyboard and i kicked ass!!

lol.

Aha! I loved that game!
Descent is the reason I barely passed high school. My buddies and I would play over 33.6k modems until the sun came up, pop some No-Doz and head to school. Good times.....

Wow i went and looked at some Oblivion screens and they are really bad next to Skyrim. In my mind they were more similar

no not really IMO, the -Art Direction- Improved, the but the Graphics, no not so much in comparison to games today Skyrim isn't really all that. In terms of advancement, little to none, again Art direciton was gloriously throttled, overall Graphics not so much. Morrowind to Oblivion was a MASSIVE leap. Oblivion to Skyrim....eehhh. a little saturation, toned down brightness and alot of muddy paletes equate Skyrim Imo

I thought skyrim looked pretty good. I also thought it could have looked better. When oblivion came out, I too thought it had incredible graphics (same with morrowind).

I remember having a mod on Oblivion that got rid of all the ugly, wierd faces and replaced them with normal looking ones. Modded, Oblivion was incredible to look at but it took a pretty strong computer to run it that way. Unmodded I really didn't care too much for Oblivion. With mods it was a great game. Skyrim looks fine to me on its own and I'm even on the console this time around. I could imagine the PC version with mods will eventually look incredible. Also, none of the other games mentioned are huge open worlds like this. You just can't put in those picture perfect graphics in a game this huge with so many little intricate objects to keep track of. How many games allow you to lay something on the ground and come back 100 hours later to find it still lying there? Yea not too many. Bethesda's graphics are what they are for a reason. Nobody else offers this kind of experience in single player RPG. Nobody.