I regularly walk my dog in the forest here at night (she is a Rottweiler and I carry an iron rod so I feel pretty safe) and I can tell you that night time is DARK. Walking around Skyrim at night feels like I am under city lights. I wish there was an adjustable night vision slider. When you are in the wilderness, you should have the option to make it more realistic. I am talking you cannot see more than a few feet away from you WITH a torch int he woods. Please Bethesda, include this option.

I agree that the night is way too bright. If you are on PC you can use a very good Realistic Lighting mod, but it looks like the author has temporarily hidden it on the Nexus. But if you are on console you are SOL

I'd rather have the game start off looking very dark with the option to make it brighter than it starting off as bright as it does and you barely being able to make it darker.

look up in the sky and understand how huge that moon is, you cannot have a white surface reflecting light from the sun to the earth at that magnitude and have it be dark...

I think it's dark enough. I guess that depends on your monitor brightness.

Except that, in the TES world, it isn't reflecting light from the sun.

The sun is just a hole in Aetherius through which Magnus fled and the moons are just parts of Lorkhan.

..light is light regardless of the source. so yes, it is reflecting light from the sun, whatever the sun is. it's still the light being reflected on the moon. /can'ttellifserious

IMO the vanilla lighting is a joke good thing there is mods that fix it.

I adjusted the slider on my disply settings, If the "moons" aren't out and full it's pretty dang dark
.http://i1254.photobucket.com/albums/hh611/Trace9569/HPIM1178.jpg That pic is larger moon only a sliver and the smaller set already. The slider on display set as bright as it would go.

Yes it's very bright if the larger moon is full.

I would like darker nights/dungeons if the NPCs reacted accordingly. If I'm in the dark and see a human NPC next to a fire,, he should not automatically see me, stealth mode or not.

No- the game would be unplayable for me like this and I just have no desire to go stumbling around in the dark. Not fun. Fine if it's a toggle, but I would hate it if it were standard.

With snow reflecting the light even further, I agree. With moons that big nights in the plains will be bright as well. But what about the woods around Falkreath and Riften? There's no snow at all and the trees hide you from all the light. Ever been to a dense forest at night? It's pitch black.

That's what torches are for.

Or you can sleep during the night time to try to avoid it.

Well you do know you have the power to do this yourself. While yes it svcks it wasn't programmed into it, just turn down the darkness of your TV/Monitor or gamma setting if there is one. That should make it darker.

This has actually be a really annoying issue with all these games, not dark enough!!!

It gets fixed after awhile due to modders though, which then becomes awesome, but if you're on a console that svcks for you :/