To say that Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is head and shoulders above Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion in terms of visuals would be a massive understatement, however it is still quite easy to forget just how far things have moved on since Oblivion arrived back in 2006. We briefly touched upon this back in August, but with the Skyrim just 1 week away we thought we would look at things in more detail.
Let’s paint a picture for you, in 2006 HDTV’s were only in the homes of people with a spare couple of thousand dollars, nobody really knew too much about Blu-ray and whether it would beat HD DVD, 3D displays were a pipe dream, Apple’s iPhone didn’t exist, Gears of War (the original) probably boasted the best visuals a console game had ever offered and the Call of Duty franchise hadn’t properly taken off – what are we getting at? Well, what we are trying to say is that a lot has changed in 5 years and some screenshots which we have come across over at GameRanx.com really prove just how high today’s standards are.
The screenshots below shows the comparison between the Khaajit race in Oblivion (left) and Skyrim (right), do we really have to highlight just how much more realistic the image on the right is? There is a much wider depth to colors, textures, whiskers and much more, in fact Oblivion’s image looks like facepaint in comparison.
Next we have another race comparison for you. This time we have the Argonians, let’s play a game, you tell us which image shows an Argonian from Oblivion and which shows the Argonian from Skyrim, scroll down to the bottom of the post and leave us a comment.
Finally we have a comparison of one of Oblivion’s orcs alongside one of Skyrim’s. On the left you see limited colors and textures along with a distinct lack of shading and an unrealistic face, whilst on the right the shape of the orc’s head is just one thing which proves that Skyrim is miles ahead of Oblivion when you compare graphics side-by-side.
So there you have it folks, graphically Skyrim is in a league of its own when compared to Oblivion, let’s just hope the storyline and gameplay etc will also deliver – something tells us it will.
Had you forgotten just how poor graphics used to be?
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