Skyrim's Staggering Beauty

[labrat]

No, not a new adult mod. (yet). Been playing for a week now. Has anybody else had the same impression? I liked a lot of the scenery of Oblivion, and kept screenshots if I found a particularily good view, but Skyrim is a bit of a knockout. It's like being able to walk through an Alan Lee painting. E.g.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And did anybody else find themselves thinking of Edoras when they saw one town for the first time?

 

Once the game's been out for a while and there's no danger of spoilers I'd like to see a thread of interesting scenes. 'Though as this is LoversLab, they should of course have an appropriate adornment or two.

 

And Mountains are fun again. All the old "Top of the world, Ma" Morrowind skills are coming back. Oblivion's slopes were a bit tedious and mostly nonsensical, but in Skyrim ingenuity and athletics seem to work. We need an equivalent of Munroe bagging'. I'd be quite suprised if the designers hadn't built in a route for every major peak. Descent may seem a bit too easy but I don't find it immersion breaking and I've managed to kill myself twice by being overconfident. Three times if you count the deliberate dive into deep water that wasn't. (It had worked somewhere else).

 

With the improved distance focus you can get some spectacular views. I'm running in low res, after Steam checked my machine and sneered a bit, and I am still overwhelmed by the almost unmarred beauty of it. (N.B. I don't run in Steam both on principle and because when I switched to starting from the TESV.exe performance shot up dramatically).

 

The only jarring notes occur when, as very rarely happens, you come across a floating rock/bush/goat, and rivers can become angular. I expect the collector's will harvest those glitches for patches.

 

I'd like to go into a thread on the vastly improved dialogue and questing etc. as well, but I don't like spoilers.

 

With the new (and old) music as well, one word sums up for me the vast improvement over Oblivion. Atmosphere. Skyrim has got it.

 

 

[chukkake]

Aye. Found an album earlier full of Skyrim's landscapes.

 

http://imgur.com/a/y4bHJ

[labrat]

These are stunning, and the whole place is like this! Also, despite being "smaller" geographically than Vvardenfell or Cyrodiil does anyone else think that Skyrim feels much bigger than it is?

[wunderbar]

I think one of the most beautiful scenes for me was when I was way up North, looking for Ysgramor's tomb. I was being chased by a bear, and me and my horse jumped into the frigid water. So I'm swimming to a nearby glacier, and I look down through the chunks of ice and crystal clear water, and I could see all these huge, sunken ships down below. I was like, "damn."

 

The setting is not only pretty, but part of that beauty is really from how it immerses you into the world and gameplay. I love it.

[Mud]

I was really liking the view for a while, but I'm starting to get tired of the dull and gray parts of the world.

 

Then I found FXAA Post Process Injector. Haven't decided which setting I want to use though, some of the shots are a bit too vibrant.

[Kain82]

These are stunning' date=' and the whole place is like this! Also, despite being "smaller" geographically than Vvardenfell or Cyrodiil does anyone else think that Skyrim feels much bigger than it is?

[/quote']

 

I agree 100% Skyrim is an awesome game and it does feel much bigger than Oblivion. Maybe it's because I don't fast travel much. I prefer to walk and soak in the beautiful scenery.

 

Oblivion was such a dull game I just fast traveled all over the map. If I couldn't fast travel, I'd just run to where I had to go.

 

And yes, when I first saw Whiterun I immediately thought of Edoras.