DrakeFox: As for the images above, Apart from lighting being darker on the original and having aspect ratio issues I don't see that big a difference. Then again, I don't know what to expect, games have rather faltered graphics wise for a while. Just started playing Skyrim last week. Installed the high resolution texture pack. And still wandering through a cave I found myself thinking "This looks just like doom 3, right down to the rather too shiny lighting"
StingingVelvet: Skyrim looks a hell of a lot better than Doom 3, but that aside I think Skyrim, Crysis and the lot have reached the point of diminishing returns on graphics. I don't see any reason for them to ever look better, the games are intensely immersive and beautiful as it is and cost too much to make already for most to be profitable.
They should focus on improving animation quality and AI over improving anything else IMHO.
I'd say effects wise yes Skyrim looks a lot better than Doom 3. Also models look nicer. But one of the things which really let Doom 3 down was the plasticy look of monsters and walls. It failed to look properly organic with a lot of things. And a bunch of things I've seen in Skyrim suffer from the same problem. Yes the world looks stunning at times, and it shows that art-direction can easily make low-poly and sprite based items still look good. The snow blowing off edges and such look great but if looked at slightly closer is actually rather low poly terrain and a 2dish sprite for the effect. And sadly it seems to have fallen into the same trap many other modern games do. For some reason now that 32-bit palettes have by far become the norm, they seem to limit themself to a rather limited one. I think it might actually be a post-processing effect to de-colourize the world.
Personally I don't care if a game has high poly-count and high-res graphics as long as the gameplay is solid. I just wish they'd spend a bit of time on making an art style rather than trying and failing to immitate reality all the time.
