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Why you should not cream your pants yet with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim’s full trailer

By on February 24, 2011

It’s pretty annoying watching everyone raving about most triple-A’s video trailers and then bashing them for their graphics when they finally get released. Especially when those graphical problems/issues/limitations were present, even in those trailers that most of them were calling “Mind-blowing” and “the future of game’s graphics”. Bethesda has finally released the first in-game footage of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and everyone is so overly excited. And we have to wonder… how come? Video after the jump!

Skyrim’s engine pushes some nice visuals but still, it’s pretty uncertain what is going on with the LOD. Detailed characters and some nice visual effects are present, although there is no indication of any POM. You can easily spot some low-res textures if you pause the video. Guess that’s why Bethesda decided to keep changing the scenes in this trailer. For example, pause the video at 1:48 and enjoy the blurry textures. Or after some seconds when the dragon is falling, admire the low-res terrain. These issues can be addressed by the time Skyrim’s gets released so hopefully Bethesda will use some higher res textures.

Blood reminds us a lot of Dragon Age and finally, the animations are way better than those in Oblivion. Still, we’d like a gameplay footage that doesn’t change scenes every now and then. This is a trick that most developers take advantage of, in order to hide graphical anomalies, bugs or limitations. And make no mistakes. You’ll have goosebumps due to the epic music and not because graphics are mind-blowing. Don’t get us wrong, the video is great. Just nothing breathtaking or revolutionary. So hold your horses as there is no reason to cream your pants… yet.

About David Scarpitta

I am a critical guy, and love to review and give my professional opinion on just about anything. Though have a love for tech/gaming and music alongside the cinema. You can catch me consulting and developing the net any day of the week.
  • TESFAN

    To answer many questions at once: the Skyrim trailer was captured entirely on Xbox 360. Also, none of the draw-distance was faked.
    about 22 hours ago via TweetDeck

    @danhall They fly, they land, they breath fire, they crash-land. Everything you saw in the trailer.
    about 22 hours ago via TweetDeck in reply to danhall

    Glad people got to finally see some Skyrim animation in this trailer. All that dragon stuff actually happens dynamically in-game.
    about 23 hours ago via TweetDeck

    http://twitter.com/nickbreckon

    Let’s face it, the footage is captured from an xbox360. That is just impressive. So you should cream your pants…

  • john2

    Yeap, at the time of writing there wasn’t any clarification about the platform it was captured. As we said though, it is great. It just isn’t something groundbreaking. Regarding the dynamic animations, do I need to remind you of the Radiant AI of Oblivion and how much they hyped it? And it turned out to be average to say the least. I’m also sure that the finishing moves won’t be appreciated by some old-school fans of the series. There is no reason yet to get OVERLY excited (pay attention to overly)… this is Bethesda, the ones that took off dynamic shadows from Oblivion, even though they were present in an early build :P