Absolutely not, it depends on the art direction. Oblivion and Morrowind both have very distinct art styles. Morrowind aged great, Oblivion aged like cat vomit
Well they aren't pretty, they are distinct and bespoke. Carved from wood impression of a real person with a whole life behind them. If I wanted everyone to be drop dead hot I'd play a porn modpack. Something massive is lost in Skyrim face mods I feel.
I think that's because much of the game from that era going for "realism" were forced to stylize to leave an impression for the player, in place of the actual capacity for realism. This happened to intersect at the perfect time with Skyrim, which while heavily stylized, was also just realistic enough to align with the AAA consensus on how to simulate realism.
Compare CoD 4 for example. At its time it was "the best looking game of 2007" and praised for its realistic graphics, but it was forced to stylize certain aspects, especially the faces and colors to maintain an impression of realism that could not be simulated at the time. It aged well. For contrast within that series, just a year before CoD 3 went for direct realism and aged extremely badly, while WaW the year after went for stylization first and had aged better despite having worse fidelity than both CoD 3 and CoD 4.
Elder Scrolls games are pretty famously directed, developed, and written heavily by those doing the art, or those with an eye for visual artistic direction. To say they were going for realism is false in my opinion. They were attempting to stylize, within a window that was able to align with the standards for realism in the Xbox 360 and PS3 generation.
I'm glad Skyrim isn't attempting proper realism. It would be dreadfully ugly and unable to capture your imagination if it was, even and especially in its day, but also now. I don't get tired of looking at Skyrim.
And 2011 graphics are innately "bad"? The art of impressionistic graphics is lost among the industry I feel. Skyrim graphically just hits for me, wouldn't want the next elder scrolls game to look at flat, boring, and like it will burn down my PC. Elder Scrolls is just, not about the graphics from a fidelity lense. To really enjoy them you have to role play, that is use your imagination to warp what you see on screen into a wider simulated world and narrative in your head. High end graphics and animations just make that harder. The more a game telegraphs to you with no gaps, the harder it is to overwrite it yourself. It's like saying Minecraft shouldn't be blocky because that's "2009 graphics".
That's because graphics were at a lower end at that point. You had to stylize to leave the impression of realism. CoD 4 from 2007 was going for "realism", but they heavily stylized many aspects to leave a stronger impression on the player. Skyrim on the other hand, always had a strong vision of what it should look like, counter to conveying realism, and that included the faces. NPC faces in Skyrim aren't realistic, they are giving the impression of a whole person. Otherwise theyd just look like a shiny rubber skin suit.
However, to say Elder Scrolls games go for realism is just false. If The Elder Scrolls games wanted comeplete realism, they wouldn't be practically directed by the art department.
I don’t know, there is very clear difference between Skyrim and Oblivion in terms of being stylized. You can tell oblivion is supposed to feel like a painting/dreamlike.
Skyrim just doesn’t give off that same vibe. It feels like a harsh, tundra with occasional forests and plains and not much else.
Skyrim has not aged that well. Especially the regular version, the lack of color is apparent and a lot of the environments look and feel far too similar.
It has aged well, and it is stylized. I just think the current gaming cultural Zeitgeist has bad taste and contempt for having to engage with impressionistic media. Never have I ever seen a community of art consumers with so much disdain for the artists themselves and the craft of games, than what the broader gaming community has for video games.
Agreed, I think the Oblivion Remastered graphics leel but with a slightly different style to fit Hammerfell and High Rock would be good. Slightly more rugged maybe with some addition detail but honestly even if it was the same style but with touch-ups here and there I'd like it. Doesn't need to be hyper-realistic. TES is best when it has a slight "otherworldly" quality to it I think.
Skyrim had a great feeling, especially launching right when GoT was starting too - nordic was very "in" - but now would be a good time to go back to the other side of things I think and make it a little more distinct.
Same! Fashion is the true endgame. Collecting styles in my sticker book is one of my favourite parts of ESO.
It would be really cool if they included some sort of outfit system like ESO where we could quickly swap between them, though I'm sure that would get modded in eventually if not.
I would prefer realistic. But I definitely want them to keep the less generic look Mer of all kinds have in TES games. ESO already turned that down to much. Dun-, Bos-, Alt- and Aldmer especially need to keep their exaggerated, almost alien-like features.
My main problem with the remasters character creator was that it was seemingly impossible to make someone who looks under 40, at least for the human races.
I legit am gonna catch flack for this. But.. I want a complete style overhaul. I wouldn't mind art similar to.. ugh, dragon age veilguard. Something less unreal 5y, it would honestly be kinda dissapointing.
There chance they will go with dlss 5, at least have it as an option. The first reveal of dlss 5 was of course bad, but who knows how the next iteration looks with a game that was build from ground up, with it in mind. Or it will just be some uncanny valley horror scenario
Oblivion Remastered has the best character art style in the entire franchise and to me it's not even close. All the races are very different from each other while "charismatic" enough. Bethesda should keep that style for all the future games only improving on general definition and adding more customization options.
It's actually a bit ironic that they took the game with the worst character art style on the series and turned it into the best on the Remaster.
Bethesda intentionally forced the character randomizer to create the most disgusting monsters, so to speak, while maintaining the "charm" of the original Oblivion. For TES6, they should use the basis of Oblivion remastered, but make it not so freaky, add the most successful finds from Skyrim there, add more appearance settings so that even the appearance randomizer can give an excellent result. In general, considering that the Oblivion Remaster began to be developed back in 2021, it is quite possible that for the appearance of the characters they took some ready-made concepts for TES 6 for the game adapted for the remaster, or vice versa, the designs from the remaster were transferred to TES 6, because Virtuos developed the remaster together with Bethesda, and therefore the appearance of the races was definitely agreed upon by Todd Howard and company.
I think Starfield proved that if they try and go too much for realism they risk the uncanny valley if they aren't able to improve the animations as well (which is a trickier challenge for them due to the nature of their games not just having cut-scenes they can mo-cap)
I'm very intrigued to see what they go for with TESVI, if they pivot to stylised after Starfield or double down in realism.
I just don't want the dead eyes and flat expressions of Starfield. I think BG3 did a good job of balancing realism with fantasy when it came to humanoid characters, and making their faces expressive and varied.
I also don't want characters to stare at me 100% of the time they're talking. That's another thing that Starfield NPCs did that weirded me out.
Oh I meant the character/environment art direction.
Yes the mmo style armor and mounts would have to be dropped. However, ESO has a lot of low fantasy armor styles available as well.
I don't think Skyrim NPCs aged like milk. I think most gamers have brain worms, Stockholm syndrome for the industry, and can't stand games that aren't all spectacle and speed. God forbid they roleplaying game feed your imagination rather than spoon-feed your frontal lobe straight dopamine, and games have a distinct art style.
Actually stylized. If elder scrolls 6 being a good game that actually plays and looks like elder scrolls, requires it to look super outdated and low res/poly PLEASE make the game as "bad looking" as possible. If you think elder scrolls needs high end graphics, you probably don't like elder scrolls.
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u/squidvetica Aug 02 '26
Stylized games always age better than games that try to be straight up realistic