Where are high res PC textures bethesda promised to release?

[volnaiskra]

the game is very inconsistent with graphics. Some, like dragons, are jaw dropping - others like walls - which are everywhere, are awful. I mean really, why? to get it to fit on one DVD? Booooooooooooooooo. Don't get me wrong, I love the game and will put 300 hours into it, but why go half-effort?

 

Because it's Bethesda, and that's what they always do. Although it's a very special sort of "half-effort": On the one hand, they reach higher than anyone and make the most vast gameworlds ever.....and on the other hand, they screw up a lot of the bread and butter stuff, and do a worse job of those things than a small indie company would have done. My guess is that they spread themselves their resources too thin: like how they had way too few people working on dungeons for Oblivion (wonderful improvement this time around - the 3-4 dungeons I've seen so far are more varied and beautiful than the 50 I saw in Oblivion!). Or how they seemingly leave the interface design to the work experience kid.

 

The people who are saying that the textures are good are simply not looking properly. Which is exactly the best way to play the game: focus on the positives, don't look at anything too closely, and try to ignore that everything is coated in a slimy, blocky smudginess straight out of 2003.

 

Don't get me wrong: the game looks good overall. The vistas are beautiful, the water is nice, the animations aren't too bad, the art design is solid, and the visual atmosphere is strong. But the textures on many things (snow, rocks, walls, clutter items, etc.) are hideous things. This is the first time I've played a game where I have to keep telling myself "don't look at anything close up, don't look at anything close up, just keep looking into the distance, you don't want to ruin the immersion!"

 

Though the poor shadows are harder to not notice: one one hand, animals run around without casting any shadow whatsoever, which looks very unnatural. But often things get even worse when there ARE shadows, since they're often flickering, blotchy messes which distract your eye like a malfunctioning flourescent lamp.

[volnaiskra]

Also I rather like the combat of TES. The Witcher 2's combat I did not like, besides the fact it would just break for no reason. This style of combat is how TES has always been, you either like it or you don't.

I don't think s/he's got a problem with the style, but rather with the implementation. When your sword doesn't appear to make any real contact with an enemy when you hit him, that's not a stylistic choice, but a technical flaw.

 

The combat is definitely better this time around, but they still haven't nailed it. And they certainly could learn from how other games/engines tackle it. For example, I've read that Dead Island does 1st-person melee combat much more convincingly (though haven't played that myself)

 

Come to think of it, there's a LOT that Bethesda could learn from other games, not to mention from their own modding community. Yet they seem to repeat so many of the same mistakes with each game. They're like the lazy genius kid at school who you want to throttle for being so slack but you can't because even when he's barely trying he still produces one of the best essays in the class.