Is it me or does Skyrim seem dark and kind of depressing to you?

[Pineapplerum]

Skyrim looks really grey to me. Like Fallout grey. There's hardly anything lush. Even the stone housed cities are grey. Not like in Oblivion..there were stone housed cities but they didn't feel so dim, dark and depressing to me.

Just because it's snowy and cold doesn't mean a place is dark and depressing. I think my city is at it's most beautiful after a snow fall. It's not grey at all. If anything, colors seem that much brighter against the white snow.

So, I'm wondering, could it be my graphics not meeting the demand? I tried the game on high settings and it's made little difference.

I hope if it is the game itself, there will be mods to make it brighter. I really don't like the greyness of the game. Not feeling it, at all.

[efikmalydoskonaly]

Your graphics are all right, it's the game. I have the same feeling, I can't stand the outdoors lightning. No warmth from the sun, everything is gray and dull. Maybe that's how it's supposed to me, all depressing and serious :rolleyes:

[ogridum]

Its not dark enough during nights. And not colorfull enough during days.

 

And the worse? You cant have both right now, unless you make 2 different profiles and change them every time the day/night cycle changes.

 

 

 

 

1 The problem with Dark.

a. Inside dungeons: dungeons have too much natural lighting and too many torches/fire by itself. Many dungeons seem to have ceiling openings that generate unreasonable light.

Even if you have a source of light, it is like everything is always iluminated.

There is NO TRUE DARKNESS.

 

b. During nights: its like the moon is always unexposed by clouds or trees or rocks or mountains and it feels like its always full moon. The moon is too close or the land is too small so that the sun actually lights up the big moon that is too close. The result? Even during nights, its not dark. Even in the shadows during night, you are still iluminated. The natural light provided by the moon is always 100% there.

 

 

2. The problem with Light: for the sun to feel like its realistically lightning the grass, trees, water sources and cast solid shadows on objects during the day, and for the fire sources to actually look like REAL FIRE (wich is not a subjective thing) you actually have to increase the saturation.

a. if you increase the saturation to make the lights look realistic, you end up causing the side effect of making everything too colorfull, not just the light sources. So things end up look like a painting, or alice's world, or some cartoon series.

 

 

The solution?

 

Individually be able to FIDDLE WITH LIGHT. So you can have true darkness during night and inside dungeons, so sneak actually becomes reasonable, like night/darkness of Thief series. At the same time, keeping the colors of the fire and the ilumination from straight sun into objects that have color accentuated, without making things too saturated or too bright, by applying a yellowish tin/lens everywhere.

 

The default game has two problems. It has a snowy/whiteness tint applied to it, as if players were watching it through a cold iluminated glass. At the same time, even when in "warm" areas with forests, grass, water, flowers, all clothes seems washed out, the yellow ends up being mustard, there is no true black because of that, trees and grass seem dead. And Im not talking about the ones in the snow areas. Im talking about the ones near the lakes/rivers in warm areas. With the default game, its unreasonable to see the butterflies on flowers that never seem to bloom.

 

 

So far, nobody fixed it. Everyone can only change gamma, brightness, the use the injector applying post processing effects. So if you want more colors, you dont get true darkness, if you want true fire, you get things too cartoony.

 

We need someone SPECIFICALLY MODIFYING LIGHT SOURCES, so we can have realistic dark areas, without making the whole game black and white with yellow whitened fire sources.

 

Like Real Light mod for Oblivion.

[ScorpionHunter]

4 words: Black and White

[Goliath978]

It is depressing. But suits Skyrim feeling.

[akin12]

Seeing the empire is on the brink of collapse, skyrim in civil war and dragons returning, i think rainbows and unicorns would be out of place. Skyrim is experiencing a grim and dark period of history.

[f3nex]

I like all the clouds and the mist. Generates an absolutely unique atmosphere. In terms of flair, Skyrim is second only to Morrowind. Oblivion was sometimes too cartooney for my taste.

[chrismgtis]

You guys are nuts. The game is beautiful.

[Deleted3158906User]

Game is fine. Further proof people will *censored* about absolutely anything.

[hymhym]

No it's not just you. Me and some of my friends feel the same way. Not that it's necessarily a bad thing, nor is it a good thing. It's just the way it is. If you like it, then good for you, and if you prefer more vibrant colors, then too bad. As for me personally, I like the ambiance the color choices give to the landscape, and have already taken several hundred screenshots. Mostly landscape.

 

However, I hope I can change it, since the mods I was planning to make with Skyrim require more vibrant and warmer color palette. As things area at the moment, I'd just rather continue modding with Oblivion.