Dear Bethesda, This is What is what meant to look like

[Rennn]

It's actually about 12 square miles, but yeah, still unreasonable. We can blame the consoles for the small towns.

 

Imperial City in Oblivion felt about a quarter the size of all of Skyrim, so not sure if consoles were responsible, plus the city in Crysis 2 was pretty big and the consoles handled that pretty well.

 

You must not think that literally, because the Imperial City wasn't nearly the size of the whole continent of Skyrim. Skyrim is actually only 1 square mile smaller than Oblivion if you take width multiplied by length.

 

As for the Imperial City, it helped the consoles and old PCs that it was divided into small sections (ie, Market District, Elven Gardens, etc). Plus, the poly density was lower in Oblivion, it used less advanced lighting, lacked dynamic shadows, and the high walls meant that little LOD was needed beyond the walls. Older systems and consoles can run Oblivion's towns better because they were less intricate, so the consoles were responsible. You saw Whiterun; there are huge chunks that are barren. If the consoles aren't responsible, why would the larger towns be less and less complex inversely to their size?

 

As for Crysis 2, it runs on the latest CryEngine, which is much, much better, more efficient, and easier to run than Skyrim's Creation Engine.

Edited April 30, 2012 by Rennn

[Rooker75]

PC developers get frustrated making games that need to work on consoles because the games are created on PCs which are literally 10x more powerful than the console they're designing it to run on. Consoles don't keep up. That's according to John Carmack of id Software, who is basically the Steve Jobs of the gaming industry.

 

The Xbox 360 was released in 2005. 2005. That was seven years ago. According to Microsoft, they expect it to last until 2015. Rather than spending their resources and talent making a modern game with modern technology the way they'd like to make them, game developers are forced to waste their time making sure their modern games will run on hardware older than the children they go home to play those games with.

 

And then we all go buy those games and look at the half dozen or so cartoonish characters casting striped shadows on a badly pixelated wall and try to move around and fight with a kludgy control system designed for a gamepad, not WSAD.

 

While pondering all that,

. That's Crysis, a game released five years ago. It's almost as old as the Xbox and look what it's capable of.

[shuriken88]

All I want is a good enjoyable game, it may even look graphically perfect but that's not the primary concern to me.

 

 

Thats what it boils down to at the end of the day IMO. Graphics are only ONE side of the coin.

 

@Renn

 

Cool to hear that Dark Souls is getting a PC release. I loved Demons Souls on PS3, and haven't bought the sequel yet, so I MIGHT wait for the PC version, just to see how well they ported it, how well they've taken advantage of the power of modern PC hardware (for those that can afford the premium LOL, me not included!)

 

Yea its true, well, sort of, that the PS4 (possibly named Orbis), AND the XBOX 720 (or whatever they wanna call it) are going to have NO backward compatibility, but thats only a rumour (in Sony's case), because AFAIK, there is NO official information pointing either way. There were also rumours that Sony & Microsoft were going to be implementing "Anti-Used Game" technology, to prevent people from buying 2nd hand games, and COMPLETELY destroying such a lucrative market (Obviously a VERY greedy and evil thing to do), but luckily Sony have officially confirmed this isn't true. Microsoft on the other hand. Well, I know how they've handled things in the past, so theres a fair chance they might do something like this. Lets just hope not. That doesn't change the fact though, that one by one, the greedmongering megolomaniac publishers such as EA & Ubisoft are implementing their OWN "anti-used game" code systems in their games, which is f*cking despicable IMO.

 

Anyway, thats just my 2 cents on the corrupting effects of greed and the abuse of power, by "mega companies" in the gaming industry.

Edited April 30, 2012 by shuriken88

[Karasuman]

PC developers get frustrated making games that need to work on consoles because the games are created on PCs which are literally 10x more powerful than the console they're designing it to run on. Consoles don't keep up. That's according to John Carmack of id Software, who is basically the Steve Jobs of the gaming industry.

 

The Xbox 360 was released in 2005. 2005. That was seven years ago. According to Microsoft, they expect it to last until 2015. Rather than spending their resources and talent making a modern game with modern technology the way they'd like to make them, game developers are forced to waste their time making sure their modern games will run on hardware older than the children they go home to play those games with.

 

And then we all go buy those games and look at the half dozen or so cartoonish characters casting striped shadows on a badly pixelated wall and try to move around and fight with a kludgy control system designed for a gamepad, not WSAD.

 

While pondering all that,

. That's Crysis, a game released five years ago. It's almost as old as the Xbox and look what it's capable of.

 

Good post. This is why even if someone does or does not like Skyrim, Bethesda is still smart for continuing to allow its games to be modded on the PC. Morrowind was released 10 years ago primarily as a PC game and it's *still* showing it has untapped potential. With the right mods, it looks absolutely stunning even by today's standards, but only on a PC. A console will never make it look anywhere near as good. On a console, once a game is out, that's it. You're not going to see any major improvements to the way it looks or plays. What you get is what you get, and you'll never see what that game could actually do if it was on a more sophisticated and upgradeable platform.

 

That's the main reason I like the PC for games so much, because I really enjoy watching a good game grow into something even more spectacular once modders have had some time to work with it.

[Stemin]

Yes, but then those new consoles will still be behind the PC's we'll have then.

 

 

Probably. But the gap is getting smaller and smaller. It's kinda like HD tv's. They can't really get much better (although they'll try) because the human eye can only register so much. That's why they went into 3d technology.

[fms1]

Sorry to be OT, but hopefully the new consoles will at least have a 64 bit OS, therefore game dev.s will make games with 64 bit exe.'s, and at least fix the lack of useable ram for us, among many other things.

[Stemin]

PC developers get frustrated making games that need to work on consoles because the games are created on PCs which are literally 10x more powerful than the console they're designing it to run on. Consoles don't keep up. That's according to John Carmack of id Software, who is basically the Steve Jobs of the gaming industry.

 

PC developers. Like I said. You're seeing less and less of those. And John Carmack has made his share of mistakes along the way. You're citing one developer while all the console developers are getting tired of having to deal with the myriad of hardware configurations pc's offer.

 

And then we all go buy those games and look at the half dozen or so cartoonish characters casting striped shadows on a badly pixelated wall and try to move around and fight with a kludgy control system designed for a gamepad, not WSAD.

 

WASD is one of the most overrated adoptions of our time. When you 'hardcore' guys develop a diagonal button or a configurations that doesn't leave my fingers cramped up like a chinese finger trap, get back to me.

Edited May 1, 2012 by Stemin

[Rennn]

All I want is a good enjoyable game, it may even look graphically perfect but that's not the primary concern to me.

 

Cool to hear that Dark Souls is getting a PC release. I loved Demons Souls on PS3, and haven't bought the sequel yet, so I MIGHT wait for the PC version, just to see how well they ported it, how well they've taken advantage of the power of modern PC hardware (for those that can afford the premium LOL, me not included!)

 

It's going to look basically the same as the console versions, according to FROM Software. The textures will be less compressed, and we can assume it'll support high resolutions, AA, AF, and probably SSAO for people with Nvidia cards, but it's basically the same game in terms of graphics. I don't mind myself, since Dark Souls is one of the most beautiful games on the consoles (and definitely the best looking open-world game in consoles), but I can see how people would be annoyed.

 

The thing is, FROM has always been a console dev, and the PC port almost didn't happen. It took a petition with 93k signatures to get this far. The good news is the style is as close to flawless as you can get, the atmosphere is great, and as I said, we're not getting terrible, blocky compressed textures like the 360 port. The 360 version, btw, was a port from the PS3 version which released simultaneously, and the 360 version dropped to 4 fps (no joke, literally 4) in a several areas of the game, and stuttered often. The PS3 version didn't run much better in Blight Town (heaviest part of the game), but at least it stayed in the double digits mostly. Why is this good for us? Because it means that the graphics are still pretty good, even for a PC game.

 

It'll probably be optimized for multiple cores, since the PS3 has 6 useable ones, and Dark Souls relied on that (as is evident when looking at the 360 performance). There's no visible LOD pop-in, which is important to make a game immersive. That's one reason why Blight Town is so hard for the consoles to run, I suspect. You can see for about a mile across a populated and ruinous swamp. By the way, I just remembered something else: whenever you attack a barrel or crate it breaks into a shower of loose boards, which drops the console framerate to about 3 for a moment, lol. :D I remember I never wanted to roll towards the crates and clutter for fear of stutter and lag in the PS3 version.

[Rennn]

PC developers get frustrated making games that need to work on consoles because the games are created on PCs which are literally 10x more powerful than the console they're designing it to run on. Consoles don't keep up. That's according to John Carmack of id Software, who is basically the Steve Jobs of the gaming industry.

 

PC developers. Like I said. You're seeing less and less of those. And John Carmack has made his share of mistakes along the way. You're citing one developer while all the console developers are getting tired of having to deal with the myriad of hardware configurations pc's offer.

 

You're seeing fewer companies for all gaming, PC or not: EA is eating everyone. More games are getting made than five years ago, but fewer, bigger companies are making them. Indie games are also taking off though, and the PC market has traditionally been much more stable than the console market. PC gaming isn't dead or dying, in fact, PC gamers outnmuber console gamers. Note that hardcore PC gamers are far more rare; casual gamers with laptops are a large part of it.

 

And then we all go buy those games and look at the half dozen or so cartoonish characters casting striped shadows on a badly pixelated wall and try to move around and fight with a kludgy control system designed for a gamepad, not WSAD.

 

WASD is one of the most overrated adoptions of our time. When you 'hardcore' guys develop a diagonal button or a configurations that doesn't leave my fingers cramped up like a chinese finger trap, get back to me.

 

WASD itself is meh- it's on par with using an analog to walk around. However, mice are so much better for aiming it's unreal. I first learned to game with a PS2 controller, then went to PS3, and I was very good at it. I still am. However, since going to WASD and mice last year, I have to say it's a vast improvement. Using buttons for movement isn't great in itself, as I said, it's about the same as an analog stick, but PC controls in general, with mice, hotkeys, and peripherals, are much better than a simple Dualshock 3.

Edited May 1, 2012 by Rennn

[shuriken88]

I think analogue sticks are better for movement (full speed control, and more than 8 directions), while a mouse is better for aiming (far more intricate). So really, its swings and roundabouts... Same as everything in life HAHA.

 

Maybe some crazy Japanese company needs to develop a keyboard with an analogue stick that we can use in place of WASD, so we can still use the mouse for precise, quick aiming, and get all the limitless menoueverability of analogue movement. Best of both world. Whether this would work for the human hand though, I DONT know!