Oblivion's shadows have been castrated...

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eh this bait and switch theory some of u mention i dont get.. how could this company bait with nice graphics if the reason why theyre toning down the graphics are for the mainstream gamers?? :confused: if i knew my system couldnt handle a game wouldnt that draw me away?

and i dono bout u but isnt it more work making something and then tearing it down "lazy"? :confused:

but then again maybe ppl are just mad at this company lol

ignore me, im just thinking out loud :p
 
Could be bait and switch but from a companies perspective, it's only realistic they go for the mass market...it would be completely impossible to develop games made for less than .1 percent of us (I'm not included in this) who have the newest hardware overclock SLI liquidnitrogen cooled setup...

On the brightside, Elderscrolls has a good following and it won't be long before someone makes a hi-res or shadow add on pack....just like a Valve fan did for HL2 we saw in another thread...
 
Don't have a link to the vid, but have a post from one of the beth people from their forums regarding that video.

http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=224781&hl=

Pete:

"That build was not a very good build for a variety of reasons, but it's what we had to go with. The press were told that before they played the game. If they chose to ignore or not believe the warning, that's their call. But we (meaning I) was very upfront about it."
 
xenogears said:
Don't have a link to the vid, but have a post from one of the beth people from their forums regarding that video.

http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=224781&hl=

Pete:

"That build was not a very good build for a variety of reasons, but it's what we had to go with. The press were told that before they played the game. If they chose to ignore or not believe the warning, that's their call. But we (meaning I) was very upfront about it."
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Is he talking about the December build, or the E3 one?
 
randy5554 said:
Is he talking about the December build, or the E3 one?
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I assume it's the german build everyone is talking about, since i found that link in a thread talking about the german pc build. Honestly, I don't know though cause I don't really keep up on that game's progress.
 
randy5554 said:
Is he talking about the December build, or the E3 one?
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The December build. Hopefully they're not lying again.
And for whatever reason they say those graphics are not representative of the final game.
Seems odd when gameplay footage from 8 months prior, looks so much better.
I mean aren't they optimizing it ? How could it look so much crappier just a few months
before it ships ? They are repeating their mantra on the official boards.
The performance hit was too great. Stay on message.

I'm not a programmer, but don't they do feasibility studies before
designing stuff like this ? They spent years in development and then 3-4 months
before it's coming out decide today's hardware just can' t handle it yet ?

Bait & Switch.
This game better get amazing reviews. I'm not buying it sight unseen on release day anymore.
 
bethsadas optimizing is cutting down graphics, it has and always will be im sorry but i didnt want to belive the dev who told me so months ago from activision thats what they would do....but hes right once again
 
One thing that draws me into a game is graphics.....and the shots look like crap now. I will still probably get the game...but I AM going to wait for reviews. It better get good ones in that case.
 
A summary of good stuff about Oblivion and shadows is here: http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=226430

Important points: The German video was on medium settings with eye candy turned off - which largely explains why it looks worse than some other footage. Characters, buildings, trees, and fixed objects have shadows.

Finally, I''ve been anticipating Oblivion as much as anyone - but it's just a game. It's hundreds of hours of fun for the price of a dinner out. What a deal. Will it be less immersive for me that every single apple doesn't have it's own shadow? Probably not. I found Ultima IV to be tremendously immersive - personally, I am STUNNED by the unreal advance we have enjoyed in graphics.

Did I mention that Oblivion is a game - you know, like checkers, but more complex? Again, I preordered a CE and am a big fan of the series from Arena onwards. Anyway, let's try to keep things in perspective here.
 
Sifu said:
A summary of good stuff about Oblivion and shadows is here: http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=226430

Important points: The German video was on medium settings with eye candy turned off - which largely explains why it looks worse than some other footage. Characters, buildings, trees, and fixed objects have shadows.
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It's good to see that we finally have an answer as to why the drastic change. I was pondering that perhaps in the process of ripping out the other engine and recoding it, the build they submitted was broken in regards to how it was rendering the images we were being shown.

Looking at those screen shots side by side, everything looks off. Geometry detail, bump mapping, character detail, and (of course) shadows were virtually non-existent.

Hopefully we get some shots of the next to final build with better graphical options enabled so that we can all stop drinking hater-aid ;)
 
1) I said "looks like," not, "it is a matter of fact that the difference is HDR, not soft shadows."
2) "Medium quality with eye candy turned off." Is there anything about this phrase that I need to be smug about? I feel like it pretty much takes care of that for me, though.
3) If I troll in a thread which is essentially trolling in the first place, doesn't that negate the effect of the original troll and end up being a good thing?

In all seriousness though, when you know what the final game will look like on the highest settings, and you feel it still isn't quite up to snuff, then I won't grudge you your right as a consumer to complain about how the developers misled you and let you down. Complaining about a video without any knowledge whatsoever of what settings they were using when they made it is downright ridiculous.
 
I'd be happy if the graphics were just like Morrowind's, only the game would have better quests than "Go get this book of death from the cave of Aaaagerouthofetus."
 
finalgt said:
1) I said "looks like," not, "it is a matter of fact that the difference is HDR, not soft shadows."
2) "Medium quality with eye candy turned off." Is there anything about this phrase that I need to be smug about? I feel like it pretty much takes care of that for me, though.
3) If I troll in a thread which is essentially trolling in the first place, doesn't that negate the effect of the original troll and end up being a good thing?
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1. It doesn't even look like HDR. HDR has nothing to do with the lack of cube mapped shadows. How anyone can look at the before and after shots and even suggest "it looks like" an HDR lighting effect was absent is retarded. Do those shots have anywhere close to a large dynamic range in the lighting ? NO. The whole scene is dim. It's a 10 foot by 10 foot room with a torch on the wall. The chains on the wall are not casting shadows. Along with the forests, that's what everyone was talking about at E3. That's what we're pissed about.

2. People spotted the lack of all the dynamic shadows in various footage and screenshots months ago. Some lucky ones that attended X360 events mentioned it looked nothing like the E3 movie. When called on it, Bethesda said oh it's just this build, we disabled some shadows but they'll be in the game. Their word means shit to me. I don't doubt the final game will look better than the horrible pcgames.de video but that isn't the point.

3. The point of the whole thread, which you dismissed out of hand without realizing what it was about, is the shadow and lighting system they advertised at E3 has been unexpectedly and abruptly cut out from the game with a very weak excuse.
The thread was to draw attention to the disturbing trend of developers saying whatever the hell they want to promote a game and then failing to deliver on their word. These claims weren't made by some overzealous game magazine. The executive producer himself bragged to everyone at E3 and in the early press interviews about how the chains and skeletons will cast their own shadows and how amazing and next gen it will be.

What they're doing is wrong and "performance reasons" is a BS excuse. You started off by defending their actions claiming they have the right to make the game how they want if it will allow the lowest common denominator of hardware to play. :rolleyes:
Either they mocked it up for E3, knowing the actual game wouldn't look like that, they ran out of time due to an artificial deadline, or they just got plain lazy and thought well this is going to take more work than we thought. We've already delayed the game once - Let's just slap together a simplified version and it will ship on time. Any one of which is a sorry excuse. :(
 
Stereo

your concerns are valid, but no one knows the future.. we will just have to wait and see what happens when it is released... maybe... just maybe they are fuckin wit us bro!
 
Maby if where lucky they will enable some effects like wall reflections, but dynamic shadows on objects are definitly out, simply for the fact that all objects are moveable and it could create very bad problems, to be fair HL2 didn't have shadows on objects eather.

Otherwise I'll probably still buy the game, but I might not upgrade if it dosn't offer much of a reason to.
 
stereo did you even read the developers explanation in the interview? it wasn't 'tacked on', it was an alternative to a system that was too slow.
 
Am I the only person on here who doesn't give a rats ass? I STILL can't wait for this game. Sure, I admit it doesn't look as good as it was supposed to be, but the game will still be kick ass.
 
Json23 said:
Am I the only person on here who doesn't give a rats ass? I STILL can't wait for this game. Sure, I admit it doesn't look as good as it was supposed to be, but the game will still be kick ass.
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QFT, im with you on this one,

BTW does anyone know what the deffinition of Bait and Switch is? Just for the record its NOT telling you there will be a change months in advance of launch. Bait and Switch would be buying the game then finding out once you loaded it.
 
Zoramac said:
QFT, im with you on this one,

BTW does anyone know what the deffinition of Bait and Switch is? Just for the record its NOT telling you there will be a change months in advance of launch. Bait and Switch would be buying the game then finding out once you loaded it.
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See Star Wars Galaxies :p
 
Netrat33 said:
uh..actually that still looks pretty good.
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05 is being refered to as the xbox1 port because his neck is unproperly meshing into his armor, the textures behind him look like they are from morrowind style instead of being normal mapped, and his face is being illuminated from a misterious glowing light

and the 06 has ugly water that almost looks like a low resolution texture with plants just sorta dropped in there, ground textures also look bad
 
I thought those new pics looked pretty good. We'll see what happens when people throw it on their boxes with fx-60's and sli 7800GTX's. If it still looks like that, then we can say that oblivion got nerfed since E3, but i have a feeling that it's going to be amazing.
 
paranoia4422 said:
05 is being refered to as the xbox1 port because his neck is unproperly meshing into his armor, the textures behind him look like they are from morrowind style instead of being normal mapped, and his face is being illuminated from a misterious glowing light

and the 06 has ugly water that almost looks like a low resolution texture with plants just sorta dropped in there, ground textures also look bad
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Sorry I didn't look at it with a magnify glass :rolleyes:

I'm sure I'm going to be thinking that when playing the game
 
Netrat33 said:
Sorry I didn't look at it with a magnify glass :rolleyes:

I'm sure I'm going to be thinking that when playing the game
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i noticed all that immediatly.........they look no where near as good as the older pc shots(even the relatively newer ones)

and if it comes out looking like the fighters guild pick sorry ill %100 pass on this kthxfucktheelderscrolls
 
paranoia4422 said:
i noticed all that immediatly.........they look no where near as good as the older pc shots(even the relatively newer ones)

and if it comes out looking like the fighters guild pick sorry ill %100 pass on this kthxfucktheelderscrolls
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You must have hated playing games growing up. Bad graphics and all.

Oh well, everyone else will be playing a fun game I guess while you have a protest of graphics
 
Netrat33 said:
You must have hated playing games growing up. Bad graphics and all.

Oh well, everyone else will be playing a fun game I guess while you have a protest of graphics
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guess so.....they show us a game 3generations ahead of its time 2 years ago and now its 1generation behind and its not even out....and not only is the game itself looking worse but other games keep looking better and better over time
 
for the comparison shots earlier in the thread, it really looks like the texture detail was turned down as well, look at the rocks in the wall behind the old guy. Someone mentioned it was on "medium" and I think it shows.
 
black_b[ ]x said:
for the comparison shots earlier in the thread, it really looks like the texture detail was turned down as well, look at the rocks in the wall behind the old guy. Someone mentioned it was on "medium" and I think it shows.
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um dude....why would a developer release shots on medium?no whoever said its medium is talking out his ass using one of the many excuses for bad graphics, made popular by the german video which is on medium(supposedly)even if it is on medium whoever told you made it up anyway
 
paranoia4422 said:
um dude....why would a developer release shots on medium?no whoever said its medium is talking out his ass using one of the many excuses for bad graphics, made popular by the german video which is on medium(supposedly)even if it is on medium whoever told you made it up anyway
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I'm pretty sure it was posted in the official forum by one of the developers.
 
Microsoft must be paying these guys a lot of money :p
I just got new PC hardware, so I'm really hoping they put some of those shadows and detail back. Just tone it down for the Xbox if you need to as it appears, and let people with higher end PCs turn up the flair themselves. Make it scalable, know what I mean?
 
randy5554 said:
I'm pretty sure it was posted in the official forum by one of the developers.
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Those 3 screenies were sent out in the official newsletter. Alot have speculated they are 360 screens from the aspect ratio. I can't say, tho, just what I hear.

regardless, I'm playing. Even if the graphics aren't cutting edge, I don't care. I like my eye candy, but a good game will deliver a good experience. Besides, it's impossible to tell anything about actual gameplay graphics from screenies, period.
 
Agreed with you there. I already have this game on pre-order, so whether they put back their "cutting edge visuals" that sold all the graphics whores, or not, I will still be enjoying it. They shouldn't have gotten everyone's hopes up though, if they were going to end up nixing features for their multiplatform launch to be even visually, and at the same time.
 
Grimdj said:
regardless, I'm playing. Even if the graphics aren't cutting edge, I don't care. I like my eye candy, but a good game will deliver a good experience. Besides, it's impossible to tell anything about actual gameplay graphics from screenies, period.
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YAAAY!!!! Good to see some "gaming" sense in this thread. This game is top on my must-have list, and will rock, pretty much no doubt about it.

As for the graphics, I think it is safe to say they will be good. Some posters in this thread somehow think modifying the shadows also reduces texture resolution, effects parallax mapping, drops water quality, reduces character model quality, forms single-point light sources etc..........

As has already been stated here, shadows have been dropped primarily from moveable objects. The chaptered E3 video lacks most if not all outdoor dynamic shadows, and IMO still looks amazing, especially the forest sections. I cannot wait for this game!
 
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