PC Skyrim "scales up as you'd expect"
May take advantage of DX11 in the future.
All three versions of fantasy role-playing game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim look the same, creator Bethesda has insisted.
But, as game director and executive producer Todd Howard pointed out at Bethesda's showcase event last week, PC gamers will benefit from slight differences.
"It scales up in all the ways you would expect," he said. "We author our art really high res. There are little things we do with all of our games on the PC. With the PC the texture sizes are going to be as big as you want to make them, and you can pump the resolution up, obviously."
But, "The game looks the same. The benefit we get when you're playing a PC game is you're sitting this far away [moves hands in front of his face]. At home when you're on your console you're usually sitting six to eight feet away."
Howard described the gargantuan, open world RPG as "mostly a DirectX 9 game in terms of how the shaders work".
"When it comes to DirectX 11 there are things they get us for free, like performance gains. You're going to get performance gains out of it versus an older version.
"But the specifics DX11 does, like tessellation and all that kinda stuff, we aren't taking advantage of that right now. That doesn't mean we won't in the future. We aren't right now because we want to author it so it looks great."
Bethesda demoed the game live to press for the first time last week. Eurogamer's The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim preview went live yesterday.
