Skyrim Races Have Come a Long Way Since Oblivion: A Visual Comparison

Orcs in Oblivion were so ugly that they could have played stand-ins for Shrek. Instead of being savage brutes, the greenskins looked comical—and not in the charmingly horrifying way of Warhammer’s Orks.

That has since changed with Skyrim, with one of the biggest improvements (aside from the gameplay, graphics, and just about everything else) being the Orcs, who have come to resemble the fearsome race they’re described as within the Elder Scrolls lore. No longer are they cartoonish, nor would they elicit laughter. Presumably, if you laughed at their looks, you would soon find your head on the wrong end of a pike.

Far from looking like sentient lizards, the Argonians of Oblivion more closely resembled what I like to call “People Lizards” (as opposed to Lizard People), like the kind of nonsense David Icke talks about.

Given some extensive amount of badly done makeup, anyone could very easily pass off as an Argonian. It’s hardly what you’d expect from a fantasy race that should, in my mind, resemble human-sized sentient velociraptors—Philosoraptors, if you will. It’s what Argonians are, and that’s what they’ll look like in Skyrim, unlike their Oblivion counterparts.

The catlike race of Khajiit in Skyrim look appropriately feline—ferocious, and with a penchant to pounce on shiny objects. Their innate nature and catlike agility is what makes them good thieves, after all. Gone are the Khajiit of Oblivion, who looked more like people in cat costumes than anything else.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is set for release on the PC, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 on 11 November. That’s next week!