The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim "mostly a DirectX 9 game." DirectX 11 support a possibility

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The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim - Aint afraid of no ghost

Game director Todd Howard has been talking about the PC version of the game will compete with its console competitors. Aside from better quality textures and higher resolutions, he says Skyrim will "looks the same" on PC as it does on consoles. However, possible DirectX 11 support further down the line could give the PC version a significant graphical advantage.

Howard was spoke to Eurogamer about the PC version of Skyrim. "It scales up in all the ways you would expect. 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."

When it comes to comparisons with the console versions, Howard says "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." He adds that Skyrim is "mostly a DirectX 9 game in terms of how the shaders work."

Howard does say that there's chance that advanced DirectX 11 support further down the line. "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."

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is set for a worldwide release on November 11. It's looking pretty amazing for a DirectX 9 game. Check out the latest batch of screens to see for yourself.

Tom Senior
Tom Senior

Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.