They said Nov. 11, 2011? Correct? Maybe that's not too bad. Its roughly another year to work on it, and they have already put 2 years into it. Still - total of 3 years doesn't seem that much for a very very large SP game like the Elder Scrolls have been. I don't think we will be disappointed though?
Maybe Bethesda is using some of the terrain tech they got from ID Software when ZeniMax bought them. ID Tech 5 engine is made for big open world games like Elder Scrolls I dont know that it uses the same engine, but look at these two screenshots and tell me what you think. First is from Elder Scrolls 5, second is an older screenshot from Rage. Look mat how the lighting is done, they both have a somewhat soft look to the lights and shadows:
I can't find the article (about to leave to go to errands) but on Tom's News Feed yesterday there was an article that Elder Scrolls V was NOT using the same engine. Nevermind, I'll stop being lazy, take from this what you want: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Elder-Scrolls-RPG-PC-Gaming-Skyrim-Todd-Howard,11791.html
Although the article says that, Nick Breckon may not have meant an entirely new engine. ID Tech 5 is itself a whole new engine with no games out yet. Another way of looking at the Twitter comment could be that ES5 uses a new engine and not the old ones from ES4 (which is obvious by the official screenshot I posted earlier), but the "all-new engine" could still be Tech 5 as it will be all-new to the ES games and is a new engine from the past one. So as you said, I will take it as I will and I still think that the comment could easily mean it uses ID Tech 5. The video and screenshot released for the game clearly looks to me like an ID style gaming engine.
Isn't Skyrim a mostly snowy area? Makes me wonder how they'll vary up the areas. Also Sogetsu, Oblivion took around 4 years to finish, if that's a good reference for time. :>
I think I might buy a new desktop when this games is about to be released. I've had my desktop for I think 6 years now and up until a year ago when I got my laptop I was still playing recently released games on it. Not on max settings but who cares. Now it's just used to download stuff so I don't get anything I don't want on my laptop. I haven't actually finished Oblivion and the one problem I had with trying to start it was I got into user mods and just spent all th time downloading mods to use and then never really got into the meat of the game. I may try and play through it this coming break along with a couple other games. That picture with the mountain looks great.