@xantufrog: I didn't even manage to play through the full intro. Game just felt so horribly consolized and the combat (and controls) were atrocious, particularly when dual wielding.
Meanwhile I put 100 hours into Oblivion and didn't even touch the main story.
Don't know what changed for me between the two games.. was quite a number of years though.
@rbrettj: If the engine supports occlusion culling, yes, otherwise it will still incur a rendering cost regardless of if you can see it or not.
There might be some more rendering related details I'm missing (I've never made an engine.. or a playable game for that matter), but I'll leave any corrections to experts. :)
Engine differences. Bethesda's engine is still crap, as is their investment in graphical fidelity apparently. Gotta ship for the lowest common denominator too.
..So if I noclip into walls I'll find things that are never normally seen?
Sorry, nope, that's now how game development works; because everything incurs a rendering and/or memory cost along with the financial and time cost of developing those assets and putting them in the game world.
You just flat out don't do it, regardless of the level of attention to detail your studio has.
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