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[partyars]

Skyrim has a very outdated engine with a few new tricks to make it seem like it has high texture graphics. Which it really doesn't.
If you walk up to cliffs and such you'll notice a lack of sufficient pixels, making it look rather bland.
Instead they've added a lot of gradients and colours in such a way to still make it seem like it is awesome unless you take a very good look at it. Or just add things in the background that catches your attention, like they've done quite a few times.

Also, this is not on account of Bethesda's laziness. But rather that of the consoles outdatedness. Companies fit their games after consoles nowadays, not after PC's. And therefore there have to be mods that improves it to the point it should be for us PC gamers.

Now, having said that. Back on topic!

Sorry for this last off topic post, but you're wrong, Bethesta created a brand new engine to use in skyrim, namely the Creation engine. If you play it on a pc, and up your settings you might see the difference.