I want to go over the GUI here in Skyrim. I do love this game, but it seems that the GUI was a good idea badly executed.
First a bit about myself, I've been working as a graphic designer and artworker for 10 years, the last 6 of them as a freelancer for various clients, my main fields are on/off-line user features and graphical interfaces. I have a degree in Advertising and Online design from the Danish Graphic Art school. So im not talking completely out of my behind when I grumble over some of these things


Some thoughts on the existing GUI
I can understand the idea of not having to create two separate GUI's, one for consoles and one of PC. Also it feels like when the discussion was up on how to create the GUI, it was favored that this is information that would be accessed hundreds of times during a playthrough, so it shouldn't be cumbersome and easy was favored over design, unfortunately in the process quit a bit of what makes a GUI intuitive was lost.

One thing that is important when creating GUI's is that it should be intuitive to the user, it should in a short time become second nature to you use. So what is wrong with the existing GUI? It ruins the flow of the game...

First of all, you can break menus and information up in two categories. Up-time and Down-time. Up-time is what you use during live gaming and down-time is the opposite, they pause the game.

The Wheel
As per se, there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. The constellation of a wheel-like menu has been in gaming for years, and before that has been used in many programmes and interfaces where a top-like menu isn't favorable. The wheel is easy to access and quickly gives you the desired information.

Items and Magic menus
For a RPG, these menus don't offer much in immersion but they are easy to navigate. Design wise they look more like an inventory listing in a Storage management interface, but that is a choice of simplicity over actual game-design.

Active Effects
I don't like at all that this rather important piece of information is hidden away in the Magic menu. It should be easy-to-access with a press of a hotkey button and/or as a sub-section of your journal. I had played several hours before I actually saw that I had some negative effects on me.

Journal
The Journal is every adventurers Guide to the Galaxy, in ALL RPGs, it is where you gather information about you do's and donts in your little fantasy world. But in Skyrim it feels like its added almost as an afterthought. For a game this size, the information about your quests and general progression in the game is lacking at best, non-existing at worst. Each quest should have a print-out of the conversations initiated and key points about the individual quest progression, it has no bestiary, it has no overview over my Alchemy, Enchanting or Smithing recipes. It offers non of the things that is expected in a game like Skyrim. It does not feel like a journal, you could put it into a first person shooter and it wouldn't make any difference.

Map
I like the map because it gives you the impression of how big this game really is. But I think I would have preferred something more in-style with the actual game. As far as I know they haven't invented the GPS satellite in Skyrim yet.

Skills
Now all of the sudden we get immersion all over the place, with star-like constellations that greets you with perks and skills and whatnot. Understanding the skill/perk-system in a game like Skyrim is very important, because these are the tools you use to define your character. This menu is what would be considered legal down-time, because here you want to spend time dwelling on your character progression. Much like how the journal should be.
But when you look at it in detail it really is rather cumbersome to use, it offers no way of looking at a skill tree with perks in a whole, and besides the simplest of information it does not give you much in the way of planning ahead. Pretty graphics does not equal information gathering. For example, why isn't there a list of all my perks "as is" with a rundown of what I've gained with my character? Little things and details that is expected of a RPG the size of Skyrim. Much like the journal this lack of detail makes the game feel smaller than it really is.

The Favorites
I shudder to think how this feature has gone through from idea to execution to Q&A. Why aren't there sub-menus in the favorites?
It is a vital part which is missing. WEAPONS, APPAREL, MAGIC, POTIONS, SHOUTS, ALL. This would be a tiny change that would make a big impact. I've made a quick sketch on it just to illustrate what I mean (http://www.breadcrumb.dk/stuff/shouts.jpg, http://www.breadcrumb.dk/stuff/magic.jpg, http://www.breadcrumb.dk/stuff/potions.jpg)

Quick bar
The quick bar is fine, except you cant assign anything specifically for left or right hand. If I've chosen to have two daggers in slot 1, and I have torch in slot 2, if I press 2 it breaks my slot 1 and I have to go back to Favorites and select the second knife again. Im also missing an overview of what have been assigned in the quick slots, press and hold "X"-key to view quick bar or some such.
For a game that does so well in distinguishing between what you can assign to left and right hand, to me it is rather odd that the GUI does not follow up and supports the use of it.


Summary of lacking or missing features

• A menu system that supports the games overall design style
  
• A journal that has what is expected in an RPG
  - Expansive quest entries.
  - Learned spells and levels
  - Learned Alchemy/Enchanting/Smithing recipes and formulas
  - Bestiary (?). This could be expanded with progressed knowledge, like if you hit a frost spider with fire you get a journal entry that states frost spiders are vulnerable to fire.
  - Player notes, a diary type system where you can write your own notes. This could be combined with custom markers on the map.
  
• A better overview of skills and perks
  
• Differentiated Favorite menu, where you can choose what list you want to view
  
• A better quick bar feature, that supports the dual wielding features in the game
  
• A map that does not look like its an image from a GPS satellite.

Overall this game is bloody awesome, and I've already played it to my fingers bled. But the GUI feels unfinished in some way, when I saw the first E3 demo I was sure that the GUI we saw there was a beta model and the final version would have something more in style with the game.

best regards
ngen

The map fails as a map, it's only good for seeing your general location. Terrain features, roads and other things i'd like to see in a map just aren't there. The map in the wizards quarters in Dragonreach is what i want. Maybe i could add that as a "book" when the CK is released...

And i agree with the journal, it is like an objectives list in a FPS.

Seems like the honeymoon is over for me, and the flaws are becomming apparent

I'd also like to add that the inventory menu is a lot less useful than Oblivion's. There's no icons to aid in finding items in a list, no way to see basic information on an item without selecting it, and no way to organize your items by weight or value.

Yeah this was what I meant, that a map like that would give information about roads and such and help with the immersion factor. Maybe you could "upgrade" your map at vendors, starting out with the most basic of maps and end up with a fully detailed map with roads, cities and such.

In my opinion there should be a mod or a patch to choose the old style inventory.
No icons to aid in finding items in a list just because the items are already grouped.
No way to organize your items by weight or value! Unbelievable.
Can I see my stats in one shot like total damage? Age? Total armor? Fame? No, I can not.

Yes you are correct, this would ease the pain of going through all your items. In addition I wouldnt mind seeing a "clutter" menu where you could assign all the junk you need to sell, just like the Favorites are made, press X-button and the item goes into the clutter menu, when you go to a vendor you would have the option to sell all clutter.


This is what I meant about the oversimplified journal. And I agree with you that basic RPG information is missing.

They try to think outside the box but they are going to make some really weird and questionable decisions.
Ok, simplify, but not this way is way too much.

The style is more "gothic" or like it's carved in obsidian.

Not sure what's the overall problem with the "lack of immersion", making the whole thing written on paper wouldn't make it any different really...
Most of the time they use in game, visible effects, like alteration spells are vidible on your hands or character.

But yes, there are no indication for diseases or some other effects, and some icons, like in Oblivion or Morrowind might have helped...
The journal wasn't that much different in the other games of the series, or many other RPGs really, they always served just for an objective list.

Bestiaries and alchemy formulas are written in actual in game books, and you can always look up out of game sources for the same too. Also crafting recepies and alchemy ingredients are listed on the alchemy screen.

These might be expected in Mass Effect but not in a TES game.
My argument was always that the alternative would be a drawn, real-time-changing GPS map, instead of a 3D one, so it's not that different.

For showing roads and other information, it doesn't really matter that much. Most of the roads are dirt roads in Skyrim anyway and many times end in the middle of nowhere. It can be used to spot valleys and other possible passageways trough mountains though...
You can see your overall perk spendings by hovering over on skill and it shows the actual built perk tree.
Still, a zoom-out feature while browsing the skill would be nice, yes.
I think the reason we don't have this is ease of use.

If the whole list would be broken to categories it would be even longer to check your selected item.

It is annoying how you cannot assign things on your left hand alone (though I heard something about shift-clicking, couldn't try it yet myself), and it might be fixed by assigning entire combinations on the quickslots, but that might hinder it's usage...




And counting until somebody brings up the PC...

The one interface issue that's risen to the top for me is: Containers.

Taking things out of a container:
- one item... click on it, or hit "E"
- all items... hit "R"

Putting things into a container:
- one item.... hit "R"
- use/equip item.... click on it


Did no-one at Beth see that there could be problems here?

Between accidentally using potions & ingredients (since "click" is Use when in your Inventory, but Take when in the container), and accidentally grabbing everything (since "R" is Take All when in the container, but Give One when in your Inventory)..... AAAAAARRRRRGGGGGG.

(Yes, I've had to put 200+ pounds of alchemy ingredients back into my alchemy storage chest several times now. It's not getting more fun with repetition.)

Haha yeah I missed that one, but yes I've done that a few times as well.

Ya I agree the interface as a whole is completetly botched, It doesn't ruin the game for me because you actually don't spend that much time in the intereface itself, but when you have to use it... it hurts.

As the old saying goes if it ain't broke, don't fix it. The starting point for this games interface should have been all the things that did work in Oblivion.. It needed improvements, but not a re-write and its unfortunate that such a great game got such a poor intereface.

Just wanted to add that this interface because of the way its designed, distances me from my character and his belogings, skills etc... I played for 10 levels before I realized I had a disease that reduced my attacks by 25%. Hiding important information like that without any real notification is just completetly unacceptable. I only discovered I had a disease after several NPC's commented on how sick I looked, after about 5 minutes digging through unintuitive menu I finally found it.

Who ever made that interface was thinking console first - forgetting that in 1994 I was probably first in line to buy my PC copy on Elder Scrolls; Arena. You think they would show more respect to us old school guys that got this company started

Unfortunately, constantly showing love to the guys who made you what you are means that you never become much more than what you were. You have to bring in new people and new ideas. The old school guys, for the most part, will never appreciate the changes. Sometimes it's the right call, sometimes it's the wrong call, but it's a decision that has to be made. I remember my bitter complaints for saving crossbows and throwing stars. If I had cared about Oblivion, I'm sure I would have been right back here, complaining about everything that I perceived would be worse going from Oblivion to Skyrim.

So, never will be footprints and snow intelligent accumulation system ?
I read bethesda is working on bug fixes right now.
In my opinion there will never be features like this anymore. What's done is done.

Congrats anyway for the hype and marketing. This was one of the things I was expecting and made me try this game. (among many others of course but I have to say it)