Everyone else is posting them, so I feel I should get a turn, too. Following is my impression of the game after 12 hours of gameplay.

I am a PC player who played the game on "Ultra" settings, and have tried combat, sneakiness, and magic.


- Graphics and Animation: Incredible, with minor issues that I would politely ask be supported

This game is beautiful. Yes, I see a bit of the shadow pixelation, but it's usually not staring me directly in the face. I am completely unconcerned with the "low res" textures that are supposedly such a problem with other gamers, because for the most part I'm not running around staring directly at the ground 2 feet in front of me, and, as I have the PC version, I am confidant that some very skilled modders will take care of the issue soon enough. The models and textures for the animals were stupendous -- the animals now look like animals. There's variation, and things don't have weird proportions. The harvestable plants blend in naturally with the environment they're set in, rather than sticking up like a beacon made of play-do as was the case in Oblivion. Besides the expected yet rare 'tearing' that I've found, the rocks and mountains look great.

I don't think the 'kill cam' feature is too big of an issue -- I did not achieve a great many of these, but I was also trying out different play styles. In fact, I think that it can actually be pretty cool.

I DO think the FOV issue that many players are complaining about is something that Bethesda should offer some support for, providing a way to fix it without having to do some complicated file/console fix and losing the achievements at the same time. It does cause motion sickness, as I can confirm, and I'm surprised that this wasn't caught in play-testing.

I haven't got to play with the horses yet, but I've seen some evidence of something I feared would make a return: horses that turn on a single z-axis. If I am correct in this, I do hope that Bethesda will provide a simple animation fix in a patch. Just throw it in there! There is nothing odder than a horse that magically spins around in place without even so much as turning its head. They otherwise are beautifully animated with great idles.



- Sound: Excellent.

I have no complaints what-so-ever here! Whoever was on the team that was involved with all of the sound in the game did an excellent job. Everything seems to be normalized, there's no migraine-inducing metal "CLANG!" when weapons hit, footfalls sound good, ambience, music, all of it.



- User Interface and the HUD: Beautiful, but in heavy need of a patch/fix

The menu system is actually very attractive, so I wanted to say that up front. My only suggestion for it, visual-wise, would be to allow me to scale it down. On my 1900x1200 resolution, its ENORMOUS.

The placement of the compass and on-screen elements for the HUD though are spot on. They don't get in my way, and I don't have to sit there wishing that someone would remake the Immersive Interface mod because I hate being forced to look at my own quest trackers. You guys did great making quest help a in-built option and having things fade off-screen when they're not important.

However, there were some useability issues that bothered me a lot:
1.) equipping right and left spells/weapons requires you to click the OPPOSITE mouse button (right hand is equipped by left button); trying to fix this by reassigning the keys leads to problems with general play if you are right-handed. In order to get around this, I just had to adopt a playstyle that isn't actually dependant on knowing what I'm holding in either hand (so not a lot of room to strategically use a healing spell and a destruction spell without more thought than necessary).
2.) switching between spells and weapon types is an extreme hassle. I have to open the menus and navigate around each time I make a change, which basically means, every single time I switch from ranged to close-range combat. For some reason, I cannot hotkey anything, and there are no instructions to be found in the game manual, the website, or Steam. The 'Favorite' system seems to be broken and I poorly understand what its for. I know it's a wee bit late now, but I kind of wish that there was a hotkey menu where I could assign more complex things, like Hotkey 1 = Lefthand Fireball & Righthand Sword, and Hotkey 2 = Lefthand Protection Spell and Righthand Restoration, bla bla bla. You get the picture.
3.) I occassionally get trapped in dialogue with NPCs. I realize this is a bug, so consider this as a report. Essentially, the 'tab' key to exit never registers.
4.) The UI -does not- update its key descriptions if you remap keys. If I set something that is default to 'E' to trigger on 'F', the menu screens will always tell me 'E'; this tells me they are either statically displayed or they are bugged. EIther way, it causes extreme confusion when I get into stuff not memorized like crafting and it's telling me to press keys that don't even function.


Story Progression: Great so far.

The characters feel real. I can tell a lot of work and time was put into all of these NPCs and making sure these stories just feel 'right'. I have no complaints what-so-ever.


Playability: Hmm.

Playability for thieves and warriors seems excellent. The battles are fun and nothing seems especially overpowered. I do kind of wish that I didn't start off the game leveling 3 or 4 times inside a single dungeon, though, because I'd level with only 2 or 3 skill gains. It felt weird and unpredictable and I had to check the forums here just to make sure it wasn't a bug.

I haven't played long enough to make a totally fair assessment; however, I do kind of want to complain about the way mages work. It appears that the vast majority of their spells require you to hold down keys in order to keep the spell in effect. That's great for things like most destruction spells where you're burning things pretty quickly and its good for balance. However, once you step outside the Destruction school.... well, how do I put this? Nothing else about being a mage is really jumping out at me as "fun." Summoning actually isn't intuitive since the only summon spell I've been able to play with flies out into the night like a purple fireball and I have yet to see my pet zombie. Things like alteration are downright useless unless you want to spend all of your time pushing down on a button. Point is, it just kind of feels like the entire mage gameplay approach centers around Destruction with some support from Restoration and the other Schools are just there for the legacy, since any 'strategic' effect that I could use magic for is actually done better through enchantment (and you don't even need to be a mage to use that this time around).

I'm all for having things 'persist' and actively burn mana if that's how the magic system is balanced - however, for the sake of strategy, and gameplay with something OTHER than the Destruction school, and the fact that this mechanic is hell on painful joints... could these spells not have been a toggle? I think it would have been cool to have things like a Protect spell similar to the Khajiit's native Nighteye power, except with a constant drain.

Think of it this way: You press the mouse button that you would be using to USE the spell/weapon. It makes total sense. Don't think of it as left hand/right hand.
It would be MUCH weirder having to press left mouse to equip a spell, and then use right mouse to actually cast the spell.


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I agree with magic spells. Alteration and conjuration are clumsy. The cast times is unneeded and makes the schools much less enjoyable. They also have very little spell effects in them that are fun to use.

The alteration tree solely improves your ability to armor yourself as a mage. The alteration school may as well be called "mage armor".
Conjuration is good, but the cast times are lame. Plus not being able to see the time left on your summons is really silly. The community is bound to mod this in (lol pun), but I'm baffled they thought that having a minimalistic timer would be intrusive. At least show a timer for when the summon is running out (last 10 seconds?)

Illusion is good but dumbed down and much too easy, with rage and calm spells working on everything at any level. It's really too powerful. It's also basically the only thing the perks focus on, which makes perking up Illusion very two dimensional (like alteration)

Eris,

re:hotkeys, once you have something favorited go into the favorites menu and hover over the favorites. press 1 through 8 while hovering and you have keybinds now


great little summary, I feel the same. I did reverse M1 and M2 and that solved a big hurdle for me. I'm left handed though so likely my brain is trained to think differently while using a right handed mouse. I love it now.

I have been playing 12 hours and only level 11-12 how are you people so high level?

I also never used a horse yet but I never looked for one.

I guess longer playing time though is a good thing .

I have noticed however you can sort of glitch-jump up almost vertical walls like in the mountains.

Lovely. Here come the packets of gingernuts/just ginger in general from the supermarket

They probably never play tested the PC version, or got an outside party to do so. That's the excuse I'm giving them.
Lol. Extremely fair assessment. Loved AC Brotherhood for this EXACT reason. They did this right.
That style of hotkeying is actually what I hoped they would do, so you could hotkey an entire load out (i.e. weapons, spells and armor) on the fly. But no. I am VERY concerned with this favorites system. It seems like Bethesda don't do enough product testing with people outside the studio before they get the journalists in. Whoever they DO get to test their product, certainly do NOT give them enough constructive criticism or have enough time to play, get over the graphics and pick up on the crucial details like this.
Lame. Sounds like Skyrim could be the first time I loved playing a mage.

Right up until the game was actually released.

What I like best about skyrim is how everything has a purpose. In every bandit hideout you look, there's some kind of profitable operation going on. There's hostages, toll bridges, mining operations, breweries, mammoth poaching you name it. It's so awesome!