+1 As much as I loved Oblivion and poured 300 hours into it, Skyrim is a different beast! Pretty much everything that I didn't like in Oblivion Bethesda have improved or fixed in Skyrim, every time I play I am amazed by something else! Today it was my companion as we neared a unexplored cave, she said " Hmmm a cave I wonder whats in there?" Wasn't expecting that... then there is that spell I used for the first time, Candlelight? The one that sets a ball of mystical light above you, it looks absolutely fantastic twinkling away and lights the way on a lonley dark night ! Played all the series going back to Arena in 94 and I can say Skyrim is the best, it has me totally hooked!

To the OP I feel sorry for you, you obviously haven't played the game enough or were prejudged before you even started the game you are sadly in the minority and I pitty you for allowing some changes (good ones I feel) to ruin your whole Skyrim experience for which you can obviously not get over!

Bye bye.... right Im off to put another 5 hours into Skyrim

Something that doesn't make me yearn for Oblivion is different voices, because it seems Skyrim suffers from it too... a certain Dunmer in a sticky situation who calls for help? Try talking to him before you cut him down. Is it just me?

Nice post OP. I have mixed feelings on what I think about the leveling/class system. I enjoy the whole, "play how you want" experience, but at the same time, I can't help but feel gimped by it. Since you level across all skill use, and you pretty much have to use all skills, you are always leveling all the common skills. Sure, my mage is really good at destruction and alrteration, but I also am impacted by lockpicking and speechcraft and everything else. I worry about leveling to soon or having skills that are not really going to matter to my power level. It is just a worry though.

Overall, I am completely satisfied with Skyrim and think it is hand down superior to any other TES product I have tried out. (Oblivion/Morrowind) The writing, the stories, the acting, the environment, the graphics are amazing to me.

I can understand the angst with the UI. I frankly am puzzled by it. While the favorites system is great, I feel often I don't really know what my character is good at. I don't really see a way to determine if that bound sword spell for instance is as good as just a normal sword. I can't tell if my Destruction spell useage is effective.

I haven't run into that issue, but I expect to. I'm shocked that I haven't noticed it once in like 43 hours played. In Oblivion, it was a constant annoyance with like every other NPC.

This.

The amount of times a have accidently pressed X and picked up everything from my chest. . I can feel Lydia's contempt for me, whilst she sips her mead in my chair. I swear Lydia mubbled "Noob" under her breath the first time.

Oh boy, here I go.


Opinions are fun, aren't they? It seems like everyone has one.
I agree with you though.

You know what is funny, Oblivion seems like both a great success and a great failure. Think about it, more people are comparing this game as even with or better than MW, not Oblivion.
MW has (opinion) always been better than Oblivion, and Skyrim easily ranks right up next to it, if not beyond it for me.


Opinions! Opinions everywhere!
I think Skyrim is much better than Oblivion, and has the same feeling that Morrowind had.


Yes, torches are in the game. I have answered this question a hundred times.

Im a PC gamer going back to the 80s when I first played Mean 18 on a IBM 8088... yes kiddies go look it up, I believe my wristwatch has more power than that machine Up to a year or so ago I was upgrading every couple of years to keep up with the latest games, well I would upgrade the Video Card every 2-3 years then after 3 years the Motherboard, CPU, RAM ... I lost count the amount of money I spent doing this over 15 or so years and when my latest build which is 3 years old now blew up again that was it! Been gaming on my PS3 ever since and you know what? I am glad, no more hardware upgrades that I can't afford now I am family man anyhow (not that the wife would let me anyway) no more reinstalling windows, drivers, fixing conflicts, getting games to work... I just turn on my 52 inch Sony Bravia TV turn on the PS3 put in the disk and whalla it works every time!

I am willing to sit back on my comfy couch and forget about the money I used to waste on upgrading and the stress in getting a new build to work with all the games I own! As a result I am not just wealthier but in much better health! So calling console gamers kiddies is really really wrong and shows how far some people are away from reality, times have changed since the NES and what people want has changed! People don't want to have to do a degree to get things to work and who can blame them?

Agreed ^

As for the UI, I don't see the big deal. Then again I'm using the xbox pad for windows as I don't like sitting bolt upright at 2am 2ft from a 22" screen. Does my eyes and my back in. so I sit back in my nice big comfortable chair with a pad in my hands, the cat on my lap, and a pillow behind my head. I can imagine the UI being a bit annoying for m+kb though I guess, but it'll no doubt be modded shortly anyway.

I'm just happy the character models don't look like grotesque monsters anymore.

At least one other Dunmer in a certain city with an immigrants issue (who otherwise sounds fairly Morrowind-esque) has the same thing too. Disappointed they shafted the Dunmer voices again. That said, it's not exactly enough of a disappointment to put me off playing (as it very nearly did in Oblivion).

Best game I ever played.

Oh and, speaking of water breathing, Volsung is an excellent mask which enables you to breathe underwater.

I have read a few negative comments on the magic but I am playing as an archer type character so haven't really had much cause to use magic yet.

I am amazed that anyone can fail to be anything other than hugely impressed by this game. I have been totally immersed in it since I got it. It is a work of art.

People just love to complain. We all do. The game has its flaws sure (doesn't everything?), but on the whole it is wonderful. Personally I think it trumps Oblivion on every scale.

I agree with you Atterana, the continued 'stream-lining' (actually over-simplification) of previously complex and involved games irks me no end. Bethesda are unfortunately the worst culprits for it currently.

On the plus side, the overall Skyrim vanilla experience is a lot better than Oblvions even with the ommisions you mentioned. It'll be modded to hell and back in short order I'm sure, and we'll get some of that complexity back. In short, the potential is huge!

Anyway, just wanted to tell you that some of us think the same way, even if the majority of people will miss the point and flame you. I guess you could have put it in a less 'abrasive' way though, might mean some of the forum jockies read your post rather than post inane drivel.

they nerfed absorb life o.0 ??? I cant be a lich now ?

Good post, a pleasure to read, thank you for posting.
I find myself in similar position to you, just getting my Asus G74SX to cooperate with Vertex 3 was a pain resulting in several BSOD and reinstalls. But I haven't gotten tired of PC and PC gaming yet, perhaps when I am older and in the same shoes as you are, I will change. But as of now, I do not consider it wrong to ask for a user friendly game interface.
Especially if we consider the technical aspects of Skyrim.

Which is:
Skyrim is made for inferior hardware available on the market and I forgive Skyrim for that.
Skyrim wastes 60% of my PC potential and the 40% it manages to use, it still lags, I forgive Skyrim for that.
Skyrim does not make use of available interface controls a PC have to offer and provide me with clunky and difficult to use Graphical User Interface, that I cannot forgive.

Damn, now I sound personal and hateful, please dont take word "forgive" at face value, it has more of a "can and cannot accept/live with" meaning.

Oh my, please tell me you are joking.
Please, please be joking.

Do you know how silly statements like that makes you look? Honestly? I hate seeing statements like this from people who are completely UNINFORMED in the reality of PC gaming.

I spent $1,600 1 year and 5 months ago on building my own personal pc, and I OVERBUILT it by about $600 because I could, and I play it on my 42" LCD tv.
To be quite honest I would expect to build that very same PC for less than $1,000 today and it runs Skyrim very well, I would be willing to bet a new pc could run Skyrim for under $800.

If you can not afford that, or want to spend that there is nothing wrong with it, however saying gaming Pc's cst $3,000 is just plain pathetic really.
Its clear that I use my PC for much more than I ever used my PS3 or 360 for and it plays games as well, thost extra functions more than justify the cost, with games as a nice icing on top.
Thats what 510 days? At 30 days a month and 17 months that right at $3 a day and I plan on using this very same PC with no upgrades for the next 3-6 months. At that point the cost to investment over time and ability of the pc have far exceeded any console.


You do not need a degree to build and maintain a pc, but I am glad you enjoy the PS3. I did not.

In my opinion, Bethesda is starting to rely too much on the modders to bring choice and customization into their game.

Opinions.

I am leaving this thread before I pop my top.

The thing I miss from Oblivion is some of the grassy, flower-filled meadows. Skyrim is beautiful, but the colour palette is fairly limited in terms of the ground environment. It would be nice to see just one lovely field filled with tall green grass and flowers swaying in the breeze.

You are correct good sir. I apologize for exaggerating on purpose. My current machine is an laptop, Asus G74SX which cost me 2000$ here in Norway (mind you this country is expensive). My desktop didnt cost 3000$, but with time I have spent well over 3000$ on that beast. Running i7 950 and Radeon 5970 with lots of ram. I consider it to be a very good PC, a bit too expensive though
But I made a choice to spent all this money, because I have a pation for it.

I don't miss Oblivion at all. I disliked the general atmosphere of Oblivion, its dungeon designs, character creation system, and menu system.

Everything in Skyrim feels much more streamlined and the have cut unimportant features out of the game.

I can understand that for some long-time fans, some of these design decisions can be perceived as making the gameplay more shallow (which I thought about Mass Effect2), but in many cases I would find myself not missing these features at all.

There are hardware forums for discussing hardware stuff like the cost of your PC and whatever else. So stop derailing the thread here.

omlette to cheesy?, nerf it.

It is funny, I missed my desktop to a certain point and the fact that I could no longer browse the net and do other non-gaming PC things because it was broken, I went out recently and bought a Asus G74 SX laptop too My version came with 2 X 750GB HD's, GTX560M and a I7-2630QM.

I have a question for you, are you running Skyrim on your G74 and if so how does it run? I am curious because some time next year I will be buying Skyrim for my laptop and hooking it up via HDMI to my 52 inch Screen? Is it playable in 1920X1080 if so?

Thanks (Mine cost me $ 2000)

I've only got one thing to say. Why on earth do people think that one-handed and two-handed is streamlined/dumbed down from Oblivion? Oblivion had blade and blunt. It's the same number of skills, and it's not like the new weapon skills are generalized or anything. They just focus on something different than in Oblivion.