Ok, gushing compliments first. I LOVE THIS GAME! They learned what they needed to learn from Oblivion and Fallout 3, and FINALLY delivered a game that functions reasonably well in third person! Ok, it's not perfect, but that'll be discussed further down. It looks GORGEOUS! Everything is so well rendered! The trees, the rocks, the grass, the animals, the people, everything! And the NPCS! Oh god the variety, the voice allocation, the dialogue, the faces and personalities! No more Oblivion bunkum where an npc could be caught conversing with himself about a nearby shop owned by himself, or a grizzled old woman alternating between haggard and posh from line to line. Everyone's got a voice, and they're all consistent, from main questgivers to petty guards! The sheer amount of work that went into this is absolutely mind boggling! Bethesda and Bioware are easily two of the GREATEST game developers in the industry, and their games are ALWAYS, CONSISTENTLY over the top awesome! Used to be that Bioware had the market cornered on story and dialogue, but Bethesda is really raising the bar with every game they make, and the free-roaming environments are just INCREDIBLE! [censored] it I LOVE to be able to just leave the main quest behind, pick a direction, and go! In fact that's what I did in this game! That was my favorite part of Fallout 3, so as soon as the main intro ended in this game, I was off up the nearest mountain! And it was good!


Ok, now that I'm done squealing like a schoolgirl who just spotted n-sync, let's get to the nitty gritty.


1) Sword and Board. Where is it? I added my sword to favorites, designated it Number 1, and thought that was it, but later, when I equipped magic in both hands, I tried to re-equip my sword, but my shield tearfully informed me that this was a journey I must take alone I had to assign my shield to Number 2! WTF? In Oblivion, you could assign TWO weapons/items to a number key, so that you could assign pairs for both hands! But in this game, only one weapon per number, apparently. Hopefully this is going to be patched soon, right?

2) This interface stinks of the Console It's Adequate for the PC, but no longer feels like it was made for this system. I am beginning to fear that maybe they were thinking XBox first, and PC second, and that is NOT a trend I want to encourage! This is a petty gripe, and I dont expect it to be fixed or even addressed, I just thought I'd mention it.

3) The quest journal is less helpful than it could be. Currently, the Miscellaneous quest section offers no help at all. It lists the very first, primary objective of a quest, but if that quest happens to have more than one step, you're SOL, because it wont tell you anything else. Maybe have a Miscellaneous section, but still give each quest its own slot so that it can show more than one step.

4) Horses control like a fat man on a unicycle! I cant count the number of times I've turned the camera a little too far to the left or right, hit W to go forward, and ended up careening off a cliff because my horse decided that W meant VEER SHARPLY TO THE LEFT! It really is like trying to drive a motorcycle through a swarm of bees. With your feet.

5) Although I LOVE this new Perks system (though when I say new, i mean new to the elder scrolls), I HATE this star constellation interface. It is SO awkward and fiddly! Half the time I try to click on an ability that's directly in front of me, only to have the damn thing veer off left or right, or pass over it to the next one, or even jump to another constellation entirely! Not to mention it starts off on Destruction by default, and you have to click and click and click and click and click and click and click and click and click and click and click and click to get it over to Block or Heavy Armor. It's just incredibly annoying, and could use some streamlining. At least let us tab through with the arrow keys! Why cant I just hit <- or -> to navigate through the menu? Hopefully this is also something that can be patched.

6) The first and most immediately aggravating issue I had with this game, IMMEDIATELY after installation, was the introduction. I can understand it being only barely interactive, sitting through twenty minutes of uninterruptible exposition and drama, but DOES IT HAVE TO BE IN FIRST PERSON?! I almost had to save and quit after fifteen minutes because I was starting to feel sick. Not all of us can play in first person! Thats why this game has a third person mode! Trundling along in a shakey, bouncy, bumpy cart, looking around at other prisoners and following the storyline rails down a hill with all that shaky-cam tomfoolery makes me nauseous! That's why I'm not playing Modern Warfare 3 right now! That's why I couldnt play Alien Versus Predator when it came out! That's why I almost couldnt play Oblivion! So forcing those of us who, like me, CANT play this game in first person, to spend twenty minutes in an uninterruptible barely-interactive story section with a shaking, bouncing camera is TORTUROUS! Please, let us at least zoom out once we've selected our race and appearance, ok?



Ok, so far, I only have six major gripes, and only four of them are really an issue. All in all, I'd say that still makes this a damn good game! In fact I'm off to play more of it right now! Level 27 and counting!

But seriously, #1 needs fixing BADLY, I need my sword-and-board or Sword-and-Sword.

' The quest journal is less helpful than it could be. Currently, the Miscellaneous quest section offers no help at all. It lists the very first, primary objective of a quest, but if that quest happens to have more than one step, you're SOL, because it wont tell you anything else. Maybe have a Miscellaneous section, but still give each quest its own slot so that it can show more than one step.'

This is an issue that really needs to be addressed. I'm sure Bethesda will see to it soon.

My shield automatically equips itself when I tap the key assigned to my sword. When I tap the 1 key, my bow is epuiped. When I tap the 1 key again, the sword and shield equip themselves.

Yes, but not if you equip magic, which automatically equips in the offhand first if you just use the number key to quick-equip from favorites.

Say, for example, you have Fireball assigned to #3. You're in combat, you have a sword and shield, you hit #3, and your shield goes away as you equip fireball in your left hand. If you want to double, equip, you hit #3 again, and now both hands have fireball.

Now you click #1 for your sword, but because you equipped magic in your offhand, it doesnt equip your shield.

Thus, you have to set your shield to #2.

I recognize Yahtzee when I read it..

Well spotted. He really is a master of the turn of phrase, isnt he?

The thing that bugs me the most is the stupid comments guards say.

Apparently everyone's cousin is off fighting dragons and nearly every guard in Skyrim is an ex-adventurer who gave it up after getting shot in the knee with an arrow. And then a large ammount of loser guards think that their the dragonborn? what the hell? It's realy dumb.

I'm really enjoying the game so far, but I just came across the first flaw to really annoy me. Essential NPCs. What in oblivion Bethesda? We asked you to address this after Oblivion. I wouldn't mind if someone could give me a reasonable explanation for why this is needed beyond "idiots will keep killing important NPCs and then complain".

minor gripe.

magicka being regained slower in combat is pretty stupid. it cripples mages who are relying soley on magic. sure, i COULD switch to a sword when my magicka runs out, but then i wouldnt be a mage, i would be a spellsword. and i dont like spellswords, they call me names

this could go one of three ways. beth could get a list of complaints from the players and fix the ones that are pretty bad and it could take a month. or they could take a couple months. or they could just not do anything at all and only fix bugs and glitches.

knowing how beth has been acting lately, i fear they would do the last option.

I wasn't going to get this game until they released the creation kit, but broke down. I'm only 1hr into it, but.

I agree about the interface. Nice looking, but uncomfortable.

#6. Holy Crap you're not kidding. That intro was horrible. The kind of thing that I've come to expect and deplore from most other games. I didn't make sidewalk pizza, but it was close.


My additional complaints:

#1. Jerky walking in first person.
- I have a low level video card and run the game on medium settings, BUT - the fighting is smooth, no lag, no pause in menus, no stutter when loading rendering distances, but the walking/running in 1st person jerks. It's almost as if the animation itself is jerky. It's like my character is running with a slight limp. I have to play in 3rd person to keep from getting sick.

#2. The "E" Key.
- I haven't checked to see if I can change this. "E" is to talk, to steel, to get up, etc. It's so much less intuitive than the old space bar usage on the keyboard. Try to talk to someone sitting at a table and you have an equal chance of accidentally stealing something from the table or sitting in the chair next to them.

#3. Mouse problems.
- For some reason, and again, maybe it's just me, but I can't get look up and down as smoothly as left and right. Wherever I set the sensitivity the left/right is much more sensitive and responsive. Not a problem on any of the other dozen games I'm running.


What I love:

#1. How the NPCs interact both with you and each other at the same time. An early scene where the husband and wife shop shopkeepers argue with each other even as they talk to you definitely won me over.

#2. The landscapes and all that stuff. Obviously.


Too early for much else.

the one and only thing that really bothers me is with the quest log. having white text get slightly whiter when you have a quest highlighted is stupid. the fact that it takes an extra second, sure sure Please continue, my good sir. i know its just a second, regardless, the fact that it takes extra effort just to be able to identify what quest is highlighted is so dumb

hell, if the text is white, make it red or blue or green or yellow or gray or orange or teal or gold or silver or maroon purple or pink or magenta or taupe.... HELL JUST NOT ANOTHER SHADE OF THE SAME COLOR!!!!!