Okay, here's the deal. I start the game, get all the way to character creation just fine. I listen to the [censored] talking to the Jarl. Everything's going great. The, I get put on the chopping block, and the executioner just idles with the axe in both hands, like he's going to swing any second. Except he doesn't. I've looked through these boards to find that this is very similar to the cart glitch mentioned in the topic: the game world keeps moving, there's just no script being read.
I've also tried a few things to remedy this: I've cleared the Xbox's cache, I've installed the game to a flash drive, I've restarted the game to experiment (only to have it freeze in the exact same spot again, and again), and I've even deleted the game data that was saved to the Xbox and restarted from that.
I know, based off of the reactions to the cart problem, that nobody knows why this is happening or how to stop it. "Its a bad disc." "The disc has nothing to do with it." "It's the Xbox - you need a new one (I do have an old white one, but still...)." "No, that doesn't explain the same thing happening on PS3 and PC."

I'm just posting this so that Bethesda may read it eventually, and to let them know that I am upset and disappointed that I bought a $150 collectors edition of a game that I cannot play.

*Edit* Also, when I am stuck on the chopping block, if I try to reload from the save or quit through the pause menu, the game freezes before the loading screen can even fully come up. I don't know if that helps or not.