What I'm referring to is the fact that in Oblivion you could view your character model while equipping different pieces of equipment, and watch as the model updates in real time (so you can see what your character looks like with said apparel).

Well, I thought this could be easily accomplished by sheathing your weapon and going into third person to see your character model from the front. From this point, you can open up your menu and equip different things. Skyrim DOES update these things in real time. The only thing preventing us from viewing our character is the fact that the third person camera always puts the player to the left of the camera.

So, what we have now is a menu that covers up the player model, because the items menu and the player are always on the left half of the screen. Unfortunately, not even the opacity of these menus can be adjusted, which means we can see that something is changing behind the menu, but we don't really know what it is.

This can be fixed easily I have four suggestions:

1. Allow the player to move the camera from the right of the character to the left of the character (similar to how you can in Infamous and Uncharted). This way we can move the camera to the left side if we want to see our character while browsing the items menu.

2. Switch the Magic menu and the Items menu so that the magic menu is on the left and the items menu is on the right. The primary menu selection screen (Skills, Map, Magic, Items) wouldn't need to be changed because the magic menu comes out of the direction the magic arrow is pointing - the way it should be in my opinion). This method is my favourite because it's very simple to do and doesn't involve messing with the camera angles or anything. Just a simple switch in the menus and it's fixed. You can't see spells being equipped on your player in real-time anyway.

3. Include a character model like in Oblivion or give us the option to reduce the translucency of the menu so we can see the character behind it. (my least favourite idea because we would have to keep changing the opacity).

4. Allow the camera to break free an move in front of the character when the items menu is opened up (or, in reality, to the left of the PC since the menu is on the left). (Thanks to Anrii)


I don't know if this is possible to include via patch, but I really hope so because I know for a fact that the looks of items have a greater influence than the stats (to a certain extent) and I've often worn inferior armor/robes in Oblivion just because they looked better. It's an important thing.

So many complaints, such an unfinished game."How I feel ya man..."
That was actually one of the first things that pooped out to me in-game as I was playing, I miss to the ability to view my character too.Oh well.

I know, I would rather be able to view my 3-d character model than have each item individually viewable in 3-d. I don't care as much about what the item looks like, I care about what it looks like on my character

Well, considering it's an easy fix do you think we have any hope? I'm dead serious when I say if this is confirmed to be in the next Title Update, I will literally save the game until then. I want to have the perfect gameplay experience.

I miss this feature, it was nifty looking at your character in the menus, with the HUD style (gap on the right) all the devs need to do is script a camera pan/zoom to the PC. saves me going 3rd person to look at identical stat armour with different skins

Have any of you played Fallout 3 or New Vegas? To be honest I forgot all about Oblivion's character model after playing those. I'm sure Bethesda will do something. Man they have a lot of patchwork to do with this game. Worst part is how there are different problems throughout different systems.

I hope they will.

Yes, that's one thing I forgot to state. Why do they have identical stat armour in the first place? The only reason can be to use whichever you find suits your style preference the best.

it makes the game "unfinished" because of that? No. It was a design choice on Bethesda's part. If you don't like it, that is your opinion. It does not, however, mean Skyrim is an unfinished game because they did not tailor it to exactly meet your preferences.

this isn't a software issue, by the way.

I think he's referring to the numerous bugs that will be (hopefully) patched soon.