First off, this is going to be lengthy but it's something that I really just want to get out there. This is completely spoiler free, minus the name of a city you'll go to very early in the game. I'll categorize everything for easier skimming:

Specs

Processor: AMD 965 BE quad 3.4
RAM: 8 gig
OS: Win 7 64bit
GPU: EVGA GTX 580 (driver 285.62)

Performance

Ultra settings
Steady 60fps (I play with vsync turned on) but it occasionally dips lower in certain areas with high views of cities (Whiterun keep looking over the city for instance).

The good

I just want to say that this is the first TES game I've played where I'm not constantly feeling like I'm loosing the level-up boss. I absolutely loathed the feeling in inadequacy in previous versions if I didn't min/max my character for each and every level to maximize key stats for the build I was playing. I'm a bit nerdy when it comes to games like this. I really like to immerse myself into the world and act "in character" the entire time I play. That means not doing silly stuff that a "real person" in that setting would not do. It's so wonderful to finally be able to just focus on the game itself, rather than how many talents I leveled up so far with the Strength attribute tied to them. While I do miss being able to assign points to attributes like Strength, Luck, etc.. I do *not* miss the strings attached to them.

The talent tree system is also equally, if not slightly more impressive then anything I've experienced in the game so far. I find myself looking over the trees carefully during my level-up process seeing how the build will progress as I push forward through the adventure. I love some of the tradeoffs, even the subtle ones such as the pros/cons system of picking heavy or light armor focus. The ability to reflect damage 10% of the time with heavy armor or the ability to avoid melee 10% of the time with light. It's so much fun in the beginning while I hone my character's skills towards the style of my choosing. Thank you for finally adding variety to the game of a measurable value, instead of the superficial variations of past games. The removal of "repair hammer spam" with the addition of an amazing Smithing option is simply wonderful. Careful planning and attention to prices can yield positive results from a financial standpoint and that, to me, is a great change for the better.

The world is much more "believable" this time around, from a TES point of view. While I don't feel it's on par with the Gothic series in terms of what NPCs do it's still the best experience yet for this franchise. The animations are finally clean and characters finally appear flexible instead of four joint stick figures from the past. The voice acting is good and the music is once again some of the best ever in a game. Radiant story is great for the most part and I'm a fan of all the random quests you can get just by listening to conversations on the streets. I know Oblivion did this but it didn't feel as fluid as it does in Skyrim. The graphics are clean, and to be quite frank, for a game of this scope, it's all I could have hoped for.

The bad

The UI is simply frustration for a keyboard/mouse user. I understand that console development was your priority, but I would have appreciated some effort from a small team of one or two people during development creating a UI that was more functional on a PC. I understand the "look" and "feel" that is being executed here but it's clumsy. This starts with the conversation screen, to the trade screen, to the world map, to your talent tree screen and everything in between. It doesn't feel right - while it's "functional" from a navigation point of view, it's sloppy from a customer's point of view. In many cases, Oblivion's poor UI works better.

The level scaling is still a problem, and I sorely miss the dangerous exploration from Morrowind. I don't understand why the world has to scale with the player, it simply doesn't make any sense. The world, and its characters were there and doing their thing long before our characters started on their journey. Morrowind wasn't impossibly difficult nor was it overly restrictive on exploration. I don't understand why you (Bethesda) want to continue to focus on level scaling. Proper placement of high/low level areas would not hinder the player's personal enjoyment of the game. It gives them goals, and reasons to revisit various areas later on when they're more powerful. After all of the expressed player frustration from Oblivion, and even from Fallout 3 - I don't understand why you keep wanting to add this feature to your games.

The ugly

The following, is in my opinion almost unforgivable to have made it to the release build.

Key binding.

Why did you all not properly test this MAJOR aspect of player enjoyment? The moment someone changes the default values the potential for frustration skyrockets. The game won't allow keybinds to the numpad. Terrible oversight. If you aren't a "WASD" user like myself (I use QWES) you cannot, I repeat, CANNOT pick up books. The game will not accept any "take" input other than "E" while reading a book, even if "D" is your remapped "take" action. So, there was a quest where in order to proceed, I had to remap my keys to pick up a book, and remap them back afterwards. The entire keybind experience is a mess.

It's disappointing that this hasn't been addressed yet, given the flood of complaints on these and many other forums. I hope you have people fixing this.

Thanks.

You might want to try http://glovepie.org/ to fix this problem.
Just keep Skyrim in the default controls and reroute the input keys to your numpad, it's easy but I guess a little programming experience (and/or persistence to learn) is required.
Alternatively you can wait until someone else writes a script for it and shares it with the rest of the world.

I haven't used Glovepie on Skyrim, but I tried it on the witcher2 (which has the same problem) and that worked.

Key binding.

Why did you all not properly test this MAJOR aspect of player enjoyment? The moment someone changes the default values the potential for frustration skyrockets. The game won't allow keybinds to the numpad. Terrible oversight. If you aren't a "WASD" user like myself (I use QWES) you cannot, I repeat, CANNOT pick up books. The game will not accept any "take" input other than "E" while reading a book, even if "D" is your remapped "take" action. So, there was a quest where in order to proceed, I had to remap my keys to pick up a book, and remap them back afterwards. The entire keybind experience is a mess.

It's disappointing that this hasn't been addressed yet, given the flood of complaints on these and many other forums. I hope you have people fixing this.

Thanks.
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Yeah this whole key binding thing has me royally pissed off not to mention, HOW MANY GAMES HAVE HAD DUAL KEY ASSIGNMENTS FOR YEARS??? I'm at a point where this game was built for illiterates. In other words, trying to read a book in inventory is a study in total frustration. I'm getting real sick of it not to mention, I don't see there being any skill game from reading the dumb things anyway.

Only certain books raise skills, not all of them. But you have to read them all in order to find those books.

But you do NOT have to take them. If you find a book that raises a skill, it raises the minute you pick the book up to read ( don't even have to flip a page ) as well as gives you a message in the middle of the screen.

So, pick up book, put down book. That's all you need to do.