I have put in 300 hours still not finished the game and not sure i will.The lack of depth is a real killer a bulk of the quests are dull, side characters/companions are pretty one dimensional,marriage is a farce.I like to get to know people in a RPG game and well you don't in this game.One of the things that made Dragon Age origins so good was the ability to get to know your companions it made for a more enjoyable gaming experience.Also a real lack of impacting decisions svcked to man the Witcher 2 you could change the way the game played some pieces of the story did not fit together until you played it again and did a few things differently.

Well you are going to hear everyone's opinion. "OMG how can you be bored there is so much to do? I have a thousand hours into this and I'm not bored? WTF is wrong with you?"

yeah I got bored too though and on week 3 of taking a break. And it's all o.k.
I get where you are coming from and just remember you aren't alone.
It's a great game, I'll go back and eventually log 1000 hours.
Take a break, come back when you are ready.

Skyrim is an empty world. That's what you're all feeling. It's a vast, beautifully detailed gameworld that is...empty. For all the time spent on books and hundreds of hours of dialogue, no one cared to write a compelling story and relatable characters to populate the vastness of Skyrim.
There is no emotional attachment here. You don't care about your allies, because you're saving the world by yourself, you don't care about your companions because they have no real background or words to share, you don't care about your enemies because they have no motivations, no real presence.

You're bored and apathic because Skyrim feels like going to a theme park by yourself. At first you'll be excited to see all there is to see, and to visit every ride and enjoy the freedom of doing whatever you like. Then after the novelty wears off, you'll feel lonely in a world filled with cardboard characters and no actual sense of purpose or reward. It has no end, and no one to share your experience, acknowledge your deeds and react to what should have been a dynamic environment.

Bethesda needs to learn a thing or two from Rockstar, Valve or Bioware. They nailed the Sandbox aspects, but they vastly underestimate the importance of a good story and memorable characters that CHANGE over time. Characters need to evolve, have goals, be developed.

Just find something else to do. Don't sell the game. Maybe you'll get interested again. 80 hours is a lot of time though, compared to most games.

i've pretty much come up with my solution to the problems with this game and this is how i'll play it:

make my 3 specific, strict rping characters to complete the appropriate guild quests while doing my best to not rehash the same old dungeons and quests. this will be a large task, obviously.

then, when that is all done i'll just continue to use whatever character i feel like playing that day and make sure i'm exploring different areas of the map while playing them.

in that way, i get to experience as much as the game can offer, dungeon/quest-wise, and, hopefully extend my enjoyment of playing. god knows i don't want to do the same things over again, but, with different characters.

and, THAT is the shame of the game skyrim.

after that it's probably back to the fallouts and another run with oblivion since i haven't played it in a very long time.

i'm very much open to any other solutions people have.

It introduced a combat system that actually made sense, and that revolutionised the game. It also made magic more viable.

My 3rd character actually refused to do either the main quest or the civil war quests. She decided to just explore the world on her own.

she just took random quests as they were given to her by NPC's she ran into. That's all she did., she just wandered. It was interesting as she rarely went into cities unless to stock up on potions or to improve her armor. She made it known she was just exploring. If she did run into someone she would speak to them, but never sought anyone else out.
In her wanderings she did 160 misc quests. None of which she sought first. Was interesting, at least to me.

Hmm..... I have alot of fun with this game and even after reaching level 50 it still Calls me back

I get what alot of people are saying about the emptiness, because honestly after a certain level none of the weapons and armor mean very much of anything and there isnt much of anything to buy or even any real threats(except for ancient dragons) on master...... but THAT is where I started playing that GOD character that i dreamed of being since i got the game....

With Two Permanent Thralls and sometimes a follower I wreak havoc playing as a type of evil character out of a anime or something......

Still i need the experience of trying to survive in this world, So i created another fresh character and play on master..... I must say it is nice to alternate between the two

What other games do you all play to even call it apathy after playing 300 hours? lmao. Or even 80, for that matter. The average title these days is a paltry 12-20 hours. I don't know what you guys expect, but I'd be grateful if a game can offer just 50 hours of game play. That's what most RPGs do, be it western or jrpg. It's like you expected to literally devote your entire life in Skyrim, and now you can't, and you call that apathy.

Daggerfall, Morrowind and Oblivion all had a longer playing time, if you get something from previous titles it is reasonable to expect a sequel to offer at the least what the previous title had.

In some of those cases, the technology involved wasn't that great either. They weren't full of handcrafted dungeons or high res textures or had a lot of voice dialogue. That's the tradeoff, I guess.

But by this reasoning, it seems like few games can satisify some of you. If length is your litmus test. Even games generally considered really fun, by a lot of people. For example, the original deus ex is about 30 hours. Action titles like Uncharted can be done in under 20. About the only things that give you a relatively long time to play in are racing and sports titles, these days. Playing a full campaign in Gran Turismo or FIFA or something.

Only Daggerfall fits your description, and I don't need a game to be long to enjoy it, it's just the fact that Bethesda has generally had a reputation for games that have a ridiculously long playing time (and MW and OB did this with handcrafted dungeons, and MW managed to do it with less copy and pasting than OB)

Well, I don't know what further to say. I'm enjoying the moment, if that makes sense. I don't have that many expectations.

The only thing I can suggest is that they're a lot of cool games to take up everyone's time. Not to mention stuff outside gaming that's fun. If there are flaws in one game, this is at least takes the edge off the disappointment. You can't be too disappointed if you're being entertained by something else. This way you don't get hung up on it, and just appreciate it for what it is.

I agree, it is a great game for what it is. It's just the fact Bethesda has shown they can do more than the competition which makes people expect more than the competition

I feel like I'm bored with the game too and I'm on PC. Waiting for mods to come out, about level 46 now. I don't like the Perk system. I liked Morrowind's system and Oblivion's, to an extent. inb4 QQ no Morrowind 2, don't really care though Morrowind provides a LOT more value and fun than this game. It's still... fun sometimes, but as mentioned earlier, it's bland. Mods are gonna spice this game up so much, I can't wait for the CK to come out. Lots of talented people out there.

Random people on internet forums are always trustworthy diagnosers.

The problem as I see it is as follows:

Skyrim's quests are linear and there are no quest choices or consequences.

There are no decisions to make other than what, join the empire or the stormcloaks, and even those quests are identical for each side, so you didn't really make a choice.

The greetings are broken so the game world doesn't recognize you or your accomplishments. You fetch the mead for the companions, you ought to consider joining the mages guild even though you are the arch mage already, too many arrows in the knee, and the guy who works for Belethor ought to get to cloud city so I don't have to hear his one line ever again.

The actual quests lack variety too. Fetch or kill. How about helping with that huge smithing order for the legion the blacksmith in whiterun can't seem to get done? Craft her 500 swords for some coin. How about spying on the enemy? Escorting VIPs? How about rounding up 50 good men for the empire or stormcloaks but you have to have good speechcraft to do it, or bribe them with incentives. I could write cool quest ideas all day that the engine can do yet they have 100 guys with no creative ideas? It's not that hard Bethesda just look at your previous work??!!! WTF?

The reason the OP lost the desire to play the game is because Skyrim doesn't let the player feel connected to the world. It feels like fetching for no good reason. You have to role play and use your imagination to make the game playable and even I'm running out of ways to change it up and keep it fun. Can't wait for the creation kit.

What Bethesda needs to do in the DLC is make Skyrim svck the player in somehow by making NPC's comments more appropriate, branch the quests a bit here and there, make QUEST FAILED possible like in new vegas, get rid of essential NPCS and give the player some choices so that the game has some replay value!

I'll agree with that. I have a lot of quest ideas too, and end up relying on my own imagination to connect more to the world. The second is not a bad thing by any means.. i like using my imagination.. but the quests could be more fleshed out.

That said, I still stand by my point.. that if you can get 80 or more hours out of the game, it's still a rare accomplishment for games.

I went through something similar, after a month of playing nothing but Skyrim, and logging over 150 hours, I got kinda bored with it. Plus being on PS3, the Lag was making the game unplayable. So bascially i quit playing for about 2 weeks, played other games that i wanted to try out. Then got the urge to play skyrim again, and started up, and while i'm not playing nonstop like i did when i first got it, I've logged over 80 hours in my second playthrough already, and have hardly done any of the guild quests, and still haven't even visited all the major cities yet. Which also has me wandering how i've been playing my new character for 80 hours and still don't seem to have accomplished much.

You said got 80 hours out of the game, so I guess it's still better than most games right?
As someone mentioned before, if you don't feel like playing then don't. You already got good time for money and perhaps you'll enjoy it at a later time again.

I'm on the same boat as you.

Madmole already did a good job explaining why. It's actually a fairly typical problem with Bethesda's games, in that there are so many little niggles and oddities that the game never really lets you in. Awkward dragon animations, incredible amounts of repeated dialogue, companions, more incredible amounts of repeated dialogue, combat that feel like slashing at smoke, companions, giants sending you into orbit, and companions are what did it for me. Oh, and the lack of variation in the quests.

I've started playing again, but interspersed between Morrowind and Oblivion now. I don't think Skyrim will be worth a third full playthrough, really. I've seen everything there is to show except for a couple of Guilds and a few Daedric quests.

It's a good game, but it's just way too shallow. As opposed to the previous titles, it doesn't actually feel like Bethesda's heart was in this one.

Skyrim feels soulless. And that is why I have not been able to connect with the game. The stuff is there, but the spark is gone.

I don't agree with that one.. especially compared to previous beth games (besides fallout). Everything feels more solid. The feel of the animations and combat in morrowind and oblivion were far more crappy and float-y feeling to me.

The problem is, that despite how many hours of gameplay Skyrim can potentially offer you, many of those hours fail to truly impress or instill a vivid memory or reaction. They are largely hollow. At times it actually, sadly feels like running around in an MMO of all things.

Baldur's Gate, Planescape Torment, the Witcher, Vampire: the masquerade, Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer, they all have much stronger narratives, whereas Skyrim, and most of Bethesda's games only have the world. And when that world feels shallow....it just makes the other weak points of the game stand out even more.

well-said

Hmmm.... Nah, I don't see it...