Sir I Salute you for taking the thoughts right out of my brain.

Same here.

(Opens a 6 pack of beer) lets drink and put our minds together.....wait nothing good ever comes from that......(rolls a joint) mucho better lets get high and put our minds together to figure out what Pros and Cons are the ones we like and the ones that boil our blood to the point we just want to say "Why Elder Scrolls Why?"

Couldn't have said it better my self.

What Skyrim does really well:

- tons of adventure out there to be had.
- individual magic effects feel more magical than previous games.
- atmosphere
- distant landscapes
- unique cities
- the daedric quests

What Skyrim doesn't do particularly well:

- interface. Highest ratio of visual excess to functionality EVER.
- lack of opportunities to "learn" your character. If you don't write your own backstory, you're never going to play your way into one.
- boring progression system: I have ideas why, but the whole system is simply unexciting to me.
- perks are uninspired compared to Fallout 3
- stat boosts are individually meaningless: any time I need more magicka, or more stamina, or more health, 10 points doesn't even start to mitigate the need.
- too many levels: feels like I'm always gaining a level, which dilutes the value.
- too many very basic quests.
- lacks that special something that makes me want to go back to a game (no idea how you could make sure you have this, but...)
- lots of textures don't look too good inside the 10' mark in-game.
- lack of character interaction
- too many activities seem to be added to tick off a checklist, and have no soul to them. (I'm looking at you, Cooking. You COULD have had an alchemy synergy. You could have had recipes to learn. You could have provided unique benefits. You don't. You exist to tick off the checkbox)
- finishing moves are too repetitive, badly "directed", and half of the time, just freeze the action for a second in first-person.

Feel free to ask me to elaborate on any of these points. Or not. (I'm working Christmas Eve, though, so I won't be on until late)

Pros:

• Character models are improved. Male characters can finally have beards and Argonians look awesome.


• Music is amazing, as usual.

Cons:

• Dialogue systems is terrible. Most of the time, decisions are made for me.


• Guild quests are terrible. They are very bland and don't offer any interesting items, besides armor.


• In my opinion, the perk system is a bad idea. It causes you to create over-powered characters in a very small amount of time.


• Removal of skills. Where is my hand-to-hand combat? Where is acrobatics? Mysticism? No?


• Character customization. It is improved, but every character feels the same. Weight has no meaning, other than looking buffer. I would have wanted weight to affect my stamina and how fast/slow my character moves.

Same here except the guild quests for i did not play long enough to get that far, and the perk system I personally don't think it is a bad idea.

I agree with a lot of your Pros and Cons. One thing for me for replay ability is being able to play a Unique character every time. In Skyrim you start out with the same thing. Yes you can go down what path anyways but I loved the fact in Oblivion and Morrowind was that you got to choose your starting abilities that benefit the type of play you want from the beginning.

Dido

pros: variety in quests and character builds, huge open world, some combat mechanics, soundtrack.
cons: bad and extremely short storylines, lack of true freedom of choice and consequences, half the features are majorly unmbalanced (stealing stuff is always way too easy, destruction is always way too underpowered, difficulty settings make enemies be either way too easy or way too hard etc...).

There's more weapons specialization in Skyrim then there was in Oblivion and, in a way, more then Morrowind too.

Morrowind had lots of categories, but most of them weren't really any different. There wasn't any real incentive to use one or another beyond RP aesthetics.

Skyrim only has one and two hand but instead it has perks. The perks have almost as many sub-categories as Morrownid did. But I think more importantly it rewards those playstyles in a more tangible way then either of the past two games, which is the ability to cooler [censored] with that weapon. More then that, big huge sword guys can get perks to do big huge sword charges, while stealthy weapons like daggers and bows benefit more then ever from being actually used as stealthy weapons in sneak. Ways to play that actually feel different and aren't just numbers in a box. Its a more natural, more intuitive and more realistic way to play an RPG. Of course you can max out everything, but the average player won't (the average player, not the average player on an RPG forum) and anyways, you've always been able to do that in TES and we'd all be pissed if you couldn't.

The cons are white thighs and no barbers.

Oh and the music is perfect.

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Pros:

Excellent Graphics
Tons of Mods (PC users)
Dungeons: Both amount and uniqueness
Character creation is solid
True open-world RPG, do what you want how you want
Combat is MUCH improved from previous Elder Scrolls games
The world is as vast as it is exciting, there's always something new to discover

Cons:

No one in the world reacts to you or your status (i.e. as a guild master or hunted fugitive)
Lack of gear; you end up crafting 10x better stuff than you can find in the toughest dungeons
Exploiting professions is way too easy
Lack of dialog choices; which is also contributing to lack of potential limitless replayability
Load times (PS3) and game breaking bugs (PS3)
Lack of any form of multiplayer or co-op (for some it's a con, not for me personally)
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The leveling system can be either a pro or a con, depending on who you are. While I did love the "stats" that were in Morrowind, I really do appreciate the innovation of this new simplified but incredibly fun leveling system. For me it's a definite pro.