Ok, everyone and their brother feels entitled to spew their thoughts all over, so here are mine. I've played TES since Morrowind, and been gaming on PC for roughly 20 years, just recently bought an Xbox. Skyrim is one of my first games since buying an Xbox. RPG's are one of my favorite genres, however, I also like good action games, having grown up in arcades. So that probably accounts for a chunk of the reason I like Skyrim.


I love the game generally, I would give it something like a 93/100 I suppose, i'll list what I think works well first:

The best thing about this game to me hands down is the random events and wandering the world. Minus looking for dungeons vanilla Morrowind was totally weak in this department, and Oblivion wasn't much better. In vanilla Morrowind about all you got was the occasional NPC who stood forever by the side of the road for a quest, and ton of cliff racers, Nix Hounds, etc...not exactly exciting fare. In Oblivion you'd get the occasional courier, Imperial Huntsman or whatever they were called, and of course whatever leveled baddies were around. However, the terrain in Oblivion was truly terrible and boring, and you could expect very little in terms of random events walking down the road.

Alot of people just don't seem to appreciate this aspect of Skyrim, but to me this is one place Bethesda really nailed it, the random events in the world are superb, seeing Giants fight dragons, running into Mai'q the Liar, getting attacked by Assassin's, mugged by thieves, the prisoner patrols..all of it taken together means that walking around actually has a point now, and i'm thrilled with that.

The combat in Skyrim is a vast improvement over the two previous games, with Morrowind I don't really even feel the need to mention why. With Oblivion the biggest difference is that now (with the right build, and difficulty setting) skill can actually affect the outcome of battles. Even though Oblivion gave you more control than Morrowind, you still generally ended up with the same result, which was that a battle would almost always be predictable, regardless of your actions. Of course Skyrim is still far from perfect in this regard, but it's a big step in the right direction in my opinion.

The dungeons...man, these are great. Are they repetitive, well yeah to a degree, but there is enough variety there to keep them fun as hell, combined with the improved combat dungeons have really been a highlight for me. I also like that some are ridiculously huge, while some are a room with three bandits. Especially compared to the copy/pasted caves full of trolls and bears in Oblivion, the dungeons in Skyrim are fantastic, Beth obviously put so much more thought into design in general with this game, and I really like that.

The terrain, this is another big one to me, I guess it bothers some people to get lost..that is one of my favorite parts of this game, and in my view that is exactly what I want from an RPG, to get lost in adventures!

One of the first things I did after seeing that Riften was the home of thieves guild on the loading screen was to run there from Whiterun, the stuff I experienced along the way was more fun than the goal itself for me. I think that having terrian that actually requires a small bit of navigation (notice I said small bit, the game isn't Gothic 2 or something, you can still go up, down, or around most hills quite easily) is a big plus. With Oblivion there is no comparison, the world was an ugly, overly flat, randomly generated bowl that I found fairly easy and boring to travel across. Again this is a feature Id on't see many people mention but to me it was huge. Of course Morrowind has similar design with the foyadas..but, you could also just fly across them eventually.

So there's the good, now onto the bad:

I have by no means been through all the quest lines yet (these are believe it or not usually my least favorite thing), but so far I have found them a bit flat. They are IMO certainly no worse than Morrowind or Oblivion, but they are no better either..after the Fallout 3, and to a degree New Vegas, I thought Bethesda had learned about having more interesting quests, but apparently they played it safe in Skyrim, which I think was detrimental. Quests with more choice would have been nice, I have yet to feel very invested in any of the quests i've done (which amounts to about half the thieves guild and a TON of misc quests). The only high point here is the radiant quests, these are a little feature that subtly adds some real depthI think. However, it's a shame that a certain amount of them are not mandatory to progress the quest line, that would have really improved the buildup. The main quest is simply too epic, and I feel here Bethesda really tried to play it safe by providing the immediate gratification of dragon fighting, not a good idea IMO..should've been something to build up to and experience about the middle of the game, not rush into right away.

The NPC remarks...my god, If I hear Jon Battleborn tell me what's wrong with Skyrim for the 100th time...I can't believe this was not improved upon, it was a glaring problem with Oblivion and I was really surprised this wasn't fixed, it seems like a huge over site and is definitely small thing that would have made a big change to the experience. At this point I wish I just had something to turn off the NPC remarks. Speaking of dialogue, the actual dialogue in conversations is really too limited, and too meaningless. Another area that I can't say is worse than Morrowind or Oblivion, but suprisingly it isn't any better either. The companions in the game (not the guild) are also quite boring. After Fallout 3 and New Vegas, I was again surprised by the lack of investment in my companions, they have no personality or significance.

My biggest gripe is another thing I haven't heard mentioned that much, the lack of journal. I do not like the using the compass to complete quests, in fact I prefer not using it at all, and simply doing a small number of quests at a time. This would all be manageable if there was a real journal. Most major quests give enough information in the quest log to be passable, but it really kills the purpose of questing when you look at your miscellaneous quests and see stuff like twenty entries of basically "Get the thing for Jim", and all you have to recollect the quest is a marker. Honestly I think Bethesda would do well to simply implement a different 'play mode' or some kind in future TES games for people who don't like the quest markers and compass. Skyrim is almost there is you turn off the HUD, but the lack of a good journal kills it.

In fact, I really think the game would have benefited by having something like New Vegas' hardcoe Mode, where you are forced to eat and sleep, perhaps have no, or reduced HUD, and maybe a preset higher difficulty level. Sure, I can do this all myself, but it took probably forty hours of play to figure out I wanted to play like this, and I think it wouldn't be bad idea to actually have something like this built into the design as an option. I feel like Bethesda often leaves out things like this because they expect people to just mod them in, which they inevitably will. However, I think a decent chunk of the supposedly 'casual' non-mod and console market would like these sorts of options as well.

The perks system is alos a mixed bag, I like that now my character is not subject to pointlessly using non-major skills to manipulate stats, but I don't like the lack of the stats themselves, and I REALLY don't like the lack of acrobatics and particularly athletics, or other method of changing movement speeds. I always played a high-speed warrior in the previous two games and was disappointed by the lack of that option. That said, the perks themselves I think are a step in the right direction, I just think they shouldn't have ditched so many attributes and options in the process.

So that's pretty much it, I could go on about the things that both amaze and disappoint me, but these are the things that stuck out.