I like Markarth and Solitude a lot, Markarth is confusing to navigate because it's a Dwarven city/ruin. I like Windhelm especially because the Nordic look.

Oh, the texture resolution in this game is terrible though. Some are good. But, for instance, the falmer caves have Nintendo64 textures.

I felt like the textures were damaging my vision. Sometimes my eyes crossed while trying to figure out what I'm looking at, and which way is up, in the corner of a mine somewhere. So blurry. Very disorienting.

But there are quite a few great texture mods out now. Admittedly, you should have been following the mod scene since day one. It will be hard for you to find the right mods. The most popular aren't necessarily the best. It also helps to be good at manually examining each mod and removing parts that svck. You need thumbnail .DDS viewer, at least, for this.

I've replaced a significant amount of the textures in the game. My mod folder is 11GB, and there's plenty more to fix. (some are unused, alternate textures. I need to do some cleaning.)


But if you're not into mods, or even if you are a bit disappointed in the game, you should still get a few hundred hours of entertainment out of it, IMO.

Anyway, I've had my fair share of the conversation. See ya.

Less spells is better? No spell making is better? No stats is better? Every character running and jumping at the same speed is better? No benefits of picking any race is better? No birth sign is better? No greaves is better? Game effortless on master is better? Enchanted weapons being far better than any weapon in the game is better? Every city looking like Bruma is better? An utterly unremarkable capital compared to the Imperial City is better? No Patrick Stewart (or equivalent) is better? Shorter questlines is better? No mysticism is better? Only being able to create potions at Alchemy lab is better? Less creatures is better? Aesthetically improved Oblivion with removed content is better?

OP, Skyrim improves on Oblivion in every single way except that Oblivion's quest log was a little better. ?

Notwithstanding the criticism leveled above, there is a reason that this game was named GOTY by so many different outlets. If you liked prior Bethesda games, you will most certainly like this one as well. And, the whole opening is very, very cool.

To the OP:

You should wait until at least the next patch as I am still encountering some serious bugs and glitches (Xbox 360 version). And I really can't believe the junk about the game people are complaining about! The one one thing that bugs me, the dungeons, nobody else complains about but people complain about the smaller stuff in such an epic game! Friggin' forums!

Not like Christopher Plummer and Max von Sydow are even more prestigious actors or anything, right?

Just going by the topic title here (I'm tired) but-.. Get the game. You won't regret it.
Pay no heed to the naysayers until you've really delved into it yourself.
Oh, and most importantly. Have fun!

There are just some people who are pissed off at change. If a single thing is changed from the last game, people will just get angry. They just don't want to let go of the previous games.

after reading all the posts and realizing its become yet another battle between die hard fans and disgruntled trolls, here is my message to the OP

1) your pc will do just fine
2) if you compare it to morrowind and oblivion you will find it lacking content and atmosphere. however, it owns both of them visually (haven't checked the other two with gfx overhauls because, you know, its still the same games i already played to death )
3) much have changed, some good some bad, nothing you cant live with. those who argue otherwise are just persons that go through life with a magnifier stuck in their right eye. their loss.
4) the game will still provide you with more than 200 hours of happy running around, and i assure you there really are many things to discover. and since by your own admission you are a re-roller, you will have a nice time fiddling around
5) you are on a pc platform by choice, you can do what i did, "sample" before you buy. there are several groups that believe in this philosophy and yes they do provide a stable "sample" version. just please buy it if you like it. that will keep the real life trolls behind SOPA movements fed.

thats it, hope you have as much fun as i still have with it!

Less spells is true. Yes, no spell making makes spells more unique. There's stats in the game, lol. Have you even played it? The speed of characters doesnt really matter to most people. Its not too much of a setback. There are great advantages to picking a race. Birthsigns are replaced with Standing stones. Yes, no greaves is better. It means less limitations to what armor can look like, and more npcs on screen. Yes, the game is a bit easy. so was oblivion. Oblivion was actually easier, and never gave me a challenge. Skyrim, I usually have to exploit the game to get to Overpowered levels. Powerful enchanted weapons are kind off the point. You don't need to enchant your stuff. The daedric artifacts are unique, and has special enchants. Have you seen Markarth? Riften? Whiterun? Windhelm? These looks a lot better than any city in Oblivion. Solitude isnt as great as Imperial City, but that is the whole point. Cyrodiil is the capital province. They can't have Patrick Stewart in every game, lol. Max von Sydow is good enough. Yes, questlines are a bit short, but they are infinitely more interesting than in Oblivion. And Mysticism is divided into the other Magic Schools. Using an alchemy lab means that you have to prepare before heading intp the wild. This is better. Less creatures are true, but the ones that are in are more interesting than the ones in Oblivion. Skyrim is much more than Oblivion with removed content. If anything, there is more content in Skyrim.

Less spells is better?

yes, in Oblivion you can have lots of different spells, but they do the same thing (give or take some magnitude/duration), yet have completely different names.


No spell making is better?

"Spell making", or "make your own exploit"?


No stats is better?

Are you kidding me? That was the biggest problem with Oblivion, at the end of the game everyone was 99 in every stat. Whats the difference if you rolled a mage or a Warrior? A wardrobe switch.


Every character running and jumping at the same speed is better?

Yes because you can design the world accordingly. People don't get stuck, the gameplay elements and puzzles and quests can be designed appropriately so that people will be able to continue and not be stuck because their not a circus freak acrobat, able to leap mountains.


No benefits of picking any race is better?

What?


No birth sign is better?

You can choose your guardian stone, or whatever. It's a huge improvement.


No greaves is better?

Not to me no. But this is in the name of balance. The robes are one piece, how is it fair that armored get two enchanting slots? But there is already a mod for greaves being seperate. I might look into it when it's further developed.


Game effortless on master is better?

The game is too easy. Oblivion had the same problem, where the game gets easier as you get further in the game! It doesn't make any sense from a video game standpoint. RPGs are all torn between seeing an advantage of leveling up, and building increasing challenge.


Enchanted weapons being far better than any weapon in the game is better?

Not sure if you meant to say that.


Every city looking like Bruma is better?
An utterly unremarkable capital compared to the Imperial City is better?

Imperial City svcked. Are you joking? I'm not a big fan of Skyrim's cities either, nor Shivering Isles, or Oblivion. Morrowind had the best. I remember I discovered some far out place with some desert sand blasting in my face.

No Patrick Stewart (or equivalent) is better?

Why would you want him in the game? A voice you recognize? What did he have 5 minutes of speech? The voice acting in Oblivion was terrible.


Shorter questlines is better?

Now you are just making up things. Skyrims quests take hours, and perfectly string you a long so it seems like there is always another step to complete.


No mysticism is better?

Yes, it was a cheesy exploit, and I always complained about it. Absorb spell 100; Reflect Damage 100; Reflect Spell 100. Really, play long enough and you can easily max one or two, especially as a Breton. Pretty much turned on God mode. Now it's perfectly balanced, and they're only available in the perk tree, so you can't exploit them with enchanting.


Only being able to create potions at Alchemy lab is better?

Yes, it's part of the challenge. You don't just start mixing potions in the middle of a boss fight. Be more prepared. Plus they can scatter them in harder dungeons.


Less creatures is better?

The creatures are way better. I won't miss the unicorn nor the imp from Oblivion that you never saw because you didn't enter a gate until you were level 20. Besides you could easily level past 10 different creatures, and never see them.


Aesthetically improved Oblivion with removed content is better?

Get out! If I made a list of all the things Skyrim did better, we would be here for weeks.


OP, Skyrim improves on Oblivion in every single way except that Oblivion's quest log was a little better. ?

Yes, pretty much. Also, the people are even more repetitive, also Daedric armor glowmaps look like "Kid red", where they used to look cool. Also, the Argonian male voice from Oblivion was pretty awesome, in my opinion.

I see lots of room for improvement in Skyrim, but at least the base game is great. It is supremely more polished, balanced, and refined -- except crafting, which is still terrible. I am looking forward to TES6, where everything is perfect. I wish.

EDIT: I elaborated

if you liked past TES games, you should get it. it has some flaws but it's mostly better than oblivion. if you like building different chars, exploring and dungeon crawling you won't be disappointed. on the downside most of the quests and guilds are rather short, including the main quest, but there's a ton of them and this kinda mekes up for it.

For a start the Khajitt look great in this game, when making your character you can have so many different styles of khajitt its great! Same for argonian which is what i usually go for.

My current playthrough is a bosmer archer using alchemy for poisons and to sell. I've done Theives guild and t'other one (i wont spoil it) and its working well. Archery and 1hd can be overpowered in this game but if you keep on your own roleplay path you shouldnt reach that point. The level scaling is loads better now so it doesnt feel broken and you dont have to worry about where you're adding attribute points (perks in this one). Being a mage isnt so great in Skyrim as you have to play the overpowered gamebreaker version of destruction magic to be a destruction mage. Other mage types are best used with a normal weapon type generally.

The story is good but some of the other main quests for guilds can be a little rubbish. The most fun i have in this is RPing through the land in general. I'll usually look in a certain region for an ingredient and stumble on different places and explore them. Whilst exploring skyrim you get a bigger sense of danger than you did in oblivion, you actually feel like you can die (if you havent made your char OP). I remember an occasion where i had a pretty big battle in the wilderness with some 'locals' and had low HP and no potions (and that char didnt use magic). I was wandering along waiting for my HP to slowly rise where i was attacked again by something much bigger! i was fighting for my life and it was great and made it a strategic fight. I never got anything like that in oblivion.

I think I'm sold! I will pick it up tomorrow morning.

N/M

I didn't wait til tomorrow...I picked it up just a few minutes ago. Time to get wasted and start the game!

Okay. I shall answer your questions to the best of my ability.

"How varied are the locations, from a scale of Morrowind to Oblivion (Very to Not, respectively)"
Eh no.
There's either snowy mountains, snowy flat lands, or not snowy mountains and snowy flat lands.
Not that much variance.

"Is the Atronoch sign sitll overpowered?"
There are no signs anymore. there are just the "Guardian Stones"
as far as the Atronoch stone being overpowered? Not that I've seen no.

"Why, why, WHY was unarmed removed from the game? My favorite character in Morrowind was an unarmored Khajiit monk (robes, speed focused, no heavy armor, etc). From the looks of it, there is no possible way to achieve the same character build in Skyrim. Is this really true?"
Wait for mods
But until then, no.


"Is the leveling nightmare from Oblivion fixed? Is there scaled leveling at all?"
Not sure what you mean by leveling nightmare but i can say the leveling system is MUCH better then Oblivions.

As for how well you can run the game, You will most likely be able to run on High Settings with no problem.
I have a AMD Athlon Quad Core 3.0 Ghz processor and a Radeon HD 5570 and I can run the game on high (Without Anti-Aliasing ofc. I don't really care for that, it looks weird to me) with 4GB of RAM, so yea your good.

Other Major differences? Well from Oblivion --> Skyrim
The voicing is better in Skyrim. Still crap but better then Oblivion.
Graphics are far better (Until you get up close for textures. EEEEE SO UGLY TEXTURES!!!)
Skyrim is a much better book collector game then Oblivion was, not Morrowind though. (I think)
Skyrim isn't as alien as Oblivion OR Morrowind. It's very generic Fantasy sandbox then an RPG. Absolutely no Daedra (Cept maybe 1 or 2?)
Or any interesting unique creatures other then Hagravens (or UOW which stands for Ugly Old Women) and Falmer (Ofc they did bring back the Dwemer)
Dragons...Dragons is a big factor. (Although they are pretty easy unless your playing as a warrior on master difficulty)

Um I can't think of many more. But overall it's still fun.

I played it non-stop for about a week but then stopped for about 2 months (I got bored pretty quickly) but I have renewed interest in the game again so, yea it can last depending on your taste.

Hope this helps!

This is the best TES game for thief-like characters, and has the best stealth system of the series.

You will love the openinig eye mechanism, and sometimes I see that eye when I'm waking up from a dream, IRL.

Exactly my sentiments.

Yea the khajitt look so much better in this game but I did like them in oblivion as well still do.