Hello! I was thinking long and hard last night with insomnia about a few things that bugged me with Skyrim. The disclaimer is correct, this is a wee bit long. The list of peeves itself is rather short, but the explanation is much longer. Without further delay, here's my list of peeves with the vanilla Skyrim.

1. Beast races.

They made my two favorite races in this game *much* less appealing this time around. Again. I had to mod both in Oblivion and I feel I'll have to mod them again in Skyrim. I was hoping for the digitigrade legs that they had in Morrowind(as were many others), and while that's not a game breaker(they probably did it because in Morrowind, you could not wear boots as a beast race. This is solved in every other game by making the upper part of the boot fit around the ankle and calf as normal and a small metal or whatever plate sit over the top of the foot, or not, depending on game but I digress), but the rest of it is a *serious* issue imo.

A. Khajiit.

a) the head.
I play exclusively female characters. Female khajiit right now look like their head got stuck in the press my grandpa's cabinet shop used to seal Formica to the countertops. It's squished vertically. The ears sit and are shaped weird. I know of no species of cat on this planet that has a head shaped like that. The males look like lynxes. Fine. The female I think is supposed to look like a cougar or lioness, but that squished head is just *not* doing it any justice. The rear part should be broader and the ears facing more forward, and broader at the base. They currently look like the old fashioned long pointy elf ears stuck on the top of a flattened cat head.

b ) the tail.
I'm sorry Bethesda, your cat tails svck. Hard. Not only are they a wee bit too long, but they're entirely too stiff. There's no movement to them. I'd expect a bit of a side to side swishing while idle or lying in wait for prey(I play them as sneak thief assassin types), and I'd expect them to kinda straighten out behind them a bit more when running or sneaking. Why? Cats have tails for balance. They use the darned things.. for balance. It's the same reason you put your arms out straight to your sides when walking a narrow beam and the like. Not having the tail do some natural things just irks the crap out of me. While it *sorta* does the stuff it should, there's like.. no joints in it. It's stiff as a board. And again, too long.

B. Argonian

a) the tail, again
These tails also seem to suffer from the same ailments that the cat tails do. Not enough movement, and what little movement there is doesn't look natural.

Maybe I'm just too fond of the cats and lizards from Morrowind. For an idea of what I'd prefer both races to look and act like more, look at those. I'd also love to see frills on female Argonians pull an Iksar(lizard race from the EverQuest games) and flare out when in combat, much like bearded dragons do.

2. Horses

No, this isn't your standard "the horses look terrible" rant. I actually prefer how they look and move here in Skyrim. I *love* the stocky horses and will have to try to mod them in other games if they make them thinner and scrawny again. But that's not for this topic. Here's my gripe with the horses.

A) control

I honestly don't mind the forced third person. I play third person for everything except spellcasting and bows anyways, and make an extremely frequent use of the "change PoV" key. My gripe is that the controls feel unresponsive and are quite bad.

a) Turning.
Oh dear Divines. Turning your horses is atrocious. IRL, when I sit on a horse, I can make him turn in place. None of this "I have to move forward to change facing while standing still". I can also make him back up without having that turn around BS. I press S to have my character back up... and if she's on a horse the stupid animal has to make a full on "move forward, turn" that makes for getting put in some precarious positions if I ride to a narrow precipice and decide not to try making the trek down the cliffside. I cannot get my mount to back up, instead he has to do a full circle and I've died a couple times from falling off. It's pretty bad.

b ) Jumping.
Not sure about you, but trained jumpers don't pause a second before following a command to jump. Doing so costs them points when they hit the barrier. When I press the spacebar to jump, I want my darned horse to jump then, not a second or two later. I've gotten caught on fences and logs with this before. It's annoying.

c) mounted combat
Nice attempt. Doesn't work worth a crab. Can only attack on the right side of the animal, and most beasts like wolves try to flank you. In my case, it always seems to be the left side they try to flank on. Due to the before mentioned turning garbage, making my mount turn so that I can put the appropriate side to my foe so that I may smash his face in with my battleaxe is very difficult. I just dismount. I have to dismount to loot the bodies anyways. If I'm killing bandits, I'm rifling their bodies for useable gems, lockpicks and gold anyways.

3. First person point of view.

As I mentioned previously, I play almost exclusively in third person. Be this from a long history of MMORPGs(going on 9 or 10 years here.. can't remember exactly) or a crappy history of failing at third person shooters(hate shooters... so terrible at them), I cannot play a game in first person much. Personal preference. Bunch of things really annoy me with it here though.

a) weapon animations
In third person, dual wield power attacks and 2h weapon swings look AWESOME. In first person, I don't get to see this. All I see, regardless of weapon, is the standard "chop slash chop slash". No variation. Same combat animations as Oblivion, which was the first game I started exclusively playing in third person. I don't wield weapons like that irl either.

b ) blocking.
Blocking with a shield eats your entire field of view. If I'm using a shield irl, i can turn my head to see beside it, under it, whatnot. In FPPOV, I cannot see a darned thing of the combat. I understand why, it just doesn't feel right or very "real" to me. If I'm trying to immerse myself in a game, and it doesn't feel natural, it destroys that. The 2h block(technically a parry, but okay) looks okay, as does the 1h(still parry). Shields bug me to no end.

c) you don't see anything. Navigation woes
I feel like a pair of disjointed eyes. I look down at myself standing in my home and I see a pair of briasts, my legs, and feet. I look down at myself standing in FPPOV in TES games and I see... nothing. This is also an issue when I'm trying to make precise acrobatics. I need to run to a specific point on that precipice to get maximum air so I don't hit the canyon below? Good freaking luck with that when I cannot see where my feet are. This right here is a major deal breaker. These are probably minor to most others, but it *really* bugs me.

4. the camera in general

I'm not sure, but I don't believe there's an option to enable mouse look with the camera instead of turning my body in third person. Nothing more annoying than trying to turn the mouse to look off to the side and actually turning in that direction as I run. Have you ever done that IRL? No, you turn your head to the side to see what's going on. I use WASD to move. I use my mouse to change camera direction. I do not want my mouse moving my character's FOV and turning her body. I'm also disappointed with the lack of being able to spin my camera around to look at the front of her with her weapons out. I can do this with weapons sheathed, but if I try it with them readied it spins her around too. Annoying.


Keep in mind, I don't really roleplay much in these games. I dislike attempting to RP in a single player game. I prefer MMO RP, where I can interact with other players as my character, or in Renn Faires or an SCA event where I *am* my character. Not in a single player RPG where I cannot specify what dialog I'm speaking to people, how I say it, act specifically how I want to. It just feels out of place.

I'm curious of what other players' peeves are with the game, and what people's opinions on my peeves are. Keep it civil, no trash talking other people's opinions. It just irritates the moderators and myself(used to be a forum mod for a gaming site myself, I have no tolerance for that kind of junk).

You can attack on both sides of your horse. Try using the left trigger.

The rest is just overly nitpicky.

i think beast races are done much better than morrowind. i mean, the argonians in morrowind walk like they've had a stick shoved up their [censored]

When people are into beast races, they're REALLY into beast races. Khajiit and Argonians have had some of the most particular (and peculiar) fans and encyclopedias worth of complaints / suggestions / recommendations since Morrowind.

PC. And try as I might, it won't let me attack on the left side. I have to dismount to loot anyways so I just do it to fight too.


If you were walking on your toes, you would too. That's the whole point.


This, basically. They look like humans with cat tails and heads or lizard heads and tails.

I think the Khajiits are very well done in Skyrim, tbh.

I think in Morrowind the beast races looked so beast like because of the graphics of the time.

Other than the stiff as nails tail and vertically squished head on the females, yeah they were. For the most part.


I prefer my beast races to have animal legs. The human legs on them looks odd to me. Granted, they probably did it so they could wear boots without having to make special versions of them for it, I think it's lazy. But that's just me.

The graphics at the time had nothing to do with the shape of the legs. The faces and such, yes. The fact that there were sharp corners on other parts of the body, not so much. That was easily fixed by mods. Think it was Robert's Better Bodies, and there was a standalone better faces mod.

*stops reading*

That I will give you, I have found, despite a mod to make them better - bodies in general to be unnaturally stiff in Skyrim...

Actually, I prefer the way they walked in Morrowind. The more beast they are the better.

I agree with you on horses, but I disagree with you about beast bodies. I, for one, am glad that Oblivion returned to its roots and made the beast races more humanoid again. Morrowind was always the redheaded stepchild in that regard.

This is arguably the only game I've played outside Vanguard(who did it the same reason as TES for whatever reason is my best guess) and EverQuest 2(for iksar, ratonga and kerra... Sarnak have the digitigrade legs) that did not use digitigrade legs for beast races. Most games that do that do it simply because it's easier to model gear for humanoid bodies and making it look decent on a beast-y race is more work. See: My face getting smashed in in most closed helms. I would have preferred the mask part removed entirely on Khajiit and Argonians for the masked hoods and the face plate on closed plate helms removed entirely just so my snout doesn't get deformed. That has to hurt :/

I will say that they did a much better job in general with the third person combat animations, and animations in general. They were terrible in Morrowind and Oblivion.

Oh, and I'd like to add on to the "more humanoid origins" for the beast races bit... did you know there's like 16 different versions of Khajiit? There are everything from humanoid/mer looking things with tattooed fur patterns to full on oversized tigers that walk on all fours.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Khajiit

Yeah, if they're going to make different body models for the beast races, the least they can do is make different armor models to match. I simply prefer the more humanoid appearance of the Ohmes and the Ohmes-raht over the bestial appearance of the Suthay-raht of Morrowind.

Edit: Ahem. Ohmes*, not Cathay. Sorry, I obviously need to brush up on my Khajiit genealogy.

I think Khajit and Argonians were well done, as I play hundreds of hours on an Argonian, no real complaints.

Anywho, about female Khajits looking like elves; I think this was done on purpose. The Khajit were originally Bosmer, and I like seeing traces of ancestry. The males too have an elfish gleam to them as well.

Anything else sounds like you're trying to have Bethesda ascend to Gods so they can have a perfect game. It's an Elder Scrolls game, expect flaws which will be fondly remembered when the next game releases.

Indeed. If you use the mod - "Moonpath to Elsweyr" you get to meet the four=legged versions of them. And very utterly cool they are too.