I know alot of people have gotten Skyrim and am kinda surprised nobody started a thread about it. 

So I just finished the main quest. 



I honestly cant say that I found the game to be too interesting.  The world was big, but extremely bland.  I found the worlds in Fallout to be more unique and that was a post nuclear wasteland.  The towns on the outside may have looked different but once you went into a building they look like they were just copied and pasted.  Same for the dungeons/caves.  The neatest looking place was probably Blackreach.

Not a fan of the AI AT ALL.  Many times I killed things I should have no business killing because they wont step over a rock or cross a river.  Giants and Mammoths were very terrible with this.  I've killed multipleof both on plenty of occasions because of it.  First giant I killed I was LVL3.  LEVEL3!!  I let it chase me all the way back to the Whiterun stables.  I hopped up on a roof and shot arrows at it.  It seemed like the only time I died was when I got a bounty and I refused to pay it so all the guards would come after me.

The actual dialog I found to be boring and pretty linear.  Half the time instead of responding to what you chose they would often go half way back to what they just said and repeat it and regardless of what options you chose to speak it eventually led to the same end 90% of the time. 

The game even now after a few patches still suffers from some obvious consolitis. When I first started the game creating a character was so weird.  I couldnt tell how to navigate the interface.   Even now when cycling through inventory there is an icon next to the list that NORMALLY is the items thats highlighted.  Sometimes this is not the case and the highlighted item is not whats next to that icon.  This had led me drinking potions that I didnt need, selling things I needed.  You can tell the GUI was made for a controller and not a mouse. The FOV is painfully low too. 

I also ran into a glitch when getting Esbern from under Riften(?).  I walked up to the door and he wouldnt say anything, essentially stopping the game.  At first it could be solved by no clipping in the console, going through the door, and striking up the reaminder of the conversation with him.  Latest patch took out clipping.  This bug now requires you to download a 3rd party program, extract sound from one of the sound files, and copy them to the Skyrim folder.  WTF?

The last 3 games I bought at full price or, on or very close to release have not lived up to their expectations.  Homefront, BF3, Skyrim.  Maybe when I pay $60 for a game I expect too much.  But when I buy a game @ $5 like say.... BRINK (yes im pimping BRINK again a-holes) I dont expect much and then am pleasantly surprised when it turns out to be half way decent.

Your Skyrim opinions please?

Czar,  I'm punching you in the face next time I see you for that stupid arrow joke.

ahhh crap i didnt even see the spoiler button in the toolbar.  i tried the vbulletin [spoiler=inserttitle] tag but it didnt work.

thanks to whoever edited it in :D

I got 29hrs into Skyrim.  I'm sure I've spent $60 over the course of 29hrs on much dumber things.  In the end it was worth it I suppose, I'm just saying I've bought better games for much less.    Sure theres tons of side quests, and even unlimited quests if you include going to the Jarls for work.    However even the side quests also felt repetitive after awhile.  That was the whole feeling of the game... repetition.  I didnt get this feeling playing the Fallout series by Bethesda.  I cant exactly put my finger on why. 

I changed the FOV in the ini too.  As you did, it was also the first thing I changed.  Why I had to change it at all is what bugs me.  That just screams console port, right along with the menu gui.   The whole menu navigation system was a joke at first.  You get used to it pretty easy, but when you actually think about how they implemented it I cant help but think WTF. 

It was a console port.  Thats not necessarily a bad thing if you can change the game to fit the system you're porting to.  Look at BC2.  Another obvious console port.  But probably one of the best console ports I've ever seen.  The ONLY option that needed to be changed was fov.  They reworked the entire menu system to make it more mouse friendly.  I applaud them for that.

The AI is still completely useless.  Both enemies and Lydia.  I focused alot on sneak and archery.  So when I'm sneaking, if that first shot doesnt kill the enemy Lydia goes charging in, normally in front of me so I cant get another shot off.  Even if I tell her to stay put.

Just my lowly $.02.  Not necessarily a bad game by any stretch, I just dont think it was all it was hyped up to be.

ps - Bethesda needs to make an MMO. 
Though not by Bethesda I cant wait for Fallout Online
http://www.fallout-on-line.com/

I have 76 hours played into Skyrim and I've enjoyed ever hour played. I didn't play the game the traditional way but rather waited until I was leveled up a good bit before starting the main quest line. I was level 35 and never killed a Dragon. It's not so bad because until you kill the first dragon, they don't randomly spawn so I was able to freely roam the worlds of Skyrim dragon free lol.

I've gotten bored of the quest lines after the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild but it hasn't stopped me from stealing everything and making CRAZY COIN OH YEAH! To me it has high replay value since you can play the game so many different ways (Tanky hack and slash and shield bash everything, Rogue style sneak around and 1 shot everything with backstabs, Kill dragons in 4 hits as a Archer who shoots from 30 yards away, Mage who throws crazy magic fireballs of doom..you get the point). When you play a game, beat it, then turn around roll another toon and beat it again... I would say those type of games are worth the moneys. Skyrim fits that criteria in my book. If only it had some deathmatch or team deathmatch multiplayer arena element . That would of put this game to another level in my opinion.

Oblivion was my first experience of the Elder Scrolls games and I was blown away by the vastness of the game.  I loved how even though you could choose to do anything, when you made your mind up that you wanted to follow through a quest, it guided you with the compass and quest book.

I was happy they didn't mess with the formula with Skyrim and although it's nearly as buggy as Oblivion was and I'm not too big on them taking away the ability to make your own spells and the level up process is a little too constrained, everything else has been improved.  The world, although still beatiful, is different enough to feel like a new world.

The AI does still take you out of the mood when it does stupid stuff.  Like recently, i was on a quest and a group of us was supposed to kill some bad guys.  Well, i had this Fire Storm spell that takes all my magic but does so much damage that it kills EVERYONE around me, friend or foe.  So i told all the good guys to stay back while i snook in wearing the bad guy's armor to make them think I'm one of them.  As soon as they started getting suspicious, i let loose the spell... But what i didn't realize was my friends decided they'd help anyway.  Well a few of them got killed in the blast.  Maybe it's more realistic that they didn't really listen to me.  I dunno.  But the fact that the game allows for such variety in how you can choose to go about doing a task is pretty awesome.

Steam says I've played about 140 hours so far and I'm around level 35ish.  Only major quests I haven't done yet are the main and the assassins.  Can't wait to do both.  I spent a great deal of time just exploring around and learning about the cities, the Jarl's, etc.  I think it makes it much more interesting when you then go through the Civil War questline and realize how much changes at its completion.  Not giving away any spoilers, but some of the changes could easily be missed if you did the civil war quest first before doing any other quests or exploring and then wouldn't know anything had changed.  I kinda wish I didn't wait so long to do the Thieves Guild quest as some of the perks you get near its completion would have been so handy before now.

Skyrim My Little Pony Dragon Mod

Installing this mod NOW. 

<sinister laugh>
i get to kill some ponies
</sinister laugh>

Potential Spoilers depending on if you live under a rock
I specifically stayed pretty general, but if you didn't know there was a thieves guilde, oops.

(preface:  I've never played morrowind):

I'm loving me some skyrim, but when I think back on all the stuff i've done in skyrim and think back on Oblivion, there are more quests in Oblivion that I remember with fondness, like a good book.  Skyrim is technically better than Oblivion in every way except for meaningful quests.

Exploring the world:  I actually give this a tie.  I remember fondly on how gorgeous (at the time), the world was in Oblivion and Skyim is just as gorgeous, again if you take the advancements in the last few years out of the equation.
Caves:  Skyrim wins hands down.  Each cave is unique, the zombies laying on the shelves and waking up randomly if you wake them, etc.
Opening locks:  waaaaay easy in Skyrim which makes the lack of unlock spells a moot point
Spells:  Animation is great in Skyrim and varied, but I really miss being able to make my own spells in Oblivion - tie
Quests:  Once you're done just exploring the world in Skyrim and really get down to doing all the quests... Oblivion's quests were longer and much deeper and meaningful.  - Oblivion wins
Dragons or Oblivion Gates:  Both were really cool at the beginning and both get annoying after a while, but Dragons can be killed so quickly and Oblivion gates required a long time to find the ball to close it, so Dragons wins (and Skyrim).

Dark Brotherhood:  Oblivion wins hands down.  Skyrim's Assassins Guild members wear gay clothing and the quest just doesn't compare to what happened in Oblivion
Thieves Guild:  I give this a tie:  both are decent length and both interesting
Mage Guild:  Oblivion wins.  So quick and the results just aren't that meaningful or rewarding in Skyrim when you complete the quest.
Fighter's Guild vs Companions:  Oblivion wins.  Again, the quests were longer and the result much more meaningful.  Companions was incredibly short and although what you get is pretty cool, I really don't use it all that often, unless I go on a momentary suicide run and load back to my prior save.

Civil War:  One of the best parts of Skyrim with regards to quests.  Having it impact the world and be all around you and even though it's not the "main quest" it really was very well done.  Again, the end result is not that rewarding, but I enjoyed having aspects of the quest all around you before you even begin it.

Main quest:  incredibly short in Skyrim and although I really enjoyed it, the final battle was pretty quick and was anti-climactic.  Oblivion was much more involved and the result was something tangible that made you feel like you did something.