My thoughts on Skyrim could probably be summarized by my experiences with the College of Winterhold.
Spoiler'd due to huge rant. It may contain some spoilers for the College of Winterhold, but that questline is a shaggy dog story so there's nothing to really spoil.
Act I
The first thing that was apparent was the UI. I was expecting it to be an unabashed console port, but I was at least expecting them to conform to some degree of standards. Instead, it appears that it was designed by someone who has not only never played a PC game, but has never even encountered a keyboard and mouse, possibly managing to performs all of their programming on a Xbox controller. The mouse sensitivity is different in the vertical and horizontal axis, it switches randomly between keyboard and mouse controls, and all of the menus have a built in lag, meaning that even once you master the unintuitive interface it is still painstakingly slow.
I started the game off doing that damnable Golden Claw quest, and it almost made me think that the game was worse than Oblivion. My character was led through a linear dialogue and then sent off to fight his way through a conveniently linear hallway filled with undead. This seemed to indicate that the dialog system is unable to convey lore and develop characters in the way that Morrowind's could and that it has not advanced from Oblivion's “click here for quest A, click here for quest B”. As much as I wanted to, I couldn't ask him why he had a giant, suspiciously videogame level-like structure a kilometer from his house, or why it was crawling with undead (I should note that this was later explained by, of all things, a loading screen). Compare this to Morrowind's opening quests; Hasphat Antabolis gives you quite a bit of information on the Dwemer, starting you on the game's central “disappearance of the Dwemer” mystery, and Sharn gra-Muzgob introduces you to the policies of the Temple, broaching on the cultural conflict that separates the Imperials and Dunmer and explaining why the landscape is dotted with well-kept tombs filled with undead guardians.
Act II
Figuring that the main quest would be boring and irrelevant like in Oblivion, I trekked up to the far northwest to join the College of Winterhold. After having the stereotypical old mentor lecture me on proper magical safety, we were off to an archeological dig. Deep beneath the earth, we found the MacGuffin and were contacted by a member of the Psijic Order. The pieces of the mystery were set out. I figured that this would be the College of Winterhold's “disappearance of the Dwemer”, tying together the First War and the Night of Tears, the disappearance of Artaeum and the PSJJJJ, the disbandment of mysticism as a school, the destruction of Winterhold, and the creation of the Augur. I also found that the dwemer ruins had returned in full force, and that there were new lore books about them. The conflict between the Imperials, Nords, and Thalmor was a refreshing break from Oblivion's boring setting. Spellcasting was also becoming more fun; impact finally made the build not a pain to play and watching a skeleton's bones explode across the room when hit by a fireball is never unsatisifying.
Act III
The problem came when I was told that I had to go into another skeleton infested hallway to recover the Plot Token to save the world. As always, whenever a TES game tells me that I must urgently do something I assume that it's an excuse to get me to go on a boring mission. In this case, I proceeded to bugger off and fight every major battle of the civil war instead. So after grabbing the Plot Token at my own leisure I returned to the college to protect it from the obvious Thalmor spy, who, instead of taking the interesting route and try to politic the MacGuffin away or steal it during the night tapped into it and sat there until I came to kill him. While I had been disappointed by the fact that the quests thus far had consisted far more of repeatedly killing skeletons than developing the central mystery, I was still certain that the game wouldn't disappoint. So I was appalled when the Psijic monk teleported the MacGuffen away, told me that it was too powerful, and proceeded to make me archmage, college procedure be damned.
So I came away from the experience with no new knowledge, no new lore, no solution, and the same Luddite, anti-intellectual moral of Oblivion's Mage's Guild questline. The Psijics we met in Morrowind and Oblivion weren't ultra-mysterious dicks used to cover the writer's laziness, and previously the PSJJJJ didn't have any problem with friend/possible member Sotha Sil using a divine artifact to gain god-like power.
As the game wore on, I started to notice more and more flaws. The few spells are satisfying to cast, but there are very few of them and many are either useless or become obsolete over time. Daggerfall and Morrowind were two of the only games where I actually felt like a wizard instead of a JRPG inspired class who “casts the spells that makes the peoples fall down”. Every effort has been taken in Skyrim to remove the freedom that playing a mage used to provide. The game also has a tendency to block your view with spell effects or HDR pupil dilation every time you cast a spell or one is cast on you. I've fought dragon battles without even seeing what I'm shooting at.
Although the setting isn't the fine gray mush of Oblivion, I still haven't seen a character developed beyond the quote that they greet you with every time you talk to them. Whereas the Great House and faction leaders in Morrowind were a diverse and scheming lot, the Jarls of Skyrim don't seem to have any ambition beyond supporting Ulfric or the Empire. Furthermore, the leaders of Morrowind were engaged in an intense cold war, although they were just as likely to be disposed by intrafaction strife as interfaction. Morrowind's conflicts weren't all resolved by fighting a corridor full of nameless goons, and I think that this is a property that needs to be returned to the Elder Scrolls. This is likely why the Thieves' Guild and Dark Brotherhood are the only popular factions in the new games. Also, while they have an excuse for reducing the armor slots due to low-quality console hardware developer laziness “displaying more actors on the screen”, I have no idea what their justification is for removing the second ring slot.
Unfortunately, given the low modability of Oblivion and the extent to which this game is a console port, I'm not expecting miracles from the modding community. The game is still better than Oblivion, and possibly even GOTY, but I think that like Oblivion it's going to be a game that is played once and forgotten.
On a lighter note, what do you think is going to be the quote that becomes emblematic of the game? We've had “HALT” from Daggerfall, “I'm watching you, scum” from Morrowind, and “Stop right there criminal scum” from Oblivion (although pretty much everything that the guards say in Oblivion is quotable).
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Topic: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Read 1602485 times)