I am playing this game on the PC.

Unlike many people that bought Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim I did not have any preconceived notions about it. I didn't really follow any of the preview stuff and may have caught the odd trailer here and there but didn't set out discover anything particular about the game. It wasn't even on my "looking to play" list, and I really did not think much of it before it came out. Before Skyrim I have never played an Elder Scrolls game. I was never really into PC RPGs when I was younger, and though I had a decent computer by the time that Oblivion came out that game gave me the impression it would be over-hyped and barely functional (from what I understand, I was not far off in that prediction).

The only game I've played previous to Skyrim that was developed by Bethesda Softworks was Fallout 3. Which I really couldn't get into. You see, Fallout 3 would crash about 2 times out of 3 if I tried to enter a building that was near the lower left portion of the map. This made it impossible to do the main story. I did do, or attempt to do, tons of the side stuff in the northern areas of the map, I found that many of them were near impossible for me to do. OR perhaps I was just terrible at it. Regardless I came away from that game with an outstanding "meh" towards it. There were certainly things that I really enjoyed, but felt it was too much of a chore to get working and never came back to it.

So as you could probably guess, my expectations for Skyrim were essentially nonexistent. So why did I pay 60 dollars and wait 4 hours for it to download on a Sunday after it was released? Well, as the competitive fighting game community will tell you, hype is an interesting thing. I have a tendency to believe that the more hyped up something is, the worse the product will be, and after watching various coverage of this game and hearing people talk about how near-life changing it was (when it looked pretty bland from the coverage), I could not resist the temptation to find out what it was really like.

One of my favorite things in the world is to be proven wrong. After my time in Skyrim, I can pretty confidently say that as a game, it's alright. It's not the bug ridden hell that other Bethesda games are known to be, however it is far from a shining example of what a modern game should be and had tons of really major and frankly bizarre design flaws. I cannot say that I did not enjoy what I have played so far. Nor would I condemn anyone for liking or disliking Skyrim. However the amount of ravenous praise that the game is receiving is still completely and totally inconceivable to me. It's certain not "RPG Of the Decade" like a certain other game that came out earlier this year. (teehee) Allow me to break down the aspects I like and dislike about Skyrim.

LIKES!:

• The music, atmosphere, and general sound design. As someone who is a composer of music and an audio hobbyist (oh someday it will be my profession!), having well produced audio is always a plus. Who doesn't love that Level Up sound? It's brilliant! It ironic, makes the player feel powerful, and fits with the theme and setting. Prefect. There are some sounds and here and that are a bit lackluster, (the stone doors in particular are obviously just cinder blocks being dragged on a concrete floor,) but overall the sound production is great through out the game.
• The combat. I'm playing as a Breton with a loose focus on magic, archery, and stealth. One of the things I didn't really take to in Fallout 3 was the combat. I could never seem to figure out how not to die in that game. In Skyrim however, I'm having a blast sneaking around sniping people with my bow then burning them if the detect me. I found that it's always better to travel with a companion to help with large groups on enemies, but will get to companions a little later. I've really enjoy fighting the 4 or 5 dragons I've come across. I could see it getting a bit stale once I've taken down my 20th, but right now the battles and challenging and fun.
• The perk/leveling system. I am a major fan of complex and obtuse leveling systems. It's one of things that attracted me to games like D'n'D and Dark Souls. That doesn't mean that I don't appreciate a simplification. Skyrim does something really interesting with it's leveling system. In some ways it builds upon what games like Final Fantasy 2 explored, but also asks the player a very simple question. "Do you want more magic, health, or stamina?" This, for the most part, allows the player to focus on how they want to play the game and allows them to experiment with relatively low risk. While I wouldn't say that it is a prefect system, but it generally seems to work pretty well.
• Non-game breaking bugs. Experiencing "jank" in video games has become a growing endeavor of mine in the last couple of years. When a game breaks in a way that's funny or non-inconvenient it adds a lot of fun to that game. Sure it completely breaks immersion, but as we'll see later, immersion is not a problem with Skyrim. I've had tons of fun little bugs in Skyrim that always cause giggles of delight. For example, my horse decided it would be a wonderful thing to just fly off and land in a tree. Another time, an NPC just jumped into a line of dialogue concerning a quest I had without me even prompting her or being aware of her involvement. It was very surprising. I've only had one game breaking bug, but fortunately, I had saved shortly before it happened and could not get it to repeat.
• Being able to quite to the desktop without having to go back to the main screen. More games need to do this.

DISLIKES!:

I wish every game had infinite time to be made and the craftsmen who poor so much labor into these silly yet beloved pass time of ours could truly realize their visions. Unfortunately it is very clear that some major things were cut from Skyrim and it seems few that have had such excitement for this product are willing to admit that. Deciding to either ignore or accept them. Well I'd rather point them out.

Now, I'm perfectly aware that these criticisms are my opinions and you may not share them. That's fine. I would like to ask, however, if you open the topics to debate instead of out right ignoring them as if you like or dislike something you should be able to explain yourself in an intelligent manner. Otherwise, why even have the opinions in the first place? (Don't answer that.)

• The menu system is awkward. I like collection junk as much as most fans of the genre, but really it would be nice if they allowed you to sort your inventory by other things instead of just category and alphabetically. Sorting, value, usefulness, would all be really helpful and it boggles my mind why they wouldn't do that in the first place. The favorite system is really great and makes items, weapons, and spells that you know you'll use really easy to access... in theory, but in practice I found myself wading through tons of stuff looking for my sword or a certain spell. If I could arrange my favorite in what ever order I want. Weapons, Magic, Potions, Food. Or whatever order a player would want. You can bind favorited things to 1 through 8 on the keyboard on PC version, but that begs the question, why not 9 through = as well? (NOTE: I haven't actually checked if there is a way to include those last four buttons, but by default you can't bind things to them.)

• There aren't any characters in Skyrim. Well perhaps that's a bit harsh and quite untrue, but as to where I am in the story (just finished with the Greybreads and have been doing some side stuff in that general area) every character I've come across is flat and sterile. I think the only character that I remembered the name of was my current companion Lydia. I've done a couple quests for the werewolf group (oh aren't they called the Companions?), but other than them being werewolves and having a very low bar to who they accept into their circle I couldn't tell you much about them (SHIELD-BROTHER). It took all of three quests to get into their highest circle and to learn their secrets. People are incredibly trustful in this game. "We won't let you into the city!" "I have information for the Jarl!" "Alright then." Really? That's was easy.
  The companions are the worst though. Early on you can ask a bard to come along with you on your journeys and I thought "Oh awesome! He'll write music about me and have all these clever bardic witty comments to flavor my journey! It will be great!" But alas, there were no witty comments, no songs. He just kind of tagged along. Only saying a few generic lines that any character of any race, gender, class, build, what-have-you could say. Shortly after I ran into a woman in an inn and beat her up because she asked me too. I was all "Oh cool, she'll be sharing wonderful stories of her travels..." and well you can probable see where this is going. They have no personality to them what-so-ever and are essentially just pact animals for your to give your extra crap when you reach your weight limit. Now it seems that there are a lot of people that you can have tag along with you, so having tons of unique dialogue for all of them would be impossibly ambitious, but maybe this is one of the many places they should have opted for quality instead of quantity.
  There is a lot going on in the world of Skyrim, but having such flat character has made it incredibly difficult to get into. I'm a big fan of the whole civil war plots in RPGs. It's one of the reasons why games like the Suikoden franchise and the Witcher 2 really resonated with me. Those games, however, have incredible characters with motivation. faults, and arcs. I don't care about a single character I've come across in Skyrim. It's actually really tempting to just try to kill off every single one I come across just to see what happens, but I doubt I'd be able to survive. This leads into another issue I have with the story telling in the game.
• You cannot role play in this Role Playing Game. Why is my character in Skyrim? We're told that we were caught trying to get over the boarder at the start of the game. Why were we trying to get into the region? This could have very easily be explained during the intro by having one of the NPC's asking you, and then depending on your answer you could get a small stat bonus or some type of item. The intro is pretty haphazard in general. I see what they're trying to go for, but I don't think they pulled it off very well. For example, say you ended up choosing to be a cat man, but none of the NPCs happen to mention it during your cart ride despite there being very strong sense of racist towards the cat people in this world. Just about any race that isn't a Nord would have most likely gotten some sort of comment during that cart ride. Let's move on from that.
  The game offers very little dialogue options. You really can't express your intentions to all the various characters in game and thus can't really feel anything towards those characters, which in turn makes them stale and uninteresting. Regardless of who is playing as the Dragonborn, everyone will have the exact same conversations with anyone they run into in Skyrim. Why even bother having a silent protagonist then? If every single player will have the same experience through the story (the "speech" stat options aren't deep enough to count as a different) then why not just record some voices? This is by far the most disappointing part of the game and is the major source of any animosity I have towards this game. Video games, especially RPGs, have matured passed the silent protagonist, but if it must exist at least they could have given us some actual choice in this game. Not just big binary choices like "Imperials or Rebels" either.
  On the PC version talking to people can be awkward. The controls aren't really consistent. Sometimes when I click on the option, it chooses it like expected and everything is dandy, but other times it chooses a different one or the same one that I just heard. This is regardless to where that little ridicule is too and can be really annoying.
• The World is Flat. There is no shortage of lore in the Elder Scrolls universe, but because of the previous two bullet points you probably wouldn't really know that since you don't get a sense of the world from the the people that inhabit it. There is no doubt that you will stubble upon hundreds of various books in your journey through Skyrim. You'll probably even open each one to see if it boosts your skills or teaches you a new spell, but you can also read the ones that do to find out more about the world of Skyrim in the most exposition-al way possible.
  I'm not against having books/PDAs/What-have-you's in games that help flush out the fiction a bit, but when the majority is only explained in such a way, I think there is a problem. Admitted, I haven't been clicking on every dialogue option or hearing everything everyone has to say for reasons mentioned above, so maybe they to exposit about everything you can read in this various books. It would be nice if after collecting these books that their contents were all dropped into some sort of codex/journal, but at last, I don't think anything like that exists within the game.
• There's a lot to do, but not really. A lot of the quests so far have been go kill these bandits, or get back this item, or something else that leads to some else that's very similar and uninspiring. While I have done more then a hand full of quests, most of them were all kind of the same thing. I just wish there was a bit more variety early on. I mean how many ancient tombs filled with undead can there be in such a small area? Turns out, quite a bit!

So far what I have determined is that Skyrim is kind of a mediocre game that feels either rushed, poorly paced, or both. This is essentially how I ended up feeling about Final Fantasy 13. Based off what I've played, I don't think I would recommend this game to anyone. I will certainly play more of it, because I don't think I've discovered what people see in it yet and for a game that could easily be 200 hours worth of time, maybe there's something in there. I will at least finish up the main story thread and maybe do that "About last night" (or what ever it was called) quest.

EDIT: I posted this to the wrong forum, but whatever.