Anyone else playing? To the dismay of my bank balance, I gave in on Saturday and bought it. Played about 15 hours so far, and have only done 1 quest, which is testament to the vast open world. I've spent almost the whole of that time trying to make my way to some dude I've been sent to kill, but keep getting sidetracked (ooo what's that? Let's go look at it/fill it with arrows. Ooo what's that? Let's go look at it/fill it with arrows etc etc.).

The PC interface is pretty horrible (hoping someone will mod it soon). It does the job but obviously had very little work put in to making it sensible for mouse and keyboard. There is also a smattering of little bugs (I found a shop owner sat on an invisible chair in the street half a town away from their store still selling stuff, and the pot I walked into in an Inn which flew through the air hitting someone and making the patrons ass stompingly cross with me), but nothing game breaking though so far.

Overall, so far, pretty damn good, certainly better than Oblivion.

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I am looking forward to playin this. It's at the top of my list of games I want to play.
I've been trying not to pay $60 for games though so I may wait a while before I pick it up.

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Do not bore me with such trite cliches. For I have you in my clutches, and should I choose, I could snuff out your insignificant lives in an instant.

I was trying to do that as well, but I was on voice coms with my EVE corp on Friday night, and all but 3 of us were playing Skyrim, so there was constant running commentary about how awesome everything was. Then I logged on Facebook on Saturday morning, and was met with a stream of Skyrim related stuff from all my friends. I caved.

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Yeah, I may quit smoking to afford this game.

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This was the world that I had created. I know what I have to do to fix it...to make things right. There's no problem that can't be solved.

I just got this for the 360, and yea, its awesome. I found some bugs too, but with a world this large it is to be expected...they have had these kind of glitches in ever version I have played.

From the way you made it sound, you weren't a big fan of Oblivion?

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Oblivion was by no means a bad game particularly, I just felt it was a long way short of Morrowind. I just didn't find the world all that interesting, and proceded through the main quest line at a pretty fast pace. Normally in open world games I spend most of my time exploring and doing side-quests untill I eventually start to feel that I really should do something about (event/maguffin/person) that all the NPCs keep mentioning. For something I picked up in a Steam sale for £4 a few months ago (when it came out my PC was well short of the specs, and I just kinda forgot about it) it was pretty good, but I think if I'd paid full retail I would have been unhappy.

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I had the opposite experience with Oblivion. By the time my main character had logged 100 hours I still hadn't touched the main quest.
It was my first foray into the Elder Scrolls games, however.

But I really took to just wandering around.

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Do not bore me with such trite cliches. For I have you in my clutches, and should I choose, I could snuff out your insignificant lives in an instant.

There are things about it which I'm not too happy about. Things which I think were better in Oblivion, but they are sort of minor details which added a level of polish to the game.

I don't like the menus at all, they're obviously designed with a controller in mind rather than a mouse. They also don't fit the world at all, they look like they belong in a game with a contemporary or futuristic setting. Oblivion had a sort of parchment style that fit the game perfectly. Also, the quest logs seem to be lackluster. There's a section labelled "Miscellaneous" which just has a bunch of objectives and no background or information around them.

In Oblivion, every quest - no matter how small - was meticulously detailed in the menus. You could forget a quest for weeks and then read your logs and be brought completely up to speed. In Skyrim you check your log and it says "Speak to [Some dude]."

I also don't get why they switched from having separate items of clothing for torso and legs to just having one item for both. Just seems like a strange decision to me.

Don't get me wrong, though, once I got out of the intro I was hooked. It's definitely an Elder Scrolls game and I definitely enjoy it. The fact that I am picking on these minor frustrations is a testament to how great the foundations are.

It does, however, in a lot of ways feel (And I hate to use this term, it's such a PC-elitist thing to say) dumbed-down. Same with the leveling system, now there are only 3 stats.

I am excited to see what sort of mods come out of it. There's already a few popping up.

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That's sad to hear. Oblivion wasn't all that difficult if you gave it a chance. I always told people if they could learn to navigate the menus they'd like it.

Dumbing down is what killed the X-Men Legends/Ultimate Alliance games for me. By the time UA2 came out there was no character building left, just the illusion of it.
I suppose it's inevitable since deveopers want the game to be accessible to as many people as possible. Most people don't want to "learn" how to play a game.
There are games I won't take the time to figure out but I don't expect to have them diluted for me.

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Do not bore me with such trite cliches. For I have you in my clutches, and should I choose, I could snuff out your insignificant lives in an instant.

The controller system does seem a lot better on Console then the previous version, but I can definitely see why PC users would be bugged by it.

And I have to agree on the stats thing. I love building up stats in RPG's, and to only have 3 seems a bit weak sauce to me.

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