he's right in a way, COD and what it represents is crippling creativity, innovation and bold risks in videogame development.

Happy with most everything. I don't like that for so many quests you only have the option to say a single line to continue or to just leave mid-conversation. And not all quests are like that, just far too many for an RPG in my opinion.

Best game ever however I'm at 12mb on PS3 and the frame rate is appalling.

Considering it's a game after all, if the gameplay mechanics fail everything else goes down the drain. And Skyrim has proved that it cannot even balance the three basic archetypes of the RPG genre.

call me a fan boy. but i am overwhelmingly satisfied with this game.
maybe its because i didnt ruin it for myself with over-hyping and disappointments about losing spears.

How is it not balanced? lol...

LOL

Well maybe I'm too low level at the moment, but I haven't had any problems on any of the archetypes. (<20)

Care to elaborate on "LOL"?

Happy, happy, etc... I love Skyrim in every way and I love Bethesda for making it.

There should be a middle option in this poll.

For example, with the quests, some of them are really well written, interesting and fun. Yet there are others which are just a bit pointless, you can't really ganeralize it into one answer.

I liked Morrowind better than Oblivion. So for me Skyrim is an excellent return to form for Bethesda.

A bit dissapointed with the length of the guild quest chains I've played so far, and I thought the cities would be bigger and more densely populated - but it's an awesome game

I'm close to the line between happy and disappointed on all aspects.

The music being one of the closest to that line for me. I do like the new music we've gotten, especially inside of Taverns and Inns. I like the 1 or 2 tunes we got from Morrowind, don't really like the Fallout 3 tune we got (pretty sure it's from FO) and I don't like the fact that the music doesn't play often enough in the wilderness.

The mechanics are okay, the UI is the worst thing out of all of them. The perk tree is cool but I wish it could be navigated easier on the PC. I also wish you could get more perk points than just from leveling up. I do like the way all skills count towards a level up though. Not as in depth and complicated as Morrowind or Oblivion, but that's okay..sometimes simple is good too.

I am not far into the story but I like it so far and the quests seem the same as they've always been really. The dialogue is top notch I think. There should be a lot more variables but that's only a minor bother, it's not needed.

The ambiance is great. Dragonflies, butterflies, birds, non hostile wildlife, hunters..fugitives..all great. Definitely a step up from their previous games. There could be a lot more of that type of thing but that's a minor nitpick, it's still better than it's ever been.

Overall it seems like Skyrim evolved more than devolved. Sure some things got dumbed down or removed, but other things got enhanced. Overall I'd say it's about 60/40 on the ehanced/removed scale. That opinion might change the more I play the game though.

Story is a bit shallow but the optional stuff is sweet (Companions, College, Thieves, Dark brotherhood, etc.)

Stats and perks and stuff is a bit disappointing with the fewer stat options.

Everything else I love. Love the looks, sound, active horizon. Love the random encounters. WAY! better than oblivion. An overall, extremely FUN!

I'm happy with everything except the UI.

I really like the game it's great but should have been better in some areas. A better poll would have been a scale of 1-10 on the OP's poll.

Apart from the bugs (not as bad as F:NV) it's a great game.

After looking forward to this game for about five years..... I am pretty pleased with everything really. I am a little disappointed at how quickly I have leveled, I would really like to stay and enjoy the game without becoming such a high level so quickly. I really would have liked attributes to stay, though I do like the perk system, I would just like to level more than just health, magicka and stamina as I think that the attributes would add more to the customization of my characters. I also had a little graphics issues but these were fixed when I downloaded a patch. Aside from that, I really enjoy all the little things that are going on in Skyrim that really make it seem like a real living world. The quests too, often times, are more emotionally weighted that make me feel something when I do them, even if they are just simple things like clearing out the Frostflow Lighthouse and discovering what happened there.

I would like longer guild quests, attributes and slower leveling, and this game would be perfect. I am still happy with it though, very much and I can't wait to see what Bethesda does for DLC.

I was happy with the game at first. I thought that it was going to get game of the year no problem. I thought i would be absolutely shocked if it didn't get game of the year.

But then i learned more about how the game worked. How the companion quest line was bugged. How the best way to level blacksmithing is to make an iron dagger over and over again until your capped. How all the quest rewards are scaled to your level. And how the stormcloaks quests have you fighting level 1 difficulty monsters the whole time and all their quests are repetitive and boring. It feels like Bethesda worked really really hard on making a great world and great dungeons for 4-5 years then spent the last week of development making the quests and balancing the skills.

Visual & Audio

Happy

Gameplay & Mechanics (Skills/Perks/Level progression)

Disappointed

Story (Quests / Dialogue etc.)

Happy

Ambience (The 'Alive' background world)

Happy

Evolution (Oblviion --> Skyrim)

Disappointed

This was meant to be an 'overall' and you're pushed into 1 or the other

Generally happy.But I must mention that it is because this came after Oblivion.If it came after Morrowind,I would have more disappointments.

But so far,the only thing I picked disappointed in the poll was story and quests.Way too one-sided and linear.

It's like a fairy tale with absolute good and absolute bad.Bad guys are TOO obvious and you can easily predict who will be dead and who will be hero as soon as you meet them.Winterhold College is a perfect example for this.No plot twists,nothing unexpected...Boring.

Why can I not try to get along with Thalmor? I'm really waiting for a TES game where you can choose whose side you are on.Okay,let's put that aside for a moment.At least make it so that I can fool myself into getting along with them.Yesterday I went to the Thalmor Embassy Party.My intention was to steal the info without killing anybody,and the game totally FORCES you to slaugter the Altmer there.That was a huge disappointment,at least make the quests doable in more than one way.Peacefully and forcefully...This is something even non-RPG games are trying to do to an extent.


And why is there no single reasonable high elf in this game?
I understand the racism of the Nords is a part of the lore,but even the High Elf merchants act like bad guys.What,have they become the tolkien orcs of TES now? I like elves over man and the game is an insult in this matter.

Totally happy! It's purrfect :3

Happy in pretty much everything. Aside from some possible enemy leveling issues. I seem to be getting kicked around a bit too much even at high level.

I can't say I really miss the stats. It's mainly a throwback to P&P games, except in those you could never really become Demigod of Everything. At least, you're not supposed to. I don't miss having to keep an eye on what stats I'm aiming for and what skills I want to use this level in order to stack modifiers without gimping myself later. I spend less time plotting and more time playing. That might be "dumbing it down" but I can't see it as a negative. If I want a complex stat based RPG, I'll bust out an old D&D game..or the real thing.

So most people are happy about everything, good to know.

Me, I'm fairly happy with the visuals and music, and skyrim is a far better game than oblivion.