Do giants look really untextured and when the guy swings his sword it doesnt even look like its close to the dragon. Anybody else see these or is it just me?

It's just you.

I think the giant looks very good and cool.
I think it looks like the sword is hitting the dragon.

My only problem is the rapids and partly the HDR at one scene.

Lolz if Bethesda fixes the rapids, 99.99% of the complaints will go away.

Jesus, the rapids are not even bad. Tired of everyone crying over that.

I mean, haven't they seen the other water? (sigh)

What is "rapids"

rapids is fast flowing water

I think it is in reference to the River flowing down through the rocks in a cut scene from the trailer release. If so though, I thought it was quite good.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid

Ah, ok. Thanks!

Oh yeah I have, which is why that rapids scene is a little jarring.

Instead of focusing on the flat texture, focus on how the water is hitting the rocks. It looks really awesome.

It's just you. That giant looked very cool and more than a little scary. What kind of bones did he have on his belt? They are huge!

Looked like a troll skull.

I think for an open world game like this, the rapids look awesome. Anyways let's not get off topic on this.

I think the open world game excuse is a pretty bad one in this case.
Decent rapids can be done without eating up the CPU, if that's what you mean (since that's usually what seperates open world games from other games in terms of limitations).
This has nothing to do with it being an RPG. Good rapids exist in many forms in many kinds of games. Yes, miraciously even open world games.

But you're right, totally going off topic.

They look worse when you pause them than when they are moving. If you pay attention to the cave scene, the water work there is actually VERY nice. But no, I think they worked on the collisions a bit, so they are more realistic.

I keep bringing this up, scale is a huge issue.
In painting a smaller normal sized creature has more detail and texture.
This is due to being able to hold multipule shades and many details very close to one and another.

Larger objets can't, they get stuck with block details.
Single coats of large areas of the same tones, texture and colours.
Muscles are larger, but more even spaced and hold less shades, compared to small normal sized six packs for shade and colour diffusion.
No small belts, jewelry knives, boots, shirts, trousers to break up the basic colours.

Creatures like dragons have scales and can break up the colours a bit better, but only barely.
Giant humaniods of flesh tones are just a pain and require a masters touch to show details more so than smaller shapes.

The simple fact is the larger something is, the harder it is to paint life like textures to it.
Most often a painter will just splash single coats on and mess up details, or flood it with too many shades and colours creating a tie dye effect.