What are your little disappointments? You know, little, seemingly inconsequential things that matter more to you than they should. Perhaps they are new features or just problems you blithely expected to have been fixed since Oblivion but weren't. These little things add up, I find. I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with Skyrim, and all of Bethesda Softworks's games, and I think it has a lot to do with the little things.

While animation in Skyrim is significantly better than in Oblivion, I was expecting a much bigger improvement. There was a lot of prerelease hype about Bethesda's use of Havoc Behavior, but, the truth is, they are just catching up with everyone else. Animation in Skyrim is far from cutting edge.

• Third-person animation can be very twitchy, especially when moving slowly.
  
• Trying to sneak forward-right often results in a weird spasmodic ice-skating dance. I think Havoc Behavior has trouble blending particular animations.
  
• There remains a distinct floaty disconnectedness about combat. While the situation in Skyrim is better than Oblivion, it's not that much better.
  
• There is no turning-on-the-spot animation when in third-person. I suspect this might have something to do with keeping first- and third-person controls consistent, but it still looks stupid.
  
• Why can't I see my character's body or shadow when in first-person mode?
  
• Why does Skyrim force a third-person view when sitting down, chopping wood, mounting a horse, etc? It's an annoying hangover from Oblivion.
  
• There remains no animation when the player eats or sleeps, even though the animations exist for non-player characters. I expected little things like this to be "fixed" in Skyrim.

Todd Howard said Bethesda weren't going to do horses unless they were going to do them right. He was wrong. The horses look great when standing in a stable chewing cud, but otherwise they are no better than the horses in Oblivion, and sometimes worse.

• Neither the horse nor rider leans when travelling up or down a slope.
  
• Horses have no real turning animation; it looks particularly ridiculous when turning on the spot.
  
• The rider doesn't do anything at all; the horse just goes where the rider wants by some kind of telepathy.
  
• Why can't I use weapons on horseback? This was one of the biggest complaints about horses in Oblivion. It should have been one of the first things on the list of 'How to do Horses Right in Skyrim'.
  
• Why the heck are horses so aggressive and near invincible? I suspect they were made near invincible so to survive despite their aggressive behaviour, but that just compounds one stupid thing with another. That's not 'doing horses right', but rather 'jury-rigging horses into the system'.

That's all for now. More later.