Didn't like them from the start, tried them out, and the result was predictable.

Yup, I want them gone. They add nothing to the experience since they (and this goes for the 1st person finishers too) are completely random, though often occur at the kill blow for the final enemy. You have no control over when they happen, they just happen. It's sort of an undocumented rule that the player be given the final decision of whether or not to play the finisher animations. Take Gears of War, for instance, there are all sorts of finishing blows (executions) you can deal, but you have to tell the game you want to do them first through a button prompt. You have the choice of just ending things quickly with a few final bullets or a basic punch.

You can't do that in Skyrim, the finishers happen automatically and without prompting the player that they are going to occur. I have more than once found myself continuing with the traditional TES button-spam for attack when the battle is ending, only to have none of them actually do anything because the game triggered a finisher. Taking control away from the player outside of a cutscene without clearly notifying him is bad design. Finishers do not give any clear indication of when they will happen, and even then only get triggered about half the time. So not only are we getting control of the game wrested away from us without our consent, it happens at random. At least Deadly Reflex in Oblivion had the courtesy of going into bullet-time for a moment before tugging you into third-person; that told the player that a finisher was about to be performed. Skyrim gives no indication whatsoever, it just does it, and the result is very jarring. This is supposed to be a carry-over from Fallout 3's VATS system, but the major difference between here and there is that VATS required the player to actually trigger the cinematics themselves. That is why VATS worked, and consequently why Skyrim's finishers do not.

In the end, though, all the finishers really are are Bethesda trying to hide how little the melee combat in this game has actually changed by flashing pretty lights in our face every once in a while. the hope is that we would be impressed enough by the finishers to ignore the fact that practically none of the melee combat mechanics were even touched between Oblivion and Skyrim. Oblivion made the same mistake with its environments, Bethesda was banking on everyone being so impressed at their ultra-realistic procedurally generated scenery and not noticing just how bland and repetitive it was. It didn't work, and after Oblivion, they went straight back to hand-crafted environments. They tried to needlessly dress up the combat with a worthless mechanic that adds nothing to the experience.

However, I am willing to give them another chance... if Bethesda puts the finishers back where they belong: in the hands of the player.

Also, if there are going to be finishers continuing in TES, they REALLY need to be animated better.

(Note I am only talking about the player-specific finishers here. AI finishers can stay as they are.)

Yup, I want them gone. They add nothing to the experience since they (and this goes for the 1st person finishers too) are completely random, though often occur at the kill blow for the final enemy. You have no control over when they happen, they just happen. It's sort of an undocumented rule that the player be given the final decision of whether or not to play the finisher animations. Take Gears of War, for instance, there are all sorts of finishing blows (executions) you can deal, but you have to tell the game you want to do them first through a button prompt. You have the choice of just ending things quickly with a few final bullets or a basic punch.

Your post is very well written but this is the part I most agree with

A button prompt would be best. Hell they could have fleshed the whole thing out better and made finishers like dragonshouts whereby you map a finisher to a button that you can execute when you want to. They could have made it so you choose exactly what finisher you perform and when you perform it.

I quite like them. I guess it would make more sense if you always got 1st person finishes when it first, and 3rd for when you're in 3rd, but I can't say I'd really noticed! I'm usually just relieved that the fight is over and I'm the one still living!