What sort of magick does Bethesda try to complete with this arduous ritual is beyond me, only they will ever know it, it's pretty simple to start as a prisoner of sorts, as you try to have a new life forgetting about the past and toughen up. Early in the game does one find out he is SPECIAL in some way. I really wish Bethesda worked harder to make up some teary story about me being kidnapped by trolls or ogres, and saved from being eaten by some foolhardy mage or noble knight and raised in some arts or the others (I remember creating a character in Daggerfall included making up a history for yourself by answering basic and advanced questions, that way you make a history and you can still change your class or make your own) but Bethesda knows better as we are all born into advlthood without knowing what is what.
As far as Skyrim goes I don't even know why I was arrested and imprisoned, while that much was hinted in Morrowind.
The next thing you find out is how to easily get ignored by a dragon, avoiding being seen while it eats and glomps other people.
What Bethesda does know how to make is Graphics, just like Square-Enix, Bethesda knows well how to abuse your hardware.
As far as skills and equipment go Elder Scrolls get less and less of those. Bethesda allows for modding, but that shouldn't be the base for their less and less competence in equipment making.
http://img198.imageshack.us/img198/1826/tesv2011111516164910.png
are you SURE you want to make an item ?
Hard to believe that ES lost it's trademark, the SpellCrafting. Although I can accept this as not allowing players to create overkill spells, however that was still depending on the players ability on surviving the game (providing the player did not cheat) which really had no real impact on the gameplay other than making it actually harder for them as enemy scaling is still the reason why players actually did it.
Reason is, the scaling enemies would just replace weaker bandit making the combat actually painful for a player and not their character.
One of the better equipment aspects in TES games was enchanting practically everything with nearly any spell, but since Morrowind we cannot even enchant capes and cloaks because they were taken away from us. This is actually very sad because I really liked expensive clothes in Morrowind nad wearing a Cape in Skyrim would actually make sense, but we don't know better, Bethesda does!
But since I talk about equipment, spells and enchanting why not just remove the Enchanting ability from players if you are going to restrict it as much as you did in this game ? That would even make sense, let us search the Skyrim for any and all enchanted equipment so that we won't cheat the game by exploiting possibilities. It's easier to remove something rather than find a solution. Yes you Damned Assassins, i'm talking about you and your abuse in Oblivion with the Chameleon Spell enchant that made you 100% undetectable allowing you to back stab pretty much everything.
Solution to that would be allowing only Jewelry to be enchanted with that spell, instead of just removing the enchant and spell altogether, just as it was done in Oblivion however with the Levitation Spell, the only solution Bethesda accepts is their decision, no matter how silly it is.
As much as Enchanting is done nicely in the game, nice doesn't mean good. I like the idea of disenchanting items to learn the effects, but this is working wrong. Effects on Items that are stronger than the ones you learned should be Disenchant-able to increase the base effect the player can use. For instance a basic shield enchant to resist fire magic by 15% that with the use of higher ability and better soul gems will increase up to 25% and wearing items that improve enchanting can even let the player to make up to as high as ... 32%. However using this on many items would make you immune to fire it just is not possible because you can only enchant boots and shield with resistance, and if you are lucky ... no, you can only resist enchant boots and shield


The enchanting calculation is wicked sick as well, although you have an armor-type enchant you can't use that type of enchant on every piece of armor, which is simply STUPID.
Blacksmithing is also very weird, I am on skill level 100 which was incredibly stupidly to obtain, all you need is travel a bit, mine some ore, smelt it and hammer away. If you are skilled enough you can make a lot of money and travel a lot you can make Daedric Armor quite quickly and early. It's even easier than in Oblivion, and that means something.
Bethesda made a great effort for the Exploration to be fun and enjoyable, and while that works it's still flawed as hell.
The MAP is great indeed and that works well, but I am not being able to identify a generally hostile MOB until it's hostile towards the player. But the Exploration is not really hard, just flawed. Even as I play on Hard it's still much too easy to do things.
And as much as I like the graphics in this game, it's hard to say it's actually working right, which isn't.
http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/9936/tesv2011112916110379.jpg
Ever lost your head to Daedric Helmet ?
http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/5008/tesv2011120113393083.jpg
My head doesn't like me, but it also doesn't leave me alone

Well I did, 3 times now. It's been a long time since I had to forget achievements because the game is unplayable without using the command console, even with the patches, or should I say, especially thanks to the patches. but that is not the only Exploration problem I encountered.
The quest that you have to go to Solutude and Speak with the Daedric Prince responsible for madness, which is pretty fun tbh, but after finishing the quest I learned that I have leveled up, checked my skills tab and to my shock all my skills have been RESET to base level for level 1 character. The Perks remained, but everything else was gone.
Collecting Shouts is always great, until you find duplicates. So far I found 4 Frost Breath words, and 4 Whirlwind words.
I most likely should that Bethesda for even making this game, but why should I bother ?
It would be better not to release a dupe instead of releasing it, making a forum for it, and locking every rant thread there is created.
I would like Bethesda to do something. Of course expecting an aswer is impossible, I would sooner be banned from the Bethesda forums (not the first time btw). What I would like for Bethesda to do is ask themselves something:
1- Why do you make games that everyone hates you for ?
2- Why do you break the games you release ?
3- Why do you fix things that don't need to be fixed ? (please, leave that for Blizzard and their World of Warcraft)
4- Is creating a game that actually doesn't break become really that hard ? or are you so incompetent and instead you prefer to make great graphics ?
5- Why is Japanese Voice-over better than English ? (don't answer, I know better than you ever will.)
So to make it final note:
Great Idea for Game.