Characters seem to be the most improved. Not my favorite thing, but I will certainly enjoy them. At least we don't need a custom race right off the bat to look half way cool.

I'm looking forward to the environment. Soaking it all up, site seeing, etc. And of course combat, magic, marriage, hiring mercs, playing drinking games and punching out loud mouths in the bar. Crafting sounds good, but I hope it's more practical than Fallout's. It seemed like the items you needed to make things were so obscure it never happened. By the time I found the needed things, I could buy something 10x better. Maybe it's just me, but in Oblivion I could memorize all the ingredients so much easier than in Fallout. Maybe its because I spent 1000's of hours playing.

Role playing seems a lot more supported this time around too. I mean living off the land by fishing, hunting, crafting will allow me to be a hermit if I feel like it. And then going to a pub to get wasted after I cash in my treasures seems to be something that could be fun too. Put on the amulet and flirt with a gal. Hire a merc to help me defeat a difficult foe or dragon someday when I think I'm almost ready and those mercs will give me the edge to win. Find a dog and make him my pet. Coming home to a wife and pet just sounds awesome. And then to be able to mod it all out and put my personal touches on it for the ultimate personal experience all seems too good to be true really. I'm so excited to toss away 2-3 years into this game, lol. But it's not a waste if your having a blast, is it?

I'm pretty pleased with what I've seen of Skyrim's UI so far. Then again, anything would be an improvement over Oblivion's UI.

the leveling.....i mean really im level 50 with 100 in every attribute except luck master of every major skill of my class and even a few minor skills mastered and i still feel like the same pathetic waste of flesh i was when i left the sewers :banghead:

Environment looks much better now, and the character appearances are not as funny looking as they were in Oblivion. Oh, the new UI looks good too.

And a whole lot more. The combat system seems better as a whole!

Better aesthetics, race design, massively improved animations and a much detailed world.

Yes.
Mammoths and giants anyone?

Anything that's different from Oblivion is likely to be better. Oblivion wasn't a very good TES game.

The menu system by far. Oblivion's menu and UI were atrocious. Did not look forward to opening up the menu on my PS3 when I'd get over-encumbered.

The aesthetics are absolutely beautiful. I'm glad they went with that style. It really very nordic.

Whoa someone agreed with me dang wasn't expecting that.

One word...

EVERYTHING

Oblivion was a downer for me...

I think the mudcrabs are a major improvement. "snip snip"

agreed

No spell crafting, no stats, no choosing of classes, the merging of greaves and cuirass, addition of perks and how they work.... graphics are pretty wicked too.

This

IMHO, any darned little detail is way better than Oblivion, other than the merged armor parts.

Some people mourn for attributes and classes, but I prefer their absence over the problematic way that those two where implemented in Oblivion, which caused us to play inverse classes and repeatedly do actions and for the sake of improving attribute stats and converging toward a general master of all stats.

Skyrim's skill perks make it a much better role playing game, and results in specialized characters that get more and more unique as we develop them.

Skyrim has gone back toward Morrowinds great RPG standards and has more culture, content, game-play depth, diverse and classy landscape, memorable places, hand crafted environment and hand picked semi-random foe and reward, and so on...

As I said before, Compared to Oblivion, Skyrim is a better role playing game in any small detail that I can think of, except for the armor fusion.

Crafting, companions, and the possibility of finding rare items right from the start (non leveled items).
Oh and perhaps hand crafted dungeons.

the one thing I hated in oblivion were the super psychic guards. STOP RIGHT THERE CRIMINAL SCUM

Graphics, animations, better/larger enemies/creatures. Magic looks amazing too.

Agreed there..

also, Im most excited for the daggers to start dealing some real damage for us theif/assassin type characters!

Not a lot has been said about the ability to hold some weapons upside down.

Im wondering if this is exclusive to daggers, or if i can do this with some shorter swords as well. im prolly going to be playing MH sword OH dagger...

2H weapons are finally useful again. Now I can finally make a character that uses 2H weapons.

The Perks. Oblivion had perks, but now they a central component of the game.

Everything