Shadow, Phoss,
I'm of the opinion that if you can't do it right, I don't want it in my game. Dragon Age irritated me immensely. The Witcher 2 was a lot better, but still irksome. I've never played Fable, so I can't say ...
Do it right or don't do it at all. So I'm okay with Skyrim not containing much in the way of relationships. If all it does is make someone sit around your house, someone that doesn't try to harass you with a constant stream of quests and dialogue, that's fine by me.
Yeah, I agree. It's like they had so many ideas they wanted to implement in Skyrim that none of them were finished properly. Everything seems kinda superficial, which is just a crying shame for a game of Skyrim's caliber.