Skyrim! Your thoughts of it?

[Chirogarmus]

So, today marks 11/11/11.
The release of TESV: Skyrim, I started this thread to see how you all feel about the game so far, if you've played it.
How are the graphics? The gameplay, etc.

I personally think the graphics could be improved just a little bit, though honestly it's taken quite a big leap from Oblivion, so I can't really complain about it. Everything feels a lot more intense, captivating, and dynamic. So I could definitely find myself being stuck on this for hours on end.
Or, if you don't own the game, or haven't played it, then feel free to talk about how you feel about it, or about how you feel about getting it.

What are our thoughts? Be as descriptive or short as you like.
Thanks for your time.

[Saber]

It's so bad that I didn't buy it.

[Nikki Wolf]

Eh, I'm not worried about graphics, but I wouldn't expect them to be the best around either, considering the engine is built for a massively open world.

Anyways, I do regret canceling my preorder to get Rage now. I may get it as a gift next week, though. I don't know yet.

[chrsi]

[Chirogarmus]

This made my fucking day.
I love Skyrim even more.

[Knees of Justice]

"A runabout? I'll steal it! NO ONE WILL EVER KNOW!"
I'm downloading Skyrim right now, should be fun. Although I've never played a sandbox RPG before.

[Slappy]

Loved oblivion, only played a few hours of Skyrim last night but so far loving it. It seems like a great game if you were paying attention to how Bethesda was developing it and expected this outcome. It isn't some revolutionary new design of TES, it is basically Oblivion++ (and that is a good thing!!). Magic system is so much better (dual wield ) and the skill leveling system makes sooo much more sense and allows for sooo much more flexibility. NPC interaction feels a lot smoother and more natural, fighting still pretty much the same except for some cool finishing moves (which I think come with skilling up..not sure, haven't played enough).

I am a little disappointed with the new menu screen...it is a little better than oblivion but still not at all as it should be IMO. It also doesn't look right...I preferred the old scroll look from oblivion menus than the modern looking Skyrim one. Also a little disappointed with graphics. The world is beautiful, especially water, but the textures are pretty meh, especially up close. From intuition and some estimated guessing from performance reviews, I think this is due to the performance of the engine. It is a "new" engine but at heart it reuses a lot of the old one and only makes use of two cpu cores. My guess is they had to tone down the textures to get acceptable performance because of the massive scenery/draw distances. I'm just a little sad because I think if the engine were more optimized we could have seen a much more beautiful version...but perhaps the mod community can fix this with some texture packs high end gamers can throw some serious silicon at (especially with next years upcoming NVIDIA gpus)