I now have this game! It's kind of an early Christmas present.
I didn't really want another game after only just getting Battlefield 3 but I was sick of hearing people banging on about Skyrim and every time I logged in to Xbox Live, I could see people were playing it.
I'll start with the few
negatives :
The first part isn't that great because you have to follow other people so you don't immediately get that sense that you can explore the land. Also (I'll be careful not to include any spoilers), a character tells you that you need to split up but then won't piss off. When I finally shook him off and went elsewhere, my housemate informed me that he would have led me to those stones where you choose your skills... or whatever
.
As standard with these gmes, when you walk up to, for example a chest, a prompt pops up telling you to press A to open it. I found that in some cases you have to be in exactly the right position to get the prompt.
A lot of people want a fight for no apparent reason. I walked into an inn and a couple kicked off at me.
Although the scenery is stunningly detailed, the way that characters move around it can be a bit odd, with them changing position by walking in a small circle or sliding to one side.
I've heard people moaning about load times but you only get the load screen when you move from one area to another, not every time you walk through a door and it's not excessive anyway (note that I have it installed on my Xbox HDD).
All of those points pale into insignificance against the
positives :
The landscape is stunning and the land of Skyrim is HUGE. Apparently it's more or less the same size as Oblivion from one end to the other but it has much more height and depth to it.
Character interaction is vastly improved, none of this hanging about to wait for a conversation to end, walk off if you want.
After the first section, you are free to move where you want, when you want.
The menu system is excellent, making it easy to assign weapons, apparel, magic and potions to your 'favourites' so that you can access them quickly via the D Pad.
I played it for about 4 hours last night and I've already fought countless bandits, villains, undead, giant spiders and finally a fire-breathing dragon.
The villages are 'living and breathing'. During the day there are lots of people going about their daily routines, working away. You can talk to them, work with them, have a go of their machinary, rob them or of course, stab them to death!
Obviously in that amount of time, I haven't even scratched the surface of this game but I can't wait to get back to it!!