It looks pretty, but it is incredibly aggravating. If I had a dime for every time I was booted out of the shop menu when switching between item categories, I would have paid off Skyrim by now.

However, I don't count the UI as a negative because there will be an inevitable mod that makes it as amazing as was originally intended.

Skyrim simplified the game and made it fun... no longer am i crunching numbers or worried about trivial shit like major and minor skills... worried to death to even use a skill or annoyed with OMG blunt weapons and swords...

Skyrim is perfect in all forms, this makes Oblivion feel clunky and sofar between my house hold we have a full mage, full 2 hander and im a stealth bow user and were all doing fine... no problems at all.. it feels great...

balanced and fun... this is simple but not stupified.. and its really exciting not worriying for once where to put points and always being viable from the start!

---Skyrim is a breath of fresh air, period... and thats coming from a guy with every single Beth game in multiple formats... I'm a fanboi and I LOVE Skyrim!

Great post that. Just wanted to say this :D

Which controllers are you using? I can see how the UI might be efficient if played with a console controller, but when played with a mouse, it's a nightmare of inefficiency and ambiguity. Examples:

- I usually see a whole list of items, but I can select only one of them (the one currently in focus). I cannot click on any other item on the list to select it. Instead, I have to scroll the list until the item I want to see gets focus, only then I can select it. This is horribly inefficient.

- A very obvious, standard "click right mouse button to get info about clicked item" functionality hasn't been implemented either.

- The list gives no information about the items or spells, it just lists their names. There is no way to compare the values of two items or spells - except scrolling the first item into focus, noting the values, then bringing the second item into focus, then compare the values of that one to those you hopefully remembered correctly.

- There is no way to order the inventory in any way (for example, to put the most heavy items on top, for deciding what to drop when overtaxed) except the default alphabetic sorting.

- There is no clear indication (nor any logic) to when the mouse needs to be used and when the keyboard needs to be used. Sometimes both are possible, sometimes it's only one of the two, but there's no regularity. This makes it very difficulty to build up the automatisms that are needed to make efficient use of any UI.

- The UI is full of traps. I regularly issue commands that I didn't mean to. Most of these are due to the game insisting on idiosyncratic key assignments (which can't even be customized fully) instead of giving a simple icon to click on, or even just _allowing_ to click on anything that's not currently in the focus anyway.

In terms of usability, it's probably among the worst UI's I've encountered so far.

The map is decent, although the pseudo-3d perspective can be misleading at times. It looks rather washed-out though, but that's due to the setting the game plays in, "snowy" and "colorful" don't exactly match. ;) However, in terms of usability, I still miss the Morrowind map. I could resize it from fullscreen to a small window and anything in between, I could move its window into any position, I could have it displayed constantly on the main screen for better orientation (a customizable mini-map), and I could set and infinite amount of markers on the map and type a text note for every marker I set. I've rarely encountered a UI that was so powerful and yet so flexible as that of Morrowind.

Yeah, all TES games look like a step back from Morrowind in terms of UI. Resizing, pinning... All that I missed were notes on the world map.

You forgot the quest list, which is not accessible through the 4-way-we-designed-this-crap-for-a-d-pad menu. It's also quite ugly and seems to drop completed miscellaneous quests instead of logging them.

I don't want to beat same the old dead horse again, but Morrowind was primarely designed for the PC, while Oblivion obviously had a "gamepad UI". Bethesda could really learn something from Bioware, at least they redesigned their UI. I never noticed DA:O was also a console game until I looked it up.

I'm playing on my PS3. I get what you're saying though. Morrowind's UI was great.

One of the things that I do really like about Skyrim's UI though is the favorites menu. Makes it easy to access useful items and spells in a pinch.

I found Morrowind to be the best, as it had the best mix of story, choice, and roleplaying. Obl. Felt like a step back to me with the dumbed down crafting, and the removal of fligjt/large jumping.

Well this topic has been beaten down but I like to get my 2 cents in.

Morrowind was by far my favorite elder scrolls game. I like the open world, the quest and the challenge of the game. The game did have faults. The fighting was weak and nothing more then clicking the swing button. Sneaking wasn’t impressive and the magic system needs work. Oblivion corrected these problems. The sneaking skill was improved, magic was much better and the fighting was a step up. What hurt Oblivion for me was the level system, the more Roman world then fantasy and for some reason the game just got boring (but I still like it). Now I still haven’t played Skyrim but from what I read they seem to improve the fighting even more, adjusted the world leveling system and when with a more fantasy environment. What worries me is the change to the leveling system and let’s face it Skyrim a console game with a PC port.

Oblivion is now dead to me, Skyrim is everything it should have been.
All it needs is a patch to stop it crashing to desktop on me occasionally and a UI mod.

A note about cliff racers:

Don't click "dispose of corpse" on any animal in the wilderness, ever. Doing so will make it respawn as soon as you re-enter the cell, instead of respawning 3 days later when the entire cell resets. If you're in the Ashlands or out in the ocean island-hopping, there's a good chance it'll turn into a cliff racer even if it wasn't one before.

There aren't actually as many of them as people seem to think. Yes, there are lots of them. Too many for sure. But the biggest problem is that they fly, and they fly FAST, and they fly QUIETLY. And they can home in on you from a decent distance away, due to their high vantage point. So there's a very good chance that they'll sneak up on you, unless you look up for them. But a decent fireball spell or bow/arrow will drop it in one shot before it can even reach you, which definitely helps. Looking up also leads me to my next point.

Look up. Morrowind is a 3-dimensional game. This doesn't just go for cliff racers, but for dungeons and buildings as well. You'll often be able to reach secret areas, or shortcuts, by using Levitation or Jump. Even in areas where Levitation is disabled, the Jump spell can serve as a replacement. The dreaded "rolling pin of doom" in Sotha Sil is MUCH easier with a jump spell. Loss of Jump/Levitation was probably the thing that irked me most with Oblivion, even moreso than Spears or teleportation. In Oblivion, you were bound to the earth and could not escape. In Morrowind, you had a level of freedom that's extremely rare for a video game. Even though the combat and abilities are more streamlined (and in many cases improved) the games themselves are MUCH more limited and limiting than Morrowind or Daggerfall were. Heck, in Daggerfall you could actually CLIMB WALLS! Gasp!