I haven't been particularly excited about Skyrim at all. I enjoyed Morrowind, but Oblivion was generally just "ok." Overall it was disappointing, and lacks replay value (which is sad considering replay value tends to be one of a proper RPG's strong points, allow for a diversity of different decisions and play styles throughout so you go back and try different approaches.)
They simplified too many things and turned the entire thing into a big GTA Sandbox. The entire game basically consisted almost entirely of side quests which were amusing, but you couldn't really pick sides for any factions and almost every quest was completely linear having only one way they play out. The number of exceptions to that rule could be counted on one hand, although you wouldn't even fill up all of your fingers doing so. This essentially meant that a single playthrough could allow you to do nearly everything in the whole game in one go with no replay value left over. On top of that, most of the side quests outside of the couple of factions didn't tie into anything in particular, it was just various little random self-contained events that didn't effect much of anything which made it even less compelling.
On top of that, the entire skill system was broken and again basically you could be a master of everything and do whatever you wanted, not to mention you actually got BETTER level up bonuses from focusing on skills you didn't pick as your primary ones because the primary skills trigger leveling up too early and the other skills have no trigger at all. This makes no sense... your primary skills should be what you're good at, not have an artificial barrier which prevents you from gaining more than a certain amount per level while all other skills are free game to do anything. Some skill were also just straight up useless thanks to the mini-games, such as Lockpicking and Personality. Didn't matter what skill level you had, you could still complete anything you wanted.
Basically, my biggest overall problem was that the RPG elements of the game were very underwhelming and there was almost no emphasis on "defining" anything. The game was primarily sandbox-focused and you basically just fucked around until you ran out content and skills to level up.
I'm hoping that Skyrim falls more into the Morrowind and Fallout 3 camp because if it's too similar to Oblivion, or god forbid even more dumbed down, I'll give it a rent and toss it.
