I could count the number of women at the opening on one hand, the number of virgins - another story ;-)
Big world. Any place you see in the game, you can actually go to. Artificial Intelligence is annoying, lots of initial bugs (that I am sure will be worked out). Not many negative things about this game.
I love Bethesda games because it isn't linear. You want to go to a place that requires you to be a high level, but you are only level one??? go ahead and commit character suicide. You want your magic user to wear knight armour??? go ahead, you will be punished - but hey... it is YOUR character. Don't want to follow the story line??? pbbbpbbst... story lines are for pansies, create your own story line. Bethesda has "open world" down pat.
I LOVE THE GRAPHICS... some of the most (sur)realistic I have ever seen.
Does this game live up to the hype? Does any game REALLY live up to the hype? I say initially... YES. A year down the road when I look back on it when I am standing in line at midnight for another game, probably not.
True story: A guy came out of gamestop and ripped open the game to look at the map. Studied it for 5 minutes and said - "I think I will use this map as my real map". He could probably give you the entire history of Skyrim flawlessly, but probably couldn't tell you who the third president of the United States was.
Quad Core
GeForce 9800 SLI
8 gigs of ram
Program works fine on my system.