Bethesda can go far keeping cloning their games, if reviews keep praising them.
Instant Classic RPG, Profound stories, Superb visuals, Deep RPG elements that will keep you play for hours, etc... etc...
Here is now the Truth:
Skyrim, is a dramatically bad Rip-Off of Fallout 3.
There are lots of stories, but none of them are interesting enough to bound you with the game.
The Main Story look original at first, but lacks hugely on dramatisation. Skyrim is About to be destroyed, but it looks like only you and two NPCS do really care about it. The rest of the world is plunged in their own buisness, and don't mind much about what's going on around.
Yes there are lots of quests, and sidequests, and even more sidequests. But all of them are based on you going somewhere, retrieveing something and coming back mechanically. By mechanically, understand that you will do almost the same things, in each quests, but with a new excuse each time.
When compared to games like the Witcher who really try to put some originality in quests, Skyrim doesn't look much different then Daggerfall, and Oblivion. Go there, take this, bring it back, talk to that guy, kill that creature, etc...
Every quest is in fact an excuse to send you to discover a new part of the map, fight a few creatures, and come back. Sometimes it's a dungeon with the same elements than other dungeons u explored before. But again, what you generally do, is go somewhere, and come back, talk or bring something, without choice or richness in the details.
Combats are dull and lack of serious coregraphy. Contamporain Games should have left behind "push and swing the air to hurt creatures" long time ago. And no, the random "finish him! cut scene" doesn't save the combats. It's too repetitive and glitchy. You don't even understand why the monster is hurt, or if your weapon even touched the Creatures you fight. An old Game like Blade of Darkness had a better combat system!
The graphics are NOT Superb. Skyrim, doesn't support Directx11, and therefor there is no Tessellation, which could have been a real asset for a game in which it's snows all the time. Yes, the game looks good, but not as much as it's hyped all around. The dungeons, the caverns, doesn't seem right, the architecture of those structures, don't make any sens, and make you feel more like you are in a one way labyrinth, more then a real structure you must discover. The worst part is the pathetic tentative to add some "puzzles" in the game which consist of the same thing in all dungeons: Align three creature correctly. With the solution, of course, being just 2 step next to the puzzles. You wonder if it's a puzzle, or an Insult? Or is the game targeting 6 years olds?
Monsters are diverse, but boring. They throw stuff at you (magic, arrows, or anything else), they try to hit you, but all creatures act like robots on your way you must destroy. You can think of them like creatures Mario kills by jumping on them. Some fall when trying to hurt you, some are stuck because of glitches, it's a true mess.
The game world could hired more NPCS! Cities, plains and streets are almost empty, even Daggerfall looked more alive then Skyrim.
The AI is a mess, the game is glitchy, + random crashes. You will find your horse flying, you character stuck inside rocks, stuck in quests because of some negligence bugs, etc...
The Game World is very boring, NPC's you get near, start telling you something, without you asking for it, which leaves a weird feeling, like everyone around have a personality disfunction.
The Dragons are well designed, but once they land, they are terrible. Bethesda really needs to work on their collision codes. And there again, your weapons never touch the target, but your character can enter rocks. It's really messy.
The only good in this game is the sound and music. The voice acting is fine, and the musics represent well the Game World and try to put you in it's ambience, if only that ambience was there.
Spoiler Alert!
The ending of the game is as dull as the game itself. No dramatisation, not even credit rolls, they just leave you there to decide of your next action, which, if you value your time, should be "uninstall".