A couple of steps forward, a couple of steps back, console port true and true
Let me get this out of the way first since it's the first thing I want to yell out whenever I see the Skyrim commercial playing on TV: the PC version of Skyrim is a flat-out console port. The crux of the matter is that-- while looking at it from the perspective of a PC player and now wary follower of Bethesda-- I feel very disappointed that they did not even try to mask this, let alone prevent it from happening.
Skyrim improves upon the series in certain areas and it should be commended for this, but it should also be called out for allowing other areas to deteriorate in quality.
The first component of the game to be judged is the easily visible one: graphics. The lighting in this heavily modified Gamebryo engine has evolved, with brilliant radiosity that attribute strong character to the myriad of settings present in the province. Effects have taken on a whole new life, whether it's the frost exploding out of a caster's hand or the illuminating fire emitting from an earth oven in the middle of a longhouse. Another marked improvement is the icy water found throughout Skyrim which has been implemented flawlessly within dungeons as well. A top star when it comes to graphical improvement is no doubt the animations, partly because Oblivion's animations didn't set the mark high at all, and partly because Skyrim's animations are just great, whether you play in third person or first. The exception here are the quicktime events which can look awkward every so often, but I suspect this is mostly the code's fault and not the actual animations.
FXAA can be used to blur out remaining jaggies left over from using even 8x AA and what appears to be a lack of transparency multisampling that's heavily needed on trees, foliage and hair. Disabling FXAA will make the game a lot sharper but jaggies will be noticed, and enabling it will add a smooth blur to everything that isn't too off-putting but at the same time doesn't feel like it's the best solution for high end PCs. Shadows even on High will display noticeable serrated edges. The viewing distance still retains some of the "wasteland" look after a certain distance which Oblivion suffered from. The far-away terrain can sometimes look geometrically stunted and just plain ugly, especially when looking down from a tall mountain. Some of these things can be ignored thanks to the beautiful Skyrim mountainside & surrounding fog.
The biggest problem with the graphics are surprisingly the textures, and it's the main reason why I can't say the graphics are a straight evolution from Oblivion, which is.. sad to say.. a 6 year old game. To keep it concise, when exploring around the world you will find extremely low-res textures in the midst of normal res textures which makes them pop out more, like a zebra among elephants. It's also worthy to note that many of the 'normal textures' aren't high res themselves, so the game generally suffers from heavy pixelization for certain things while, for example, the rock next to that blurry looking mess will look extremely detailed and high-res. In this way the graphics do feel schizophrenic at times and might detract from the immersion if you have an eye for it, which doesn't neccesarily require you to look at everything under a magnifying glass.
Don't misunderstand me though, the problems here are largely technical, because the art itself is beautiful and very well-done. I suspect that many of these problems are byproducts of not only development primarily intended for consoles but also of a lack of polish with the release. Character models are really a huge improvement from Oblivion, although it's a bit hard to escape the same facial structure with some races. If anybody remembers when they first released the 3D head shots of all the races months before the release, you can recall that the noses had a graphical anomaly on them that resemble what happens when you stretch polygons too much. Lo and behold, this anomaly made it into release, so upon character creation all of your characters will have something odd on the tip of their noses, between eyebrows and on the chin.
The first thing PC players should notice when starting up the game is heavy mouse input lag, a phenomenon commonly associated with poorly done console ports to the PC. The remedy to this problem is usually to disable vertical sync, but it could not be found anywhere within the game. To start off, you are not allowed to change graphic settings within the game, except for fade distances. The launcher will give you the option to do so before you start the game, but vertical sync isn't found here either. It's a bit disappointing that the way to change such an important setting to all PC games is by finding a command in the internet which you'll put into an obscure .ini file. Even after reducing input lag almost entirely, Skyrim's software mouse has a mind of its own and likes to change acceleration/smoothness/dpi depending on where you are, which I suspect is linked to FPS values. Movement in interiors with 100 FPS feels different from movement outdoors with 70 fps. Most will probably not notice this but why can't we just have raw mouse input? It's also worthy to note that some buttons and some menus cannot be clicked on by the mouse, especially during character creation, you have to use the WASD keys. Other menus are very unwieldy with both keyboard AND mouse, such as when navigating between perks. Why is a PC version having such a difficult time integrating the base peripherals of the platform?
The second thing one might notice is that Skyrim is comparatively quiet. Every other program running on your PC could be very audible, and even though you might have volume at max, Skyrim seems to have a volume problem right off the bat. One solution that was circulating was to use the Loudness Equalization enhancement on your playback device, and while it did make Skyrim very audible, it could also make other programs ear-shattering loud. Another solution popped up, and this was to yet again change a value in the .ini file, but as of yet changing this number does not produce any noticable difference for me.
The technical issues do not stop there for me. I'm running a dual-video card setup (SLI) which seems to produce a frequent flickering while in outdoor areas only. While NVIDIA did release an SLI profile for Skyrim in their latest beta patch, all the kinks have yet to be worked out, which is something I felt they could've worked with Bethesda on beforehand. Hilariously enough, enabling vsync back on will get rid of this flickering, but will introduce back the input lag I got rid of before.
The game itself is marred by a wide assortment of bugs and glitches. Right off the top of my head I can tell you about many instances where I've walked into an interior such as a tavern or inn, to be met by the sound of a banging noise coming from an indiscernible location. This sound will continue while you're talking to the patrons or just exploring around, while random objects such as plates or carrots will unexplainably pop out of nowhere and go flying across the room. After a while the floor will have a few items littered about and some will continue to glitch around the area.
I've also had this problem where my character will enter a continuous animation loop of her unsheathing her sword. For some reason, mudcrabs and/or small streams will trigger this. Enemies will also jump up and down rapidly in place or float in the air at times, until you get close to them and it corrects the issue. All of these technical problems and bugs really do their part in breaking immersion, while at the same time the game makes me want to play it without waiting for a patch that will inevitably solve these things. It's a vicious cycle.
The quest log/journal is another step down from Oblivion. While Oblivion took care to add detail to even the most menial tasks as well as keep record of what you've done, it seems Skyrim is content on streamlining the entire thing, providing one liners for main quests and side quests that would otherwise have lengthy dialogue and events attached to them outside of the quest log. I also dislike the fact that the game funnels all the lesser tasks into one 'Misc' category which actually gives the appearance that all these tasks are different steps of one quest but are in reality entirely different from each other and are, again, full of simple one liners such as "Visit X" "Talk to Y"
Let's move on to something that really stands out in this game: the music! Jeremy Soule comes out stronger than the Dragonborn here. He manages to catch both the wonder of traveling the countryside and the frantic brutality of face to face combat, while not leaving behind the mystery of certain gloomy areas or the bustling of town life. At times I will actually find myself extending the task I'm doing just so the track that's playing is allowed to finish, some of them are really that great.
The voice acting shares my same thoughts as the animations, there was plenty to improve on from Oblivion and they did it well. More variety is a breath of fresh air, spiced with several accents as well, some of them similar but still wholly welcomed. The only true flaw here is some of the delivery falls short and could use more character but it's still leaps and bounds over Oblivion.
The writing isn't anything special to put behind a glass case in a museum but it's acceptable enough to keep you immersed and in the game. The writing will of course vary between dialogue and in-game books; some of the books contain magnificent lore and well-written tales, and a couple of characters do have their moments when it comes to dialogue. Some of their battle cries will get you pumped or have you burst out laughing: the result of the writing working in close tandem with improved voice acting.
Combat has been improved from Oblivion but it also isn't a night and day difference. The new perks here make a bit of difference, such as time slowing down when you're blocking the enemy's power attack. I have a love-hate relationship with the quicktime events, or the 'fatality' animations. While the added gore and violence is welcomed in my book (thank you for the M rating) and the animations are mostly nice, I don't like how the transition is very rough; quicktime events will often interrupt my hit mid-swing and trigger an uncontrollable animation. Sometimes they occur when the enemy is very low on health, sometimes my character just kills the enemy outright when they are at 60% or 70% health. It's very unpredictable but I do like that if an enemy has their attention on your companion and their back is turned to you, instant death is more likely with a stab to the back. Some combat depth is added with better blocking techniques, dual wielding, perks, more dynamic spells such as flamethrowers instead of the same old fireball and of course the good old dragon shouts which are able to do a variety of things such as sending a target flying or making them reluctant to enter combat.
One difference to note over Oblivion is the changed level scaling, which can directly translate to an easier or a harder time depending on where you go. Entering a camp triggers a fight with bandits that were easily dispatched but I could not say the same for their lethal chief, nor the tougher bandits which go by a different denomination, such as highwayman. To contrast, I've wandered into areas with mages or giants that wrecked me quite easily while I could barely do any damage to them. You really need to be careful where you're going and what you're fighting or you're going to find yourself dead quickly and that's great. Some encounters require you to drastically change your tactics; where I would normally charge in with sword-and-shield and mop up, I would find myself retreating and finding cover, trying to use the terrain to my advantage while I picked out each enemy from the group. I can safely say this is an improvement from Oblivion.
All in all, this game will be something different down the road with several patches tacked on, even without the use of any mods. Right now it's very apparent that it's a poorly done console port masking a game with a lot of potential and talent behind it. I wholeheartedly expect to devote hundreds of hours on it, but definitely not in its current state. I do feel a personal disappointment with Bethesda for releasing the PC version like this, it genuinely feels like a slap to the face to the PC crowd, and what astounds me is that Bethesda comes from PC origins and now it seems like they've turned their backs on us completely. There was bound to be a fundamental problem when you're developing for consoles, streamlining things for them, making it more accesible for the players and simple to use with a controller, and then trying to release the same game for the PC as well. The PC version is exhibit A of what happens when you try this.