That’s half the fun of Skyrim! Replaying through as a different race/class and like going between good and bad. I’ve found, as really should be expected, it’s much harder to be the good guy in Skyrim than the bad guy. I mean, my options are to help you potentially slaughter dozens of innocents during your escape or kill you myself even though you’ve been kinda been given a bum deal? Not the easiest choice to make if you’re choosing the side of good. Heck, you even have to choose sides in one of the main story quests AND the main DLC story quest. So you can go through the game an entirely different way just choosing a different side.
My point was: TES can’t rip off Fallout, unless the latter invents a uranium-powered retro time machine. Fallout 3’s interface was probably inspired by many sources, and one of these was likely TES.
Change it to isometric, then, or 3/4 view. The latter was my first thought, but I checked Wikipedia and chose 2.5, but they are confusing in this regard and their definitions. The type of view that is above the characters and at an angle. Fallout was almost certain sprites.
Well, I’m sold. If we get a good Steam deal this Christmas, I’ll pick it up.
Thanks for your thoughts. I look forward to losing a few hundred hours in yet another game!
Both of those are 2.5 D. It’s just that a different .5 is missing. In one, the gameplay is 2D but the rendering is 3D. In the other, the gameplay is 3D but the actual rendering is 2D.
Beyond the game, Skyrim is just an all around fun world to experience. I remember once just sitting back and watching a Dragon and a Giant duke it out on hill in front of me. Just watching it play out was as much fun as fighting either myself.
Ha! I remember watching a dragon swoop down from a cloudy sky to attack a giant, then a group of black-robed clad magic-users joined in, the battle then moved to a swampy area to include several giant crabs, a bear, and a traveling caravan of Kajiit.
Good times.
Not as annoying, however, as a dragon trying desperately to pound the snot out of some slaughterfish, and failing. That’s just sad.
There’s a good mod to make dragons much tougher. I think it’s called Dangerous Dragons, but you can easily find it at Skyrim Nexus, it really made the game more enjoyable for me.
It’s called Deadly Dragons; I use it. It makes them more powerful and adds new varieties with new attacks and powers; Forest Dragons, Shock Dragons, Nether Dragons, etc.
That’s the mod, and you can choose a difficulty level for the dragons, it makes the fights with them more epic.
FYI - I hate the combat except for the bows & arrows part. I play a sniper/stealth/ranger class in all the TES games and never have any trouble with it.
Try focusing your perks on these skills: Archery, Stealth, Light Armor.
You might also want to look into Smithing & Enchanting so that you can make the best bows and armor. You said you didn’t like Alchemy in the previous game. It’s not necessary, but if you give it a try, you might like it better here, and it has good poison and skill boosting potions that can be helpful. You’ll find plenty of heal pots around though, so don’t worry if you want to skip it. You’ll be fine without it.
The Conjuration spells can provide some awesome meatshields, if you want to go that route. The Bound Weapons in the Conjuration tree are very powerful, also, if you’d rather not fuss with bows and arrows.
Also, you might consider buying the Dawnguard expansion, which adds arrow crafting, or download a craftable arrows mod (I use this one). That way you smith your own arrows instead of relying on what you find. Don’t worry though - like alchemy, it’s not something you need to do if you don’t have fun at it.
The sniper build is a lot of fun and with practice, and the right gear, you can take down anything in the game. Give it a whirl and see what you think.
Forgot to say - Skyrim is on sale right now for $40, and $14 for Dawnguard and $3.50 for Hearfire, at Steam. I doubt it will be any cheaper next month.
I’ve seen Skyrim at 50% off before. I wouldn’t buy it at $40.
I’ll keep the sniper build in mind. I favor that and spellcasting anyway in single-player games. I’ll wait on Skyrim, as I have a suspicion that it’ll be sub-$30 during the Steam holiday sale near Christmas.
It might go below 30 USD during this sale if it ends up as a daily or a flash sale, too.
Skyrim is currently $22.50 at GreenmanGaming with voucher code GMG25-G4VDR-0ZL4Q
Steam activated. You’re really just buying the key to activate the game via Steam.
I just came back to this thread to tell everyone I just got Skyrim for $22.50 at Greenmangaming, with the voucher code GMG25-G4VDR-0ZL4Q.
It’s. . .like we’ve got a psychic bond, or hang out at the same hot deals forums or something 
Thanks, though, and here’s a bump for the rest of the board to consider this deal.
Sweet. Hope you like it! 
Then, I assume you won’t like Skyrim, either. Even though IMO Skyrim is significantly superior to Oblivion (Dungeons and encounters are somewhat less leveled, making them less deadly, and more importantly, I disliked all these roamings in Oblivion that I found incredibly tedious), they’re still very similar.
Regarding the leveling system, it’s more straightfordward in Skyrim than in Oblivion, and it’s genrally considred a good thing, but you won’t find the elements you liked in Fallout 3 (Perks) so again I assume you won’t find it as pleasant.
What? Skyrim has perks.
My major criticism with Skyrim was that the world just didn’t engage me. It felt empty, cold and desolate*, and I didn’t give a shit about the civil war that was allegedly raging (I never saw any of it on my first playthrough, which made one sequence later in the game jarring because I had no frame of reference to work with) - I wanted both sides to lose because I didn’t care for either of them.
In the Fallout games, I ended up feeling like God Emperor Of The Wasteland. I never got that feeling in Skyrim, despite all the Dragon Shout powers and what have you.
*I know it was supposed to be like that