Sorry to drag up this old thread, but I thought I'd ask who else out there is playing their way through Skyrim.
My daughter got a PS3 for Christmas and I bought myself Skyrim the week after. I normally put in an hour or so in the evenings, but I haven't got very far yet.
My thoughts...
Good things:
Great gameplay
Excellent graphics
Plenty to do
Very addictive (not sure if that's a good thing)
Bad things:
Lot of time spent looking at load screens*
A few more tips for newbies would have been nice - I'd never played any Elder Scrolls stuff before, so rather than focusing on making a character who was magical/a warrior/sneaky I've ended up with somebody who's OKish at everything, which means I tend to get my head kicked in a lot.
It's easy to get involved in too many quests, just about everybody you meet seems to have something they'd like you to do.
On the whole though I'm really enjoying it and I was very chuffed last night to find a massive short-cut to one of the side quests, Soljund's Sinkhole ...
When you first go into the mine there is a room with a few Draugr in, who are easily dispatched. Once they're beaten you head along to a room where you're supposed to drop down into a hole, to be hacked up by some more badies.
If you avoid the hole and look at the wall on the left as you enter the room you'll see a passageway high up on the wall and unreachable.
However, you can climb up the wall that's directly ahead of you when you enter the room, and get to a ledge just beneath the ceiling. If you then face the passageway and use the whirlwind spirit shout you can leap across the gap and follow the passage, which conveniently takes you to the final chamber. If you sneak you can get a couple of arrows into the main baddie. He'll head to a tunnel to get to the platform you're on, but you can jump down, sneak behind him and get a few more good shots in before he knows where you are.
Once you've killed him you'll get a message telling you that the quest is completed and you can return to the surface to collect your reward.
* Load screens are especially annoying when starting a session...
1. Insert disc
2. Watch load screen
3. Press start and then "Continue"
4. Watch progress bar load game
5. Press circle
6. Watch load screen
7. Begin playing, get immediately killed by the baddie you knew you were about to have to face when you decided to save the game.
8. Return to step 6
9. Repeat until your wife complains you've been hogging the TV for 4 hours.
and counting..... 
