There, fixed.

 You've obviously never played the game becasue the actual storyline takes a good 30 hours. The Guild Side Quests add alot to the gameplay as well and to the story which if you add them all up are probably an extra 30 hours combined. Then you have 100 hours+ of side quests. Get your facts straight.

Actually, the way characters level up by using thier skills is part of the series.  I don't see it going away any time soon.  After all, does it not make sense.  How do you become a better runner?  Do you go and beat up some guys on the street, gain "exerience", "level up", and spend some bonus points on speed?  No, you go out and run to become a better runner.

As to those people who thought that it took too long to level up athletics in any Elder Scrolls, you need to put athletics as a major skill.  If you don't want to spend a slot for the skill, tough cookies.  That is the point of the whole system, pick out a couple of slots that you excell in, not excell everything.

As for the serious dialogue tree, that is the fault of voice acting.  Elder Scrolls 3 had way more dialogue than Elder Scrolls 4, because 4 was spoken.  IMO, ES4 had better dialogue sometimes than 3.  Think about quests in 3; Most of them was "go kill them, go get that".  What was one of the first quests for the fighters guild in ES4? It was a spoof off of the first one in ES3, save the rats instead of kill them.  I thought that was hilarious when I heard "yes, there are rats in my basement, and something is killing them! It's horrible!"

Don't get the impression I like ES4.  I hate it.  I hate it for luring me into playing it with the false pretext of being fun, and then dissapointing me every time.  I have played the game for at least a total of 30 hours with about 5 characters.  I keep starting the game thinking it will be fun, and then end up discarding it.

What the.. jeez, are you aware of what you just said? That's blasphemy!

Weeell, anyway. I hope they learned a few lessons out of Oblivion (and maybe Fallout, didn't play it yet). Would be cool if they were developing a new engine. Fallout 3 does still have those stiff character movements and all. I want this to be gone!

Also, they shouldn't forget to make it easily mod-able again. Even I could do some stuff in Oblivion :O

Dude, the main quest isn't long, really (especially if you play on Easy, which I did). It's not that enjoyable either.

And side quests are what they are, side quests. With no online and all, what's the point of doing them after the main quest? Just level up a bit, do the main quest, and done. I have to say I exagerated a bit with the 3 hours, but it's still short and you can't deny it if you just try to finish it (and not bother with the useless item quests, because that's what they are pretty much). Get to a dude, find where you have to go, complete the guild side quest, travel back to the guild hall, rinse and repeat. Fun? :/

Even on easy your looking at probably 15-20 hours for the main quest. I personally found it enjoyable becasue it does give an interesting storyline. The thing is that with Oblivion you get many stories that really are interesting in the side quests for example if you become a vampire, or joining the Assasins guild. Don't get me wrong, I think the overall art direction and detail in Fable is better and I am a huge fan of the Fable series but to say that Oblivion isn't an enjoyable game....well, to each his own I guess.

The way skills leveled was fine. The way stats leveled was stupid. The way you picked three stats, based on how much you used the skills they support, and leveled them by a capped 5 encouraged some behavior which simply wasn't fun. If you wanted to max your stats, you'd have to very carefully raise your skills in a particular way which wouldn't waste these stat increases.

They need to reform this leveling system so that it doesn't reward you for carefully using and not using certain skills. It just isn't fun, but if you don't game the system, you find your stats falling behind as you level.

Yes this leveling system wasn't the best idea, but Bethesda has changed this system in Fallout 3 and I hope they will use it in the new Elder Scrolls.

As for branching dialogue trees being hampered by voice work, this is a problem which Bioware has managed to overcome. They used language barriers to help them in KOTOR, and I'm guessing they did the same in Mass Effect, but important conversations still got full voice. If Bethesda can't figure out a way to make it work, perhaps their game would be better with less voice...