I've picked up recently where I left off - that is, confused - and have resolved to at least attempt partaking in more interesting quest lines and avoiding the dull stuff that adds nothing.

Finally I visited the Dark Brotherhood and have ventured head first down that path. Since abandoning my archer/thief (not by choice, if you recall from my ramblings earlier in this thread, but due to loss of PS3 save file) who was somewhat of a karma-conscious character I've taken to a more selfish, sinister path, so the Dark Brotherhood has suited me well. It's at least more intriguing than the Thieves Guild whose work I found a bit underwhelming, if simply unsuited for Skyrim's stealth-dumb engine.

Once I exhaust the Dark Brotherhood story line I believe I may carry on with the main path, since I seem to be a bit over-leveled now: 120 hours or so on this character, level 37, and with level 2 Marked for Death I can take out an Elder Dragon in 4-5 swings of my mace.

I'm tired of having a carry limit. The thing's pretty damn arbitrary in the first place. 400 weight units or infinite, what the hell's the difference? Dark Souls had the right idea in abandoning Demon's Souls carry limit. I'm a fantasy world veteran, I really don't mind suspending a tiny bit more disbelief for what honestly amounts to a significant chunk of convenience. I would guess that I've spent anywhere between 10-20 hours purely devoted to my carry limit, whether it was trading heavy items for their maximum value, playing ridiculous games of choose-which-barrel-in-my-house-to-store-this-type-of-crap-in, concocting fortify carry weight potions, at the same time guessing how many of other types of potions I'll need for a given trek so that I can offload what I don't need, each potion being a significant 0.5 weight units.

It's a terrible meta game in and of itself!

Let's just say for example that I was writing reviews for a site like IGN, with a 10 point scale; the sheer volume of banal chores alone would detract an entire point off my score.

Two days after I lost my PS3 save file I went out and bought the Xbox version. Yep, I'm an idiot.

So yeah, I finished the Dark Brotherhood quest line, I really liked it. There were some brilliant moments throughout (assassinating Vittoria Vicci and the madness afterwards being one). What these specialized quest paths do, however, is like Kay said, highlight just how banal some of the regular side quests are.

I have no problem with the size of Skyrim; not finishing any previous Elder Scrolls game, I don't know how the size of the territory (without looking at a map of Tamriel) stacks up to Cyrodil or Morrowind, but it's plenty large for explorer types. That's great, because there are constantly very lovely places to discover - I just reached the Lover Stone for the first time a few days ago ... it gives you a brilliant view point.

The down side is how Bethesda feels the need to fill so much space with boring dungeons and many dull fetch quests. I really can't stress the word boring enough, either. Anyone who has played at least 60 hours of the game knows what I mean: there's the odd unique or brief dungeon, but most of them are just these endless mazes of draugr after draugr, and the whole time I'm thinking to myself what am I doing this dungeon crawl for? ... and it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

I would be ready to applaud Bethesda if they made this large world but left a lot of it empty. Not literally; yes, trees, rivers, rocks, bears, whatever, those are all pretty. But it's the dungeons hidden away everywhere, and that for some sick reason I feel compelled to go spelunking.

I have one major city left to visit - Winterhold. Didn't visit in my 120 hours on my first (PS3) character either, so after all this time there is more discovering to do. I don't know how long I'll keep putting off the bigger stuff. I don't think it will be much more though, because I need to feel interested in something in Skyrim again.