Skyrim - PC Interface Frustration @ GamaSutra

Eric Schwarz has penned a piece on his blog at GamaSutra dealing with his frustration on playing Skyrim with the current UI. Here's some excerpts, here's a quote about the user interface:

Other issues, like mouse acceleration being forced on and impossible to remove without an INI tweak, or the game defaulting to "Xbox 360 Controller - On" when started, even without a controller plugged in, or needless breaks from convention ("Tab" instead of "Esc" to exit menus) show just how little thought or care was put to the PC version's interface, and how little priority was given to this version in the game, or foresight given to what its players might want and expect.

Here's something about the hotkeys:

After rebinding the hotkey for the Favorites menu to "F" and the auto-walk key to "Q", I found that Favorites menu didn't want to open anymore. Curious, I pulled up my inventory and tried assigning some items to the Favorites - only it didn't work......Turns out, the "F" key is holy ground - because it controls the assigning of items to the Favorites menu, rebinding it to perform another function during regular gameplay, even a related function, makes it impossible to assign items and spells to it.

Here's something about optimization:

A second issue I immediately ran into was an intense audio distortion - crackling, skipping and popping most commonly heard in dialogue, but also in many of the game's environmental sounds. No in-game audio options helped and there seemed to be no relevant settings in the game's INI files to help. On a lark, I went to my Windows Sound Properties page and dropped my sound card's bit rate from 96,000 Hz to 44,100 Hz. Instantly, the problem was gone - and instantly, I was frustrated at the fact that once again, it was clear Bethesda had foregone so much as basic compatibility testing.

And here's a rather interesting quote:

All of the preview footage for Skyrim I'd seen was for the Xbox 360 version, with the PC version only featured in screenshots. Many PC-focused web sites were reportedly denied their own review copies from Bethesda, as well, and in all those glowing 9/10 and 10/10 reviews, the PC version was either downplayed or not mentioned at all. Now it's clear why - it's because it is at best a half-functional, poorly-performing wreck of a game.

Scwartz has an edit saying this:

I have to at least in part take back some earlier complaints I had listed here. The game was patched today and apparently fixed some of the interface problems with unresponsive and inconsistent controls and menus. Either way, those problems shouldn't have been in the game to begin with, but it's nice to see Bethesda on the ball.

As Scwarz mentions the game has been updated to version 1.1 - The changelog to both the bug and quest fixes can be found at the Skyrim forums - here.

I'll list the bug fixes below:

•General optimizations related to stability and performance.•Essential followers recover properly if player fast travels away.•Fixed rare instances of dragons flying improperly though objects after player exits an interior.•Fixed rare instance where the a music track would not stop playing properly.•Autosave message properly displays when going through a load door.•The fifth level of the Light Fingers perk correctly calculates the Pickpocket skill bonus.•Enchanting an item to improve the Sneak skill properly calculates the bonus to the player's Sneak skill.•Enchanting an item to improve the Lockpick skill properly calculates the bonus to the player's Lockpick skill. •Corpus Enchanter perk properly calculates bonuses to stats for the player’s new enchantments.