Judging by what I'm reading on the Bethesda forums, the controls are horrible... Can anyone confirm or deny?

There seems to be issues with them. I remapped the controls to what I'm more used to, but the prompts in the menus don't match the remapped controls.

To favorite an item or drop it is reversed from what it says on screen for some reason.

I have yet to figure out how to take a book that is just sitting out. I can read it and set it back down, but not take. A button is labeled to take, but it doesn't work.

I don't know how to assign things to hotkeys yet. I'm assuming it's broken.

I'm hoping for a patch soon.

Defaults keybinds are a lot different then Oblivion. But they can be (mostly) rebound to Oblivion-standards. It's not too hard to get used to the new controls, though I still sometimes try and jump with E. The old Drag key didn't seem to make it to Skyrim.

I've not had a problem taking books. It's assigned to 'E' by default. So is probably bound to what ever you have for interact/activate. I had more problems figuring out how to exit without taking a book.

To hotkey, open the favorite menu, highlight the choice and hit 1-9. Voila, hotkeyed. Though I've been having difficulty keeping my dagger assigned, spells/bow have been reliable.

The hotkeys are very silly in this game. There is no way so far as I can tell to give a hand preference to your hotkeys, so you can only ever hotkey to the right hand. Until I can figure out how to make a left-hand hotkey, the system is pretty worthless. Even then, there are so many functions Bethesda did not tell us about (like clicking and dragging to 3D view items and zooming in on them using the mouse wheel) that I would call Skyrim's "Improved PC UI" a load of hot air.

It is unintuitive, has a terribly long learning curve, is even more restrictive than Oblivion's, and there are major issues with the mouse controls. Some has said the mouse is unresponsive in the UI, but for me, the problem is I often select what I did not intend to select. In Barter, for instance, I often find myself scrolling down to select a menu lower down in the list, but when I click it, I don't select it, I close the barter menu instead. I also have issues with the game selecting the wrong topics in conversation and selecting the wrong items in my inventory. And my first click in conversations never seems to ever do anything.

In all, this UI was such a massive failure on Bethesda's part that in my mind it needs to be addressed officially. If this UI is supposed to be "improved," this is one of the biggest screw-ups they've ever done.

I'm hoping they patch it soon. I still can't take books, I assigned 'interact' to the 4th mouse button and that won't let me take books either.

I really cannot see where all these complaints come from, all the keys are easily labelled and mapped, and if I need to find anything it only takes a few seconds of experimentation or guide/control layout reading. What's more the key bindings are not too far from oblivion, e is still your default for interection with everything, the biggest difference is that R has not become more commonly used.

But that's just me.

The problem for me is that I remapped the controls and the button bindings in the menus changed as well. The labels do not reflect these changes either.

I had huge problems starting out with the cursor's unresponsiveness going up and down. And I agree that the interface as a whole stinks. I've spent a fair chunk of the last couple days here finding tweaks on-line. More or less works now (except for favorites, for which I just downloaded a potential-but-untested-by-me fix) and the game has become a joy to play, for the most part. It's just a shame that the poor interface and controls are marring a potentially great game experience.

I haven't had to download anything, but I had to restore default controls once in order to complete a quest. Remapped everything right afterword.

I've not had to download much (yet) but I've been doing a lot of work in the .ini. But my laptop is really under-powered for the game, so it makes sense that I would be having more issues than most. I expected that going in. That I get the FPS I do is somewhat remarkable. The problems with the cursor and the UI, though, should have damn little to do with my computer's specs. It's odd.

I've started to use the arrow keys and WASD in the menus. They seem to be better than the mouse.

This is an excellent read.

Basically, this brings to light all of the frankly stupid decisions Bethesda made with the new UI design. These affect not only the PC, but the console users, as well. Basically, Bethesda tried to streamline the interface without having a clue how, considering how many basic mistakes were made. It is not a terrible UI on PC, it is a terrible UI, period.

It is terrible enough that it really needs to be patched. This is without a doubt the single biggest flaw in the entire game. Bethesda really needs to acknowledge that they screwed up on the menus and do them over, because they flat-out suck. Full stop.

Wow.

Compare that to Steve Jobs's design philosophy: Simplify, simplify, simplify.

When he built the Macintosh interface and the iPod interface, he insisted that you should not click more than three times to find what you are looking for.

Looks like the Beth designers should have gone to the Apple University themselves to learn how to design really good interfaces.

The design was inspired by Apple menus, actually. Unfortunately, Bethesda hamstrung themselves by putting style before ease of use. And they are going to pay for it. This is the first time Beth used this menu system, and judging by reception, it will also be the last. If they don't cave and admit they screwed up by patching out all the idiotic design decisions they made.

I don't care about how my menus look, Todd, I want to easily find the info I'm looking for! Organized cluttering of the screen is a good thing!

All they really did was copy the clean look of Apple's interfaces. As far as usability goes, Skyrim went back to the Stone Age.

TK, I'm a long time Apple user, and I'm very familiar with their interfaces and menu systems.

What I saw in the link of the Skyrim interface is nothing like anything that has come out of Cupertino. If anything, it looks just like the menu system in Infinity Blade. That is a clunky menu interface and just about my only pet peeve about that game. Eye candy, is all it is. And I suspect Skyrim is about the same.

Menus and interfaces should be simple in design, simple to use, and simple to learn (then forget about, as it becomes so automatic). Apple has that down cold. I have yet to see anything else that comes close.

Superficially, I suppose it works like the iOS on the Apple devices. But even those are smooth and easy to use, and so intuitive. Based on what I've read so far, and the screenshots I've seen, looks like Beth didn't even come close to missing the boat - they missed the anchors aweigh too.