I've been looking forward to, and then playing, Saints Row the Third so much I haven't even glanced at Skyrim. To be honest, the hilarious amounts of hype Skyrim's been getting on this and other sites have been rather confusing me, as I play RPGs for, well, the role-playing, and as a general rule Bethesda games lack the interesting characters and settings (excluding Fallout 3, which I loved) that make me love creating and roleplaying a character so much. In my mind, having fun with a creating a character relies on the world in which they live and the options they give you when it comes to character creation, and Bethesda games don't really offer much in the form of the former, and I think the Saints Row games trump the Elder Scrolls games in the case of the latter. All I've seen of Skyrim was more of Oblivion, plus dragons, which really aren't anything of interest to me (don't get me wrong, I love a good dragon, but that just means Skyrim joins the ranks of every fantasy RPG ever in having them).
So yeah, I've been playing Saints Row The Third a crapload since it came out. And, in fact, I'm enjoying it more as an RPG than I've ever enjoyed any of Bethesda's games. It has interesting and over-the-top characters (Oleg and Kinzie are awesome), a world that I can really get into, plenty of stuff for my character to do outside the main story, even "moral" choices occasionally, and usually ones that are better done than ones that were present in, say, Oblivion, since there tend to be no right or wrong answers. Combined with the staggering level of character customisation, letting me continue the exploits of my anorexic middle-aged mexican drug lord from the previous two games, it's honestly everything I want in an RPG, when Skyrim isn't...
So I'm going to take a stand on the point that Saints Row the Third is a better RPG than most RPGs, and then go charging into the midst of a horde of zombies armed with a sword and with only a squad of SWAT at my back, courtesy of my good friend Burt Reynolds. Have I mentioned that I love this game?