daggerfall is the first real entry in the elder scrolls series, and what an entry. a masterpiece of early procedural generation, second only to frontier in how well it leverages its scope and scale. a labyrinth of content, some of it great, most of it at least pretty good. bethesda's grand adage of "go anywhere, do anything, be anyone" has never been more perfectly realized than here.

if morrowind was a grand novel and oblivion a theatre production, skyrim is very much a video game — arguably the first real video game released under todd howard's stewardship of the company, and the first in the franchise since arena

there are moments where it all works together perfectly, where you can see their grand design, but they are infrequent and when they do happen it's never for very long. but they do happen, and they're lovely when they do.

oblivion is a small-town theatre performance of a grand fantasy epic about an empire plunged into chaos by the forces of evil and the one man who has the strength to strike back at the heart of darkness. you play as that man's trusty sidekick.

though several steps backward from the heights attained by morrowind and daggerfall, this game built up and ultimately perfected the core formula that would be copied by every subsequent bethesda title and it is still the best among them

it's better than fallout 2 in all of the ways that mattered in that game but it's worse than fallout 3 in all of the ways that mattered in that game

they should have stopped with just this one

the only positive i can really give to this game is it's very pretty sometimes

if they set out with the design goal of "let's make system shock 2 but everything about it sucks" then they nailed it

stellar game, no notes. they should stop making souls games and go back to making stuff that's actually good again

it's a really strong iterative improvement over the first game but ends up ultimately with an experience that feels less charming. everything about it is Better but not in a way that makes it Good.

it was alright. it's a "bad fallout game" but that's a good thing. of all of bethesda's games this one has probably aged the least gracefully but there's some charm to be found still. the last thing they made that still had that local theatre production quality

it is impossible to give it in words the praise it deserves. a genuine masterwork of narrative and worldbuilding, a mechanical nightmare that's broken just enough to make it all even better. no game has yet been made that can even compare.