How is the Elder Scrolls series views by Codexers?

[Falksi]

Lots of posts have pretty much covered my thought on it; basically Morrowind is peak and still worth playing, the rest have had their day.

My only POV which goes slightly against the grain, is that the latest version of Skyrim with the right mods installed is probably worth around maybe 20-ish hours of your time. It's not great by any means, but it dangles a few cool hooks which make you think there's a great game on the way (which there isn't, it's just that first 20 hours regurgitated...often in a far worse way).

 

[JarlFrank]

If you want a better Skyrim just play Enderal.

 

[Lemming42]

Daggerfall has some clearly superior systems (character creation is my favorite of them), but handmade content is so clearly superior to procedurally generated stuff, it's not even close.

Replying to this again because I think I can make my point in a much better way than I did before: I'd agree with you on this if I thought Morrowind had seized the potential offered by handmade content. I would love if Morrowind had scrapped every system in Daggerfall and instead focused on making branching quests, vivid and unique NPCs, and all kinds of other genuinely good handmade content - basically, if it was New Vegas set on Vvardenfell, with the tone and style of Redguard. That would easily have been the best TES game ever created.

But MW isn't that type of game, it's in a weird middle ground; a great deal of the content is basic cookie-cutter stuff that wouldn't be out of place if it were a huge procgen game (linear quests, copypasted NPCs, etc) but it's also missing the mechanical breadth and scope of Daggerfall despite still having the vestigal trappings of it. It's stuck somewhere between Daggerfall and New Vegas but is missing all the best aspects of either. It doesn't make the most of handmade content, and it simultaneously shuns all the things from DF that it could/should have built upon. That said, I still like it because you can OD on Skooma and jump into the ocean and kill Fargoth; I just think the change in direction is disappointing and isn't capitalised on in the way it should have been.

You mentioned Tamriel Rebuilt and I've enjoyed it a lot as well, but I think it mostly serves to show up Bethesda's own lack of ambition/skill, and the more exciting parts of it brush up against the limitations and constraints of MW's own systems.