Arena was awesome, most fun ive had with an elder scrolls, ever. And i played it on 2006.
Then i played daggerfall, bugged up the ass but a step forward in many ways.
Then it came morrowind, with vastly improved graphics and blah blah blah, you know the rest.
Then oblivion, a step back in so many ways, but graphics looked prettier (except the area around people faces, how do you fuck that up so much?) and it was a good time waster with mods, without them i deemed it unplayable, oscuros mod made it fun, sorta, with so little to play at the time it was all i had.
Then came dragonattack: a watered down version of morrowind, good thing is that its constantly being modded to improve on it (yes, its up to people with free time on their hands to make a game you bought playable and fun...), it has a good future and its good enough, i guess. There are subtle signs of some faggot at beth actually getting it right, but trying to desperately cover his tracks so that their bosses and most players dont realize that the game has a little bit of depth on it, god forbid a console tard having to actually use their head.
Thats how i see it anyway.
Similar impressions.
I played Arena when it was released. For its time, it was amazing in look, play, character development, depth, etc...
Daggerfall was as you said, an improvement in many ways. I personally thought the extensive generated content to be... cumbersome and tiring after awhile though. It was buggy beyond belief, but... it was enjoyable in many ways and still had the depth of character development and interaction.
Morrowind was the start of "streamlining" in terms of character development (they got rid of a lot of skills), but it wasn't a game breaker for me (keep in mind I am saying this from a perspective that primarily plays games for complex character development options). The world obviously was smaller, but... it really was a new direction in terms of feel. It had a very artistic measure to it and I think that provided an authentic charm to the game. The quests were varied in focus, interesting in their dialogue and interaction. The exploration aspects were well done and danger of the world was very real. It really felt like a single player MMO where you could spend hundreds of hours exploring and interacting. Mods fixed most problems from the initial release and expanded the game to amazing new levels. In many ways, I think this is one of the best of their series, but only because of its accessible modability.
Oblivion. Well, this one I hated with an extreme passion on initial release. They appeared to streamline just about everything in the game. No skill, quest mechanic, combat mechanic, etc... was left unmolested. The dialogue was horrible, the constant quest helper text was insulting (seriously, did anyone feel like you were a blithering idiot on the mage quest where it handheld you to ridiculous levels?). The instant travel made a large world feel as if it was in a small box. The world dungeons were "ok", but the Daedric dungeons were obviously phoned in.
The combat combined with their idiotic "safe level" feature was terrible. I remember killing mobs with MMO tactics kiting them around with a bow that I only had a skill of 1 in. That was insulting and an obvious sign they were dumbing the game down in terms of character development. While I thought the whole NPC system was interesting, it created major problems on release. Also, this is where they stepped into an obvious "tardsoling" the game. Axes as blunts? REALLY? It was an obvious sign of them trying to streamline their skill system to reduce time and effort into the development of the game, likely due to a need to appeal to the console market.
Anyway, the game was crap on release, horrible. The only thing that saved this game was the mods and... well... they did a superb job of taking a title that was fast marketed to idiots on consoles and created something new. FCOM mod (culmination of 3-4 major overhauls and other various mod additions) actually brought back Oblivion from its complete stupidity. While I think it is debatable whether Morrowind fully modded vs Oblivion is better or not (I prefer Morrowind personally), the modding community did help save the game from its designers.
Skyrim.
Himm... complete garbage. If you look at the loss of skills due to streamlining from Arena up to now, well... Skyrim is just an action exploration movie game. Character development is pointless, non-existent, lacking any intelligence in its pursuit and as some have said, the quest/dialog, etc... is just... well.. it is like trying to say pornographic movies are rich intellectual experiences. This game was a console game, period. It is obvious in every possible way. Skyrim has a major problem though. Because they completely stripped the complexity of the systems out of the game by designing it first and foremost for tardsole, the modding community is extremely limited in what they can do to fix the most damaging problems of the game (its development system). That is, mods can not save this game, it is junk, will always be junk that rates right up there with Dragon Age 2 and Dead Island. There is no hope for it other than for people to fix/create better dialog and quest focuses. The core system just can't be salvaged.
Sad to see a genre of this level not simply fall from grace, but dive into the toilet after a binge at the seedy back alley mexican restaurant. Skyrim is a perfect example of how gaming has been destroyed to cater to a certain crowd that simply wants cheap movie like entertainment.
to see if I got another long response from you.
, before it was patched out) and rob in peace, but eh.
