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