I was watching "...why Skyrim?" by Razbuten on sloptube this aft and it's so weird that it finally took Starfield for people to realise. Like Fallout 76 wasn't enough, only now are negative things people were first saying about Skyrim in 2012 finally bleeding into mainstream consciousness. It's so wild, like wow they ruined the magic system? The game has worse writing than a PS1 era Mega Man X game??? Skyrim is just shitty Game of Thrones?? Welcome to thirteen years ago!!
Bethesda hasn't made a really good game since 2002, but it'll probably be years before that realisation sinks in.
All TES games have that modeling clay (and thirst) essence, going back to Arena since they were always so broken or incomplete they ended up being sort of like zombies or something far past their prime kept alive by community necromancers through patches and such. Morrowind was probably the most stable game imho, but when its a Bethesda title they're all about as stable as a unicycle at their best moment.
I think this is somewhat true, but Morrowind is also a wonderful game at its core. I think Oblivion is still decent too. Also Morrowind had more gameplay systems bugs than stability issues yeah...
Right, I love to slam on Oblivion but its a really chill game, the npcs are the friendliest of the series and their conversations are funny, also the corrupt watchman quests in Cheydinhal and Imperial city were reasonably done rather than 'oh smack you're a hero and solved our problem forever'. Morrowind/Daggerfall/Skyrim had better storylines overall imho, they all have their positives for sure. I remember having so many cliffracers following me in Morrowind it ended up killing guards in Aldruhn.