I will echo my esteemed colleague Vazdru's thoughts on Daggerfall and name that as my favorite as well.
Back in 1994 I was working for a high-end motherboard company in Silicon Valley and was lucky enough to post some questions through the proto-internet at the time to I believe Julian LeFay himself about the game as it was still in development. I asked him some silly questions such as, "Will we be able to climb a tree and shoot a fireball at an orc?" to which I seem to recall him answering "maybe".
The point is that my hype for this exciting game -- a game that was promising to do things as an RPG that had never really been done before (I was a happy veteran of Arena) -- was dizzyingly high.
I'll never forget the day that I called in sick in order to devote 24 hours to its glorious release. Having been shipped via FedEx directly to my address (Bethesda did things like this back then), I actually drove to the local FedEx depot to intercept it, such was my desire to possess it.
The unboxing. The glorious, glorious box art (I got the Collector's Edition):
Finally installing the game. The deep character generation. Waking up in Privateer's Hold for the first time. It was all almost too good to be true. I loved it.
But the real thrill came when stepping outside the dungeon for the first time. Only then did you begin to realize the immensity of the game. Its true freedom. Fuck the bugs. I can deal with some bugs. But you can't fake or compensate for the lack of a truly open world. And for Bethesda to have actually pulled off a working story and main quest to slowly work on while LARPing my hero wandering from town to town?
Well, it just doesn't get much better than that. Even if I never could climb any of those trees.
Back in 1994 I was working for a high-end motherboard company in Silicon Valley and was lucky enough to post some questions through the proto-internet at the time to I believe Julian LeFay himself about the game as it was still in development. I asked him some silly questions such as, "Will we be able to climb a tree and shoot a fireball at an orc?" to which I seem to recall him answering "maybe".
The point is that my hype for this exciting game -- a game that was promising to do things as an RPG that had never really been done before (I was a happy veteran of Arena) -- was dizzyingly high.
I'll never forget the day that I called in sick in order to devote 24 hours to its glorious release. Having been shipped via FedEx directly to my address (Bethesda did things like this back then), I actually drove to the local FedEx depot to intercept it, such was my desire to possess it.
The unboxing. The glorious, glorious box art (I got the Collector's Edition):
Finally installing the game. The deep character generation. Waking up in Privateer's Hold for the first time. It was all almost too good to be true. I loved it.
But the real thrill came when stepping outside the dungeon for the first time. Only then did you begin to realize the immensity of the game. Its true freedom. Fuck the bugs. I can deal with some bugs. But you can't fake or compensate for the lack of a truly open world. And for Bethesda to have actually pulled off a working story and main quest to slowly work on while LARPing my hero wandering from town to town?
Well, it just doesn't get much better than that. Even if I never could climb any of those trees.