Before Skyrim, Oblivion, and Morrowind there was Daggerfall, the second entry in what has become a household name for fantasy RPGs. The original is available on Steam and GOG, though 23 years later we have a modern remake in the form of Daggerfall Unity which brings in modern graphics, controls, QoL improvements and mod support (as well as Linux and Mac support).
I haven’t played Daggerfall, but I’ve read about it.
IMO the thing that made Morrowind such a revolutionary game (and part of why it and its sequels are so good) is that everything in the whole open world was actually designed by hand. Daggerfall is not like that: its open world is many, many times bigger than Morrowind’s (apparently similar to Great Britain IRL!), but it’s populated with procedurally/randomly-generated content. So there’s “more” to do, but less variety/uniqueness.
I double that. As much as I played it Daggerfall was a fun game, but it just don’t scratch the same places Morrowind does. It looks like a great system that has every needed mechanic in for a potentially endless game, like a rulebook, but it lacks a GM. As we learnt later, there’s some value to a thoughtful hand-holding and quality control (look at these fucking dungeons!).
I don’t think Todd liked it that much comparatively to his first game, MW, but since it ended up in a mad crunch in some shitty basement, he tries to ‘work smarter, not harder’, and all his new findings like radiant quests, random encounters, heavily scripted AI, optimized dungeons, interchangeable fractions and so on look like right now he is slowly transitioning back to Daggerfall. Quite possible that it takes so much to create TES6 for he tries to implement even more of that here. There’s not much info about it for now, but it sure has a dedicated team for years and had it before it was announced.
I think in the long run, computer-generated content is viable; I just think Daggerfall’s attempt was way, way too early. We might be hitting that threshold right about now with all the “AI” LLM stuff going on, in fact.
I do think the generation of content should happen once by the developer (as opposed to randomized for each player), though. The output ought to be checked over/play-tested/edited before release.
I see the counter-thought to be viable too, like the hand-made marker on physical products. I’m sure I wouldn’t get skrewed if I pre-order products from some companies or producers. Hand-crafted campaigns can meet their new highs.