I was more making the point that first person dungeon crawls are a dying genre, beyond Etrian Odyssey, Minecraft, and TES younger gamers haven't really had a chance to get their feet wet in it. If you were born in the 90s then there's a good chance your first and last experience with a nonlinear crawl was Morrowind. Bethsoft isn't obligated to try to only please fans who began with Daggerfall by accident of birth but also people who started with Morrowind and Oblivion who have different expectations when it comes to dungeon design.
But they only have different expectations when it comes to dungeon design
because Bethsoft and other companies stopped making proper dungeon crawlers. That's just circular logic you're using there.
I think it just turns out that first person navigation is extremely disorienting and has only niche appeal.
Hence why first person shooters are a dying genre.
And you have to remember, when Bethsoft made Morrowind they were still a no-name company with essentially one noteworthy release under their belts.
That is simply false. You're likely referring to Daggerfall, but don't forget their Terminator series. Terminator:Future Shock established them in
massive style, it was the first FPS with fully 3D texture-mapped environments and enemies made of polygons instead of sprites. People usually think of Quake, but that came out later. Likewise, T:FS was the game that invented the now standard mouselook control for first person shooters (i.e. not only turning but also looking, and more importantly aiming, up and down). Again, people usually think it was Quake, but Quake came out later and you had to enable that control method via a console command, the default controls were basically identical to Doom's. In T:FS mouselook was the default.
After that of course there was Daggerfall, which was
revolutionary and in many respects remains unsurpassed to this day (and it used the same engine as the Terminator games, btw).
They also developed XCar, an ultra-hardcore racing simulator (again using the same engine, which if you think about it is something really rather amazing for 1997). Just look at that
car setup screen. In
1997. Good god, even today's so-called "realistic racing simulations" don't offer that level of detail.
Oh and don't forget TES: Redguard and TES: Battlespire, which were also quite well-received.
Due to all of the above, Bethsoft had a massive reputation and Morrowind was one of the most eagerly anticipated games of its time.
It will always be that type of company who are the innovators, which is why indie gaming is so popular right now. I mean, just look at the narrative arc of Chris Avellone. Fallout 2, PS:T, KOTOR2, NWN2, Alpha Protocol. After PS:T every single one of those is less deep than the last. I think it's just the natural lifespan of a game company. Innovation, refinement, and then over-refinement toward simplicity.
I'm not so sure. Is Alpha Protocol even an RPG? It thought it was some kind of stealth thing like Splinter Cell. I tried to get into NWN2 several times, but the
horrifically bad combat and movement systems always put me off, so I can't comment on the plot of it. But Kotor2, that's one of my favorite games of all time and IMO far superior to Kotor1, so I'm not seeing the decline there.