[citation][nom]maestintaolius[/nom]Well, comparing daggerfall to oblivion, morrowind or skyrim really isn't completely fair. Most of the content was just randomly generated copypasta, with the exception of a few main storylines. Don't get me wrong, daggerfall was a very impressive game. I do still giggle over the fact it's mapsize is still larger than any rpg out there yet, by a large margin (unless you count minecraft's randomly generated worlds).[/citation]
Well, it is fair to still compare what can be compared: hence when I give quest-counts, I'm merely counting each "type;" since we're going to see this in Skyrim, (and I'm sure some of you have by now already dashed in to see it) it's a fair comparison. An unbalanced comparison here would be, say, directly comparing the map sizes, since the >60,000 mi² of Daggerfall can't be compared to the maps of the three games that came after it.
[citation][nom]mapesdhs[/nom]On the subject of how artificial worlds can be modelled so that they exhibit unique and novelbehaviour, I thought you all might find the following article interesting:[/citation]
Yes, it's a very basic idea: interactivity yields more than shiny graphics, since the interactivity won't go obsolete and look dated in a couple years.
I think one major reason for the trend against increasing the detail of interaction is that it's gotten harder and harder to implement them reasonably with increasing levels of graphics, and the latter have been pushed regardless, as there were market forces (from hardware makers) behind those. When polygon counts and texture resolutions go up, it makes it all that much more work to provide all the variations needed for alteration. I think this is a major factor why, say, we have high-interactivity games like MineCraft with intentionally lower-level graphics: it's a lot easier to handle calculating building physics and destruction when everything's made of uniformly-sized cubes.
A similar comparison more relevant to the games at hand is Arena's "passwall" (as well as "disintegrate floor," "create wall" and "create floor") spell. As that game, too, was based on square blocks, it was relatively easy to allow for the player to alter the map. But the more detailed the system used for the map, the harder this became: Even just moving to a full 2D raycaster (in the style of Doom) Makes adding these "tunnels" much more difficult, as then the game must calculate where it clips with existing architecture, and adjust accordingly. (this is relatively plausible, though I don't think I've seen it done) Once you crank it to full 3D, it becomes much, much harder; it took us years and years just to get Portal, and it didn't even deal with ADDING new architecture, just joining points together. Given that TES (barring Arena) use a positive-space architecture system, (i.e, everything sits in a void) that allows for ease of drag-and-drop architecture on the developer's side, coding in a reliable system that could allow for the addition of extra tunnels, and calculations to clip with existing architecture, becomes a headache that thus far I've seen no game programmer do.
[citation][nom]bystander[/nom]What was also very impressive is just how many bugs were in Daggerfall. Even more impressive was how well it was liked with so many game stopping bugs.[/citation]
Well, keep in mind that Morrowind and Oblivion had their share of game-breaking, widespread glitches as well, and I'm positive Skyrim will as well. Morrowind had a lot of infamous "important NPC clips through the floor; falls forever" issues, and Oblivion had its infamous savegame corruption. Daggerfall had a lot of "quest targets don't show up" issues, but that was MOSTLY an issue with DOSBox emulation; it was much rarer when run natively.