They've created a huge imaginary world with its own detailed history (lore), laws of physics (based on magic), antagonists (enemies) and heroes (players, US). It's large enough that you can take any part of it and expand it into a full-blown storyline. The possibilities are almost infinite.
I don't think the Elder Scrolls franchise is dead yet. There's too much potential for making money from the "intellectual rights" to their creation. Elder Scrolls may even become the next Lord of the Rings, spawning spin-off books, movies and games. Look at the Resident Evil games, for example... Four spin-off movies so far. Look at Star Trek. Started as a TV Series in the 1960's and resulted in thousands of spin-off books, four TV Series (Next Generation, Deep Space 9, Voyager, Enterprise), nearly a dozen movies and numerous games. Look at Stargate: Started as one movie in the early 1990's and resulted in three TV Series (SG-1, Atlantis, Universe), several spin-off SG-1 movies and hundreds of books.
No, I don't think Skyrim will be the last TES game, because it's the fans (US) who keep the franchise alive. If it wasn't for US here as part of the army of Oblivion fans STILL playing after 5 years, extolling the virtues of it, and spurring budding RPG'ers to buy/play it too, interest would have waned years ago. Skyrim would have been nothing more than a brief vague idea in someone's head, never realised, or tentatively discussed and shot down in flames because "there's not enough interest to justify the expense of development".
Look at it this way. How many new members have been joining our ranks lately? How many people have recently bought Morrowind and/or Oblivion to experience them before Skyrim is released? Where did they get the idea from? Every Google search they do for RPG, Morrowind, Oblivion or Skyrim has UESP Wiki info and UESP forum posts amongst the search results, that's why. And WE are responsible for "creating" those search results.
It's precisely BECAUSE the fans have kept the interest and momentum going with Morrowind and Oblivion that Skyrim has become a reality. WE were the driving force behind it, even though we were unaware of it. All these years, we've been playing the "Persuasion mini-game" with Bethesda, to get their Disposition high enough. At some point, we obviously succeeded, but they "Kept Mum" about it so as not to get our hopes up then dash them. And in less than 2 weeks, we'll see if the reward justifies the MASSIVE effort of our collective "Main Quest". Personally, I hope so. If not, I'll be bitterly disappointed.
I did some searches recently for a Far Cry related problem and they led me to my OWN posts from 2004 at Ubisoft's Far Cry Technical Forum! Talk about "helping myself in the future", eh?
