I was watching “…why Skyrim?” by Razbuten on sloptube this aft and it’s so weird that it finally took Starfield for people to realise. Like Fallout 76 wasn’t enough, only now are negative things people were first saying about Skyrim in 2012 finally bleeding into mainstream consciousness. It’s so wild, like wow they ruined the magic system? The game has worse writing than a PS1 era Mega Man X game??? Skyrim is just shitty Game of Thrones?? Welcome to thirteen years ago!!
Bethesda hasn’t made a really good game since 2002, but it’ll probably be years before that realisation sinks in.
I had basically the exact same experience. I got super hyped for 11/11/11, stopped going to school for a week and spent all day every day playing it to the point where I was solving puzzles in my dreams and then I beat it and never really touched it again. I kinda woke up from the dream back then and have been watching the rest of the world catch up. I did put a lot of hours into FO4 but that was solely for the base building aspect, never touched the main plot after the first time through.