Thanks for taking the time to spell it out for me. Were that Daggerfall found me as a kid, it sounds like it would have been exactly my thing. Even as a preteen I was already deep into dark, novelistic RPGs like Fallout 1+2 and (to a lesser extent) Strife and the early Baldur's Gate games.

Since someone in this thread reminded me of Daggerfall Unity I've been looking at some gameplay footage, which was quickly apparent to be the wrong way to take in the game even before you described its depth as textual and tantalisingly obscurantist. At this point in my life, masquerading as a breadwinning parental archetype, I'm thinking the best way for me to vicariously digest a portion of Daggerfall might be through the imperial library site (link).

Looking forward, it's impossible to come to any other conclusion about Todd Howard and his ilk being something like the Musk of great novelistic game franchises, buying and cheapening anything that captures the imagination and profiting immensely from it. Such voices are unwelcome in the conversation about games as art.

I still hold out hope that there are enough grown up bookworms like me to carry that torch as indie developers, though. Games like Disco Elysium still do get made, and as games get easier to produce over time it's not hard to believe that the more writerly among us can make use of the medium to good effect in the traditions established by Lefay and Peterson.