Well, I agree in some cases... and not in others.

Richard Garriot IMO is a brilliant game-maker, but in the "limited" style of his initial games. In essence, I think his greatness shown through when the AAA space was glorified indies (by today's standard)... but he still chases the AAA space that has expanded (in both technical scope and team size) far beyond where he saw success.

I keep looking at the one-dev indie Moon Ring and thinking this should have been Garrriot!

If Garriot had stayed small -- where he saw success -- I think he would have a string of great indie games into this decade (ie Spiderweb Software), but he's continually chasing the ego-driven slot-machine high of AAA releases... and sadly keeps failing.

I think Wayward Realms has great potential and the talent behind it can certainly make essentially an updated Daggerfall, but will they get sidetracked by ambitions of modern AAA? I sure hope not. I hope they embrace what they do best.

To be perfectly fair, Bethesda games feel like glorified indies as well, so I believe they can perfectly fit in the niche of TES competitors.

There's something very appealing about the term spiritual successor.

Depends largely on his team. I think he had like mind people when he began expanding his startups, years ago. The problem with being a person that creates new and big. Is there is nothing to compare it to. He tried to invent a speach program similar to what ai chat is now.....but in a video game. Its pretty ballsy. Considering nothing until now was really possible. I think that was 10 or 12 years ago.


edit:
Yeah, I think its Shroud of the Avatar....I say I think......because google just turned into an even bigger mountain of shit and is making my search a chore. So I cant search to deep, until I find a better engine. >_>

I wish they would avoid the term in marketing and let people make their own mind up after the game is finished and after gamers get a chance to judge by themselves.

Will never buy Songs of Conquest or Hero's Hour merely because the amount of times they posted "Spiritual successor to HOMM3!" "Like HOMM3!" "HOMM3!!!", it felt like they were trying to brainwash people into buying the games. Just embarassing behaviour.

Similar here. Just make the damn game and if it's good and inspired by Daggerfall then I might buy it.

Is it though? I've seen way too many games self-proclaimed as such, and then they end up falling flat on their faces when they can't stick the landing. In the end, it's really nothing more than a hype/buzz marketing word.

I usually wait a year after a game comes out to buy it so that most of the bugs have been worked out and I can get it at a discount.

I remain cautiously optimistic.

There's a lot of good stuff in Daggerfall, most of which, were only really allowed to shrine through Daggerfall Unity.

But the original game is also a buggy mess, and there's a lot of bloat intrinsic to the design.

So, I hope they can produce a new game with "good complexity" and more inline with modern RPG designs and minimal bugs.

About the random generation, it remains to be seen. It's very hard to actually produce an interesting open world this way, and nowadays we know that bigger doesn't mean necessarily better.

No Man's Sky is a good example of random generation, but only because they spent years and years adding new handcrafted stuff to the game.

Awesome. Added this to my Steam Wishlist.

But, really - is this game going to be coming to GOG? I don't see it listed for GOG here sadly.