Indeed, I see Besthesda as a not-so-shining example of the case that squidsoup is making. Morrowind was brilliant - it had great freatures, great gameplay, a great storyline etc.

Then Oblivion came along and they switched their development focus (or at least a fair amount of it) onto the graphics. And the result? Poor gameplay with a cop-out 'auto levelling' system, a 'fast travel' system which was 'click this button to travel anywhere in the game World', etc.

Sure it might have looked pretty and thus sold well, but it was a step backwards in terms of gameplay.

Crysis 1 is another example of this. Amazing graphics, amazing physics. But the storyline was non-existant and at times the gameplay was poor.