Actually a rail shooter, not a space shooter. It's a game where there are branching paths within locations, but locations themselves can branch, too, serving as a difficulty marker. To even unlock "expert mode" you have to play through the game multiple times. Your average playthrough should be no more than an hour long (I've actually timed it). It isn't the perfect thing you describe, but the closest thing to what you describe I can find would be River City Ransom. It falls short in the department of controllable camera or story. I have a feeling you'll end up modifying your definition quite a bit when you compare. Oh, and TES and fallout. You'd really seem to like those.

This is a huge balance issue most games have. In reality, they should be pushing you the whole way, which oblivion does really well, but it's hugely complained about. Your issue with TES races boils down to this issue, right here. The racial differences are actually huge, but there's never enough pressure to actually use them. I know we kinda got away from it, but let's go ahead and get into specifics of what i mean this time, by taking Morrowind for example:

Redguard: Their daily power gives them a HUGE combat boost, close range, which more or less makes them a berserker. Their innate ability to resist disease and poison also adds to this, and caters to them being fairly up-close in all combat scenarios. As a result, probably a good start for most beginners.

Orsimer: Much like the redguard, they are very good close range, but their lack of disease and poison protection makes them more suited to in-and-out kiting tactics (so slower weapons would be preferred, as oppose to swords for the Redguard). They innately resist magic damage to a degree, making them break the normal mage > tank section of the triangle. But who the hell plays an Orc?

Nord: They have a natural ability to resist frost and shock, nice strength and endurance to boot. You'll likely find yourself playing them like you would an Orc, but their ability to take on mages is, yet, stronger. Their daily power, however, rounds them out a bit to make the more survivable against just about anything. Ignoring the base stat advantage, the race also makes a really, really nice anti-mage build, because of their innate resistances, which means giving them a bow is even more deadly. This makes them another great beginniner character, especially for those who might not be smart enough to learn that Leeroy Jenkins' style isn't the only strategy you can have.

Khajiit: Contrary to what the lore would have you believe, these are particularly skilled archers (which always seems to be true regardless of how the stats change from game to game). Their acrobatics advantage allows them more ease to get to good archery spots, and their demoralize power can save them in a pinch. The real prize, however, is their reliable Eye of Night spell: where it is dark and hard to see, the will survive. This means sniping from dark places, looting places, and also spending time underwater with something to provide waterbreathing. They're also likely to branch off into Illusion magic. They're terrible in close combat, so if you do sneak close, it better take out the opponent quickly.

Imperial: These guys kinda suck at combat. They seem to do best in avoiding it entirely. On the flip side, their powers lend to them being good bandits in the beginning (not that it matters, 'cause there's no travelers to single out and raid). Their natural stats will cause them to focus on gaining equipment to make up for their shortcommings. Odds are, you're going to play them like Orsimer, but spend more time outside of combat at the very beginning.

Dunmer: Their natural fire resistance and their power Sanctuary means they're going to be adept at any range of combat (since sanctuary apparently applies to arrows as well). They get a slight boost to destruction magic, however, suggesting you move in that direction. Their speed, also, suggests hit-and-run like Orsimer, but that sanctuary doesn't exactly justify it when destruction is such a viable option for them.

Breton: These things are sponges. You have that power which increases your armor rating once a day, but 50% magica resistance, that conjuration boost, the restoration boost, and the mysticism boost all say one thing: you're gonna make it. Primary damage method is probably going to be your conjuration, which is also what provides you with another mode of survivability, since the AI may target that instead. You're likely to be guzzling magicka resotration postions, but there better be a companion doing damage for you.

Bosmer: This is going to be more like the Khajiit. The disease bonus isn't really useful if you're playing them right, and does more to help them if they get blind-sided. I imagine this was meant to be poison resistance instead. They start out better with bows than Khajiit, but they also need to with their lack of comparable acrobatics. The bosmer is far better off choosing their spot before the battle, unlike the Khajiit, and isn't going to get the benefit of nighttime without buying the spell. Command creature is a nice little diversionary tactic, but isn't that great overall. Bosmer could probably use a rebalance.

Argonian: Hit and run. With poison resistance and disease resistance, they are good at running up to something, smacking it, and running (with their athletics) to water, where drowning damage gives them a distinct advantage with their cheap water breathing. Easily the strongest.

Altmer: Strong with magic, weak too magic. Their disease resistance suggests, to me, that they focus on charging with touch spells, since most mages will pull out weapons when you're in their face. The slight conjuration boost suggests they have a disposition for summoning something to be their tank, as well, since they're pretty squishy otherwise, especially with that low strength prohibiting armor. As such, in and out like an orc, but with touch spells.

Now, of course, we could also point out that enchanted gear that gets found totally changes alot of this, as well. If you play a more casual game, with lower difficulty, once again, none of this actually matters. You can also see a fair bit of changes should've been made, because most skills are going to end up neglected in a hardcore game, until they start hitting 100. I've done mage khajiit in most play throughs, but i've also played very casually. The bow setup i've done before, though, and it's very, very effective. I haven't actually touched the other races much, so i'm basing this solely on their stats rather than experience, but i'm probably not that far off.

I've found from experience alot of things get lost in translation, either to sensibilities or otherwise. I notice when i have Japanese audio in games, i can hear alot of (minor) differences between what is written in english and what was actually said. Most recent one was a character was being portrayed as a pervert by explaining her preferance for "romance novels," but in english it was simply "manga." Her overall disposition towards being a pervert was kept, however it was very much toned down where they could, even if the original wasn't necessarily offensive to sensative ears and eyes.

[About TES]

But they still don't change the fundamental rules regarding character growth.

High Elves may be better mages than Redguards, but the way you make them into powerful mages is the same; it just takes longer form Redguards to catch up. This is in contrast to SaGa 2 DS, where a good Esper mage and a good Robot mage need to take completely different paths to power. (Using the DS version because the Game Boy version doesn't allow Robots to be good mages.)

Also, later on, the powers don't make much of a difference, though the resistances of some races can (particularly in Oblivion, where Bretons are now overpowered due to "magic" resistance now affecting elemental spells).

I did in Morrowind, because they're the heaviest, and therefore fastest, race. (Of course, I was playing a female Orc when males are heavier and therefore faster.)

(Note that, in Oblivion and Skyrim, speed is based off height instead, making female High Elves the fastest characters.)

(Worth noting that Redguard is actually used for Morrowind speedruns simply because the temporary speed boost you can get at the start is more important, mainly because it helps you get to the point where you can glitch speed faster. Oblivion speedruns use High Elves because I believe the height effect is multiplicative, and your base Speed stat is insignificant when you're drunk with Skooma (which you are for most of the run).)

(By the way, I forgot about Morrowind's multiplicative Fortify Magicka effects, which make a big difference for mages, but I note that you don't see similar factors for other races, and no race changes the game as much as the Atronach birthsign.)

This can, of course, be replaced with a spell or magic item. In Oblivion, it's even one of the effects you can constant effect enchant, and it works even with a petty soul.

This does remind me of another issue I have with many games: I don't like it when games make it hard to see. It should always be either easy or impossible to see, so that players with vision issues or low quality monitors aren't disadvantaged.

Yeah, i agree the powers are worthless overall. They're too few in use per playtime. As for growth, well, that's the point of freedom. The idea is, if you're playing on the right difficulty, your usage of lesser powers should matter more, because if you're struggling no matter what you do, you'll cater to what you start with and you'll stick with that for a good long while. This is what i keep saying emphatically: if you're maging with a redguard, you're obviously playing on the wrong difficulty.

But outside of that, really, players should be given the chance and freedom to shoot themselves in the foot. If they are good enough on the hardest difficutly to make a redguard mage, they should most certainly be free to do so. I don't believe characters should be completely barred from something, but instead be heavily discouraged, especially by overwhelming pressure. My khajiit mages even still had high sneak skill, because, let's face it, you're gonna be a sneaky kitty. You're not going to sit there and play khajiit with that night eye and say "yep, i'm only going out during the day, and i'm never gonna sneak in the shadows." Similarly, you're not going to avoid water as an argonian. That one orc player, out there, wherever s/he is, isn't going to do so without a battle axe. Ano no altmer player isn't going to play without doing something about that magicka weakness, whether it's play style or throwing on a bunch of enchanted equipment. The race will always matter, it's just difficulty determines how much.

Interesting. However, wasn't it the case that in skyrim, the races were of only marginal size differences? It was one of the reasons why it was hard to tell certain races apart from one another. Well, let's just say that morrowind speed runs are special in their own right. The birthsigns need rebalancing badly: some are not worth glancing at, others change things alot. I'm a bit divided on atronach because it's going to force alchemy dependency. yeah, but that enchantment slot you're using to do that can be a huge deal, too. That said, you are right. The game does need a little rebalancing in that regard, too. Fortunately for khajiit players, it'll take a bit before others can overtake this. All the time i see games tell you to make the left box disappear, but make the right box appear. Sorry, but I can't even see in "bright" environments with the gamma that low. Clearly you're trying to make me mess with color balance or something. I'd love to know what the dev environments are like that this feels even remotely comfortable for anyone. I've yet to find someone that doesn't turn the gamma up. I understand you shouldn't have it too high, but no one is going to take you seriously when you're trying to make the sun dark. I would love to know why this is such a trend.

As for "disadvantaged," i don't think that's the case. Unless i'm such a player myself (whcih i'm not, as far as i'm aware), I don't see how it really affects anyone in a positive way. My vision isn't 20/20, but it's no where near needing corrective lenses. Moreover, this existed before OLED, and monitors have always tended to be commodities in this regard. I don't know what it is, but there's clearly another angle to this. Most people i know just go to a cave, find something that's reasonably dark but still gives them issues without night vision.

I also noticed we don't have this in handheld games where the contrast and such isn't maleable. Oddly enough, things aren't as dark. You'd think there'd be a push for that, especially where it's possible to enforce it, but there isn't.

Or you just summon ghosts and provoke then into hitting you with their spells.

Or (in Oblivion) you take adventage of those wells scattered across the landscape that restore your Magicka (well, they actually have *you* casting the spell that restores Magicka, which has the side effect of giving Restoration XP).

Neither's a good option in the middle of a fight. Sure, end game, but early game you're going to spend alot of MP just on a few simple casts. Obviously for morrowind this is different, though.